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1028 alists and Sinn Feiners. It was a scheme, said the Freeman's Journal, for the "plunder and partition" of Ireland. Protestant Ulster, after a little hesitation, took the line that she was quite satisfied with her present position in the United Kingdom, but that, if Parliament thought such a measure right, she would accept it and do her best to make it a success. The bill was opposed, on the ground that it involved partition, both by the Labour party, who were prepared to concede the absolute right of self-determination, and by Mr. Asquith, who proclaimed his adherence to a Dominion Constitution. That also was the view of Sir Horace Plunkett; and several southern Unionists, such as Lord Dunraven and Lord Midleton, demanded complete fiscal autonomy for Ireland. The bill eventually passed into law in Dec. 1920, and was put into force in 1921. Lord Edmund Talbot, who became Viscount Fitzalan, an English Roman Catholic, was appointed Lord Lieutenant, and elections were duly held for the two Parliaments in the spring. As the campaign of Sinn Fein terrorism was still in full swing in southern Ireland, Sinn Feiners were everywhere returned in that area unopposed, save in Trinity College. In northern Ireland the Unionists had a great electoral success, returning 40 out of the 52 members of the new House of Commons. As Sir Edward Carson had retired and taken a Lordship of Appeal, Sir James Craig was the Unionist leader, and formed a Government as Prime Minister. The King and Queen opened the Ulster Parliament in state on June 22, the King, in moving language, expressing the hope in his Speech from the Throne that Irishmen would forgive and forget. Thereupon Mr. Lloyd George, while making every arrangement for strengthening the authority of the Crown in southern Ireland against the forces of disorder, issued a public invitation to Mr. De Valera, the Sinn Fein leader, and to Sir James Craig, to come and confer with him at once in London without conditions. Sir J. Craig accepted immediately; and Mr. De Valera, after consulting with other Sinn Fein leaders and with some of the southern Unionists, also came to London; while a truce was called in the "war" (see further the article ).

Several important changes took place in the Ministry in the early months of 1921. Mr. Long retired from the Admiralty for ill health and was subsequently created a viscount. Lord Milner, after remarkable service to the State, resigned the Colonial Office, and retired into private life, being succeeded by Mr. Churchill. Mr. Bonar Law had a sudden breakdown, which entailed immediate abandonment of political work, and which, as he was one of the main pillars of the Coalition, might well result in serious political complications. But Mr. Austen Chamberlain was immediately elected by the Unionist party to be leader in the House of Commons in his place; and he stepped into the same confidential relation that Mr. Law had held in regard to the Prime Minister. He became Lord Privy Seal. Sir Robert Horne succeeded him as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was succeeded at the Board of Trade by Mr. Stanley Baldwin. The Government bills which attracted most attention in this session were one by Sir Eric Geddes for grouping the railways of the country in the interests of efficiency and economy; and another promoted by the Board of Trade for the safeguarding of special industries. The Independent Liberals, in their opposition to the Protection which they discovered in this latter bill, made use of the well-known arts of obstruction, and all-night sittings were resumed. The budget dropped the excess profits duty, and the higher rates of duty imposed in the previous year on sparkling wine and cigars. Postal rates were however further increased. Otherwise taxation remained at the same height.

This heavy burden was more felt this year, because the period of inflated trade which had succeeded the war had come to a sudden end in the previous autumn; prices tumbled down; it was impossible to find markets for goods; wages had to be reduced and men dismissed in one great industry after another; and unemployment steadily increased. It was borne forcibly in upon every individual that economy in public and private expenditure was imperative. By-elections, as might be expected with so huge a majority, had on the whole gone against the Government from the beginning. But their losses this spring and early summer had this exceptional character, that the victors in the three contests which attracted most attention, at Dover, St. George's (Westminster) and East Herts., ran simply and purely as "Anti-waste" candidates. The tendency of the Government, already manifested, to restrict its ambitions and curtail its schemes, was intensified. Already practically all the new war ministries, except the Pensions Ministry, had been disbanded; the putting into complete effect of Mr. H. A. L. Fisher's comprehensive-but somewhat extravagant Education Act had been postponed; and urgent admonitions in favour of economy had been circulated to the departments. Now it was announced by Mr. Churchill that he had formulated a scheme by which the enormous outlay in Mesopotamia and Palestine, against which there had been a great public outcry, might be materially reduced. Dr. Addison, who was thought to have studied thoroughness rather than economy in regard to his housing schemes and his medical staff at the Ministry of Health, resigned that Ministry; and so strong a protest was roused by his retention in the Cabinet without a portfolio but with a salary, that the Prime Minister felt it necessary in June to declare that the arrangement was only for the remainder of the session, and that the salary would be halved. Dr. Addison's successor in the Ministry of Health, Sir Alfred Mond, announced an administration on much less ambitious lines. Ministers also abandoned their guarantee of agricultural prices and wages; and further determined to terminate their control of the coal industry on April i, four months earlier than the date originally announced. This resulted in yet another coal strike, or stoppage, the most serious of all the strikes in the industry in these years. The men could not reconcile themselves to the great reductions in wages necessary to make the industry self-supporting. And they also demanded a national pool a half-hearted form of their old demand for nationalization. They alienated public sympathy at first by withdrawing the pump men from the mines a position from which they had to recede. The Government offered a temporary subsidy of 10,000,ooo to tide over the difficult early weeks; but terms could not be arranged, and the strike lasted for three months April, May and June, and was settled in the end on terms which the men might have had early in the dispute, if they had not clung to the national pool, which of course had to be abandoned. The loss to the country was enormous, as the great industries dependent upon coal had one after another to close down their works. But the employers in these industries could support the stoppage better than the men, as, owing to the depression of trade, they would have been manufacturing during these months at a loss. The funds of the great unions were depleted, and many of them got deeply into debt; and there was some want and hardship amongst women and children. Happily, it was a season of warmth and brilliant sunshine, so that the domestic fire was needed only for cooking.

A momentous conference was held in London in the summer of 1921 between the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand and the Union of South Africa, together with representatives of India. The main object of the conference was to formulate a common foreign policy for the sister nations composing the British Empire, and to come to a decision as to the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance (see ).

There were symptoms of uneasiness in the latter part of 1920 and in 1921 in the extreme wings of both parties to the Coalition. On the one hand there was some fraternizing between Independent and Coalition Liberals; and on the other Lord Salisbury was the spokesman of those Tories who urged Unionists to come out of the Coalition and resume their independence, a course which had already been taken by a few individuals, conspicuous among whom were his brothers, Lord Robert and Lord Hugh Cecil. But neither move-