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Henry Campbell-Bannerman

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The Right Honourable
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman

GCB
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office
5 December 1905 – 3 April 1908
MonarchEdward VII
Preceded byArthur Balfour
Succeeded byHerbert Henry Asquith
Personal details
Born7 September 1836
Kelvinside, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Died22 April 1908 (1908-04-23) (aged 71)
10 Downing Street, Whitehall, London, United Kingdom
Political partyLiberal
SpouseCharlotte Campbell-Bannerman
Alma materUniversity of Glasgow
Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
ProfessionMerchant

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, GCB (7 September 1836 – 22 April 1908) was a British Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister from 5 December 1905 until resigning due to ill health on 3 April 1908. No previous First Lord of the Treasury had been officially called "Prime Minister"; this term only came into official usage 5 days after he took office.

Early Life

Campbell-Bannerman was born at Kelvinside House in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1836 as Henry Campbell. The surname Bannerman was added to his surname in 1871 as required by his maternal uncle's will. It was a condition of his inheritance of his uncle's Kent estate, Hunton Court.

He was the second son and youngest of six children born to Sir James Campbell (1790-1876), who was Lord Provost of Glasgow 1840-1843, and his wife Janet née Bannerman (d. 1873). Henry Campbell was educated at the High School of Glasgow (1845-1847), the University of Glasgow (1851), and Trinity College, Cambridge (1854-1858),[1] where he achieved a Third-Class Degree in Classical Tripos. After graduating, he joined his family's firm, J.& W. Campbell & Co., who were warehousemen and drapers, based in Ingram Street in Glasgow. Campbell was made a partner in the firm in 1860. Following his marriage that year to Sarah Charlotte Bruce, Henry and his new bride set up residence at 6 Claremont Gardens in the Park district in the West End of Glasgow.

Member of Parliament

In 1868 he was elected to the House of Commons as Liberal Member of Parliament for Stirling Burghs — a constituency he was to represent for forty years.

He was appointed as Financial Secretary to the War Office in November 1871, serving in this position until 1874, and again from 1880 to 1882. After serving as Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty from 1882 to 1884, he entered Gladstone's second cabinet as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1884.

In Gladstone's Third (1886) and Fourth (1892-1894) Cabinets and Rosebery's Government (1894-1895) he served as Secretary of State for War, where he persuaded the Duke of Cambridge, the Queen's cousin, to resign as Commander-in-Chief. This earned Campbell-Bannerman a knighthood.

Liberal leader

In 1898 Campbell-Bannerman succeeded Sir William Vernon Harcourt as leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons. The Boer War (1899-1902) split the Liberal party into Imperialist and Pro-Boer camps and Campbell-Bannerman had a difficult time in holding together the strongly divided party, which was defeated in the "khaki election" of 1900. However the Liberal Party was able to unite in its opposition to the Education Act 1902 and, more significantly, Joseph Chamberlain's proposals for Tariff Reform (protectionism) in May 1903.[2] Chamberlain's proposals dominated politics through the rest of 1903 up until the general election of 1906. Campbell-Bannerman, like other Liberals, held an unshakable belief in free trade.[3] He proclaimed: "...to dispute Free Trade, after fifty years' experience of it, is like disputing the law of gravitation".[4] On another occasion he explained the Liberals' support for free trade:

We are satisfied that it is right because it gives the freest play to individual energy and initiative and character and the largest liberty both to producer and consumer. ... trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. ... We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form. Besides we have experience of fifty years, during which our prosperity has become the envy of the world.[5]

In 1903 the Liberal Party's chief whip negotiated a pact with Ramsay MacDonald of the Labour Representation Committee to withdraw Liberal candidates in order to help LRC candidates in certain seats. Campbell-Bannerman got on well with Labour leaders and he said in 1903: "We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons".[6] However he was not a socialist.[7] One biographer has written: "He was deeply and genuinely concerned about the plight of the poor and so had readily adopted the rhetoric of progressivism, but he was not a progressive".[8]

The Liberals returned to power in December 1905 when Arthur Balfour resigned as Prime Minister, leaving Campbell-Bannerman to form a minority government. Campbell-Bannerman immediately dissolved Parliament and called a general election. In his first speech as premier on 21 December 1905, Campbell-Bannerman launched the Liberal election campaign, focusing on the traditional Liberal platform of "peace, retrenchment and reform":

Expenditure calls for taxes, and taxes are the plaything of the tariff reformer. Militarism, extravagance, protection are weeds which grow in the same field, and if you want to clear the field for honest cultivation you must root them all out. For my own part, I do not believe that we should have been confronted by the spectre of protection if it had not been for the South African war. ... Depend upon it that in fighting for our open ports and for the cheap food and material upon which the welfare of the people and the prosperity of our commerce depend we are fighting against those powers, privileges, injustices, and monopolies which are unalterably opposed to the triumph of democratic principles.[9]

The Liberals swept to power in a landslide victory.

