And who is Augustus Stryver?

As a coda to my last post, I have just been reminded of a little satire about the Liberal Nationals.

The Right Honourable Gentleman: A Satire was a book written in 1945 by Roger Fulford. It tells the story of Augustus Stryver, a young politician who is elected to parliament as a Liberal in 1929 but rapidly ditches his staunchly expressed views, especially on free trade, in favour of political advancement. In the events of 1931 he deviously repositions himself and secures his seat, then subsequently when the Samuelites left Stryver enters the government in the all important post of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Waterways and Bridges. The height of his career comes when his Minister dies and Stryver is chosen to succeed him, becoming The Right Honourable Gentleman. And then within a few months he is forced to resign after having an affair with his married secretary.

The novel is little remembered today, but The Word Cloud: best sellers of the past. 1946 suggests it was one of the better selling books of the year. It is biting but this is unsurprising. Fulford was no casual observer but a Liberal Party activist, standing several times for Parliament and later serving as Party President. Attacking the Liberal Nationals as unprincipled opportunists was a standard part of the Liberal attacks by this stage.

Stryver was in part based on Edgar Granville, MP for Eye from 1929 until 1951. (For confirmation see The Independent: Obituary: Lord Granville of Eye.) Interestingly the latter part of Granville's career followed a very different trajectory from Stryver's - he returned to the Liberals in 1942 and became one of the party's more left-wing MPs. He lost his seat in 1951 and joined the Labour Party, unsuccessfully standing for his seat again and later becoming a life peer.

Will this coalition produce such satires? Perhaps not because there are far fewer political satire novels written and read these days. But could there be an Augustus Stryver lurking on the government benches, preparing to discredit both parties involved?

Nick Clegg - Sir John Simon or Sir Herbert Samuel?

What happened the last time there was a peacetime coalition in the UK? The Liberal Party enthusiastically entered it but badly split between two dominant personalities, dividing the party for generations.

Sir John Simon had served successively as Solicