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Beaverbrook As Historian: “Politicians and the War, 1914-1916” Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

John O. Stubbs
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For students interested in the political history of Britain during the early years of the Great War, Lord Beaverbrook's Politicians and the War, 1914-1916 is now essential reading. This, however, has not always been the case. The historiographical fortunes of this important study, Beaverbrook's modus operandi, and his preoccupations as a historian are the main concerns of this paper. Examination of these issues, combined with a reassessment of of certain key themes and incidents in Politicians and the War allow for a reevaluation not only of the book as a major source for the period but also of that wonderful and partisan fusion of politics and history who was Max Aitken, the first and only Lord Beaverbrook.

Beaverbrook, as A.J.P. Taylor's vast biography makes clear, was a man of many parts. Politics colored almost everything he did. His politics were those of the Unionist (later the Conservative) Party and, as a Canadian colonial who had come to Britain to augment further his considerable fortune, he identified strongly with the Tariff Reform wing of the party in the years before the First World War. He was Unionist MP for Ashton-under-Lyne from 1910 to 1916. Within the Unionist Party his closest friend was Andrew Bonar Law, another Canadian born politician, who in 1911 became Leader of the party and was thus a central figure in the tumultuous events examined in Politicians and the War. Aitken also had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Liberal Party. They, too, provided him with another perspective on the politics of the wartime period; one of them, David Lloyd George, in one of his earliest acts as Prime Minister in December 1916, elevated Aitken to the House of Lords where he took the title of Lord Beaverbrook.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , Winter 1982 , pp. 235 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1982

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References

1 Beaverbrook, Lord, Politicians and the War (London, 1960)Google Scholar. The book was originally published in two sections in 1928 and 1932.

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6 An exception were the reviews in the Beaverbrook Press by two men who were hardly political intimates at the time—the Labour politician Philip Snowden, and, more surprisingly, the fiercely Liberal journalist, A.G. Gardiner. As editor of The Daily News, in 1916 Gardiner had staunchly defended the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, against not only the intrigues of the Unionists but also against those of the ultimately successful Liberal intriguer, David Lloyd George (Taylor, , Beaverbrook, p. 251Google Scholar; see also pp. 51,335).

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13 I have discussed these matters elsewhere in more detail. See Stubbs, J.O., “The Impact of the Great War on the Conservative Party,” in Peele, Gillian and Cook, Chris, eds., The Politics of Reappraisal, 1918-1939 (London, 1975), pp. 14–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jalland, Patricia and Stubbs, John, “The Irish Question after the Outbreak of War in 1914: Some Unfinished Party Business,” The English Historical Review 96 (Oct. 1981): 778–807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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29 Rae, John, Conscience and Politics: The British Government and the Conscientious Objector to Military Service, 1916-1919 (London, 1970)Google Scholar touches briefly on the subject in chs. 1-3. Robert Blake has suggested that conscription “would indeed be a tedious topic to pursue through all its ramifications. The endless discussions … constitute a chapter in English history to which no doubt in years to come dull history professors will direct their research students.” To which Alfred Gollin has sardonically replied: “It may, perhaps, be observed in this connection that dullness, like beauty, resides in the eye of the beholder” (Robert Blake, The Unknown Prime Minister: p. 282; Gollin, A.M., Proconsul in Politics: A Study of Lord Milner in Opposition and in Power: With an Introductory Section, 1854-1905 [London, 1964], p. 275.Google Scholar)

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32 Law to Asquith, 15 May 1915, encl. in Law to Lansdowne, 15 May 1915, Bonar Law MSS., House of Lords Record Office. Robert Sanders, a Unionist whip then on duty in France, returned for the Unionist Party meeting on the coalition on 26 May and “learnt … from Edmund [Talbot—the chief whip] that the Unionist leaders went in without any guarantees as to National Service” (Sanders diary, 13 Sept. 1915, pp. 83-4, Conservative Research Department, London). At the Party meeting the question of National Service was raised by two dissident peers but “nobody could tell me that our leaders had exacted any pledge from Asquith as the price of surrendering their independence beyond asking for a certain number of seats in the Cabinet” (Lord Willoughby de Broke to Leo Maxse, 5 June 1915, Maxse MSS., 470/224-5, West Sussex Record Office). See also the “official” and sanitized report of the meeting in The Times 27 May 1915.

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35 71 H.C. Deb., 5s, cols. 1968-76, 14 December 1915.

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