Prime Minister

Campbell-Bannerman

Campbell-Bannerman's premiership saw the Entente with Russia in 1907, brought about principally by the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. In that same year, Campbell-Bannerman achieved the honour of becoming the Father of the House, the only serving British Prime Minister to do so to date. Nevertheless his health soon took a turn for the worse, and he resigned as Prime Minister on 3 April 1908, to be succeeded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Henry Asquith. Campbell-Bannerman remained in residence at 10 Downing Street in the immediate aftermath of his resignation, and became the only (former) Prime Minister to die there, on 22 April 1908. His last words were "This is not the end of me"[10]. Campbell-Bannerman was buried in the churchyard of Meigle Parish Church, Perthshire, near Belmont Castle, his home since 1887. A relatively modest stone plaque set in the exterior wall of the church serves as a memorial.

Legacy

In an uncharacteristically emotional speech on the day of Campbell-Bannerman's funeral, his successor H. H. Asquith told the House of Commons: "He was not ashamed, even on the verge of old age, to see visions and to dream dreams... He met both good and evil fortune with the same unclouded brow, the same unruffled temper, the same unshakeable confidence in the justice and righteousness of his cause."

Another of Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet Ministers — who was also later to serve as Prime Minister (and, years after his premiership, as Father of the House as well) — David Lloyd George, said of his passing, "I have never met a great public figure who so completely won the attachment and affection of the men who came into contact with him. He was not merely admired and respected; he was absolutely loved by us all. The masses of the people of the country, especially the more unfortunate of them, have lost the best friend they have ever had in the high place of the land. ... He was a truly great man. A great head and a great heart. He was absolutely the bravest man I ever met in politics."

George Dangerfield said Campbell-Bannerman's death "was like the passing of true Liberalism. Sir Henry had believed in Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform, those amiable deities who presided so complacently over large portions of the Victorian era... And now almost the last true worshipper at those large, equivocal altars lay dead".[11] Campbell-Bannerman held firmly to the Liberal principles of Richard Cobden and William Gladstone.[12] It was not until Campbell-Bannerman's departure that the doctrines of New Liberalism came to be implemented.[13]

There is a blue plaque outside Campbell-Bannerman's house at 6 Grosvenor Place, London SW1. On 6 December 2008 former Liberal Democrat leaders Charles Kennedy and David Steel, now Lord Steel of Aikwood, unveiled a plaque to commemorate Sir Henry at at the home in Bath Street, Glasgow. Lord Steel praised his predecessor as Liberal Party leader as an "overlooked radical" whose 1906 landslide victory had paved the way for a succession of reforming governments. "He led the way for the longest period of successful radical government ever, which was continued by Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George," Lord Steel said.[14]

His bronze bust, sculpted by Paul Raphael Montford is in Westminster Abbey (1908)[15].

Campbell-Bannerman's Government

Blue plaque at 6 Grosvenor Place, London

Changes

References

  1. ^ "Campbell [post Campbell Bannerman], Henry (CMBL854H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. ^ John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 394.
  3. ^ Wilson, p. 407.
  4. ^ Wilson, p. 410.
  5. ^ Wilson, p. 413.
  6. ^ Wilson, p. 394.
  7. ^ Wilson, p. 506.
  8. ^ A. J. A. Morris, ‘Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 29 March 2009.
  9. ^ 'Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman At The Albert-Hall', The Times (22 December, 1905), p. 7.
  10. ^ "Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at 10 Downing Street". Retrieved 2007-01-31.
  11. ^ George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (Serif, 1997), p. 27.
  12. ^ Morris.
  13. ^ W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition. Volume Two: The Ideological Heritage (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 150.
  14. ^ "Plaque unveiled to the forgotten Prime Minister, Glasgow Herald, 7 December 2008". Retrieved 2008-12-07.
  15. ^ "British war memorials · paul montford". Retrieved 2007-01-31.

Further reading

  • ‘Maistly Scotch’ Campbell-Bannerman and Liberal Leadership by Ewen A Cameron, Journal of Liberal History, Issue 54, Spring 2007
  • Campbell-Bannerman (British Prime Ministers of the 20th century series) by Roy Hattersley, Haus publishing 2006
  • C. B.: Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman by John Wilson, Constable & St Martin's Press, 1973
  • Biography of Campbell-Bannerman by Tony Greaves in 'Dictionary of Liberal Biography', Politico's, 1998
  • The Life of the Right Hon Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman GCB by J A Spender, Hodder & Stoughton, 1923
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Political offices
Preceded by Financial Secretary to the War Office
1871 – 1874 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Financial Secretary to the War Office
1880 – 1882 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty
1882 – 1884 		Succeeded by
Chief Secretary for Ireland
1884 – 1885 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary of State for War
1886 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary of State for War
1892 – 1895 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Leader of the Opposition
1899 – 1905 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
5 December 1905 – 3 April 1908 		Succeeded by
Leader of the House of Commons
1906 – 1908
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Stirling Burghs
1868 – 1908 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Leader of the British Liberal Party
1899 – 1908 		Succeeded by
Honorary titles
Preceded by Father of the House
1907 – 1908 		Succeeded by
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