A player rather than a gentleman

Andrew Bonar Law is chiefly famous for having been `the unknown prime minister' in his last year of life, 1922-23. This by no means does him justice. His main importance was as a leader of a rather successful Unionist (that is, Conservative) party between 1911 and 1923 - a stint comparable in length to that of Macmillan or Lady Thatcher and with a rather happier outcome. In short, he deserves to be better known. His achievement in climbing to the top of the greasy pole rivals that of Disraeli. He was not English, not a gentleman, not a believer in the Church of England: or to put it more offensively, he was Scottish-Canadian-Ulster in family background, from the Glasgow commercial class, and not only an unbeliever in religion generally but not even an Anglican unbeliever. As if that were not enough, he was an intimate of Lord Beaverbrook. The gentlemen of England have never had a more improbable leader.

Bonar, as he was familiarly known, raised questions about the nature of Conservative party leadership which are still with us today. Is there a place in British politics for an uncompromising Conservatism with no frills and no affectations of compassion? Can a leader succeed in Westminster politics who is rooted in the habits and assumptions of the provinces? And can a commitment to Protestant Ulster ever survive the bigoted hatred of liberal Britain for people who are not like themselves?

The answers were clear enough. Bonar's uncompromising but never reactionary Conservatism went down well with his own party. He was not anti-working class and recognised the need for a new inclusiveness based on a patriotic alliance with the working-man voter. More surprisingly, he went down well with Labour, which recognised in him a man of principle. His almost exaggerated provincialism served to disguise formidable talents, kept his hands clean in a corrupt era, and established that he somehow was not as other men. He fought unremittingly for Ulster, and more than anyone else at Westminster secured partition and the exclusion of the Six Counties, which was the only possible Irish settlement in his century. And by holding out against an enforced united Ireland he helped to prevent civil war.

He never forgot that he was, above all, the leader of a political party. He saw his task as being primarily that of rebuilding a strong Tory party. In this he succeeded beyond measure. Unlike some other Tory opposition leaders, he did not attempt to run a government in exile. He thought that it mattered little if whole branches of public life were a closed book to him. He thought that the leader of a Tory opposition could and should - nay, must - duck many important issues (women's suffrage was one). Foreign policy he avoided: it did not interest him and was not his immediate responsibility. On social reform, he thought that Tories should not do nothing, but agree on one or two things, and not try to cover the whole ground. Then as now, this makes sense. He avoided attempts to put the clock back: he saw to it, for instance, that Lloyd George's National Insurance legislation went though the Lords unopposed. He argued that the one social reform people really wanted from his party was jobs, and that neither his being a knowall nor `this vision thing' were necessary for building a strong Tory party.

Asquithian snobbery has caricatured Bonar as a dour puritan. Was he not a teetotaller who liked rice pudding? Did he not retire each night on a glass of milk and a biscuit? Did he not loathe country house existence, preferring family life in a `rather suburban-looking detached villa in a Bayswater street, decorated after the familiar fashion of Bradford or Altrincham' as Asquith cattily put it? Tories made much of his living in the unknown wastes west of the Park, where no gentleman had ever trod before. Best of all, perhaps, he was the totally urban Tory leader who, on seeing a game bird in the country (which he disliked), had to have it explained to him that it was a pheasant.

In fact Bonar did not mind others enjoying themselves so long as he did not have to do it himself. His devotion to chess, bridge and tennis did not bring him into much contact with opulence, but it brought significant contacts: Stanley Baldwin was a tennis partner. Judged by his choice of intimates, Bonar was no stern moralist. To be closely associated with Keynes, Beaverbrook and Lloyd George shows a certain eclecticism, one might even say a quietly upright man's taste for outrageous rogues. His greatest single achievement was the partnership he forged with Lloyd George. That two men of such totally different characters and backgrounds could combine for the public good over six harmonious years speaks volumes; during the coalition years, Lloyd George found Bonar Law `an ideal companion with whom he could laugh and joke and enjoy himself . If Lloyd George was the man who won the war, Bonar was the man who paid for it; equally important, he was the man who ensured that the great war leader did not have to watch his back at Westminster. Since Lloyd George depended entirely on Tory votes throughout his premiership, Bonar's selfeffacing tact alone kept the show on the road. It was one of the great political partnerships of history.

Nobody has suffered more from attempts to blacken his name. The ruthless distortions of Liberal propaganda have made him out to be a bigot, an extremist, an opponent of the people's will, an advocate of civil war. Fortunately, serious opinion is now becoming less crudely partisan. It is Asquith's reckless optimism, based on the idea that `Ireland is a nation, not two nations, but one nation' that can now be accused of leading to civil war, while Bonar Law's extremism of language was the only way open to him of forcing a sensible Irish compromise. Talk of civil war was only a phrase, as this book establishes; Bonar Law always made it clear that if Asquith won an election on Home Rule, that would be that. He would accept the popular verdict. His objection was to constitutional amputation without the issue being put to the people.

Was he a dour Protestant bigot? His bigotry took the form of believing in nothing at all. He was not anti-Catholic, and appointed a Roman Catholic to be resident governess for his daughter. If he was a nasty piece of work in some way, public or private, the evidence has eluded his talented biographer. He was ambitious as a young MP; he suffered from depression as a widower, and could appear indolent; otherwise he was a pillar of old-fashioned Glaswegian mercantile rectitude.

Why did he dump Lloyd George in 1922? All turned on whether Bonar Law would return from convalescence to lead the revolt, which lacked a figurehead. Bonar's reasoning was oblique. He did not turn against the premier because he had fallen out with him. He merely dithered when Baldwin appealed to him `not to leave all the white men on the beach'. He remained undecided even though it was clear that Lloyd George had become a vote-loser who would let Labour in, an `albatross round the neck' of Toryism. Only when he saw that the party would split in any case did he decide to act, rather than leave the Tory identity `in the hands of a reactionary element'. For that rather arcane reason this very modest man allowed himself to be pushed into becoming prime minister at 64. But for the sudden onset of cancer of the throat (he smoked cigars incessantly) it is hard to see why he should not have turned out an excellent one for his time, an apostle of social and international peace and a central figure in the Tory pantheon.

This is an authoritative book. All the Tory sources have been read, with a gift for understanding the Tory point of view. It may appear strange to have a second major biography, when the young Robert Blake gave us in The Unknown Prime Minister (1955) what many think his best book, but comparison is both needless and impossible, the range of sources having expanded immeasurably. This is an essential work and my only quibble would be that the apparent lack of proof-reading is unworthy of the great house of Murray.

Copyright Spectator Apr 17, 1999
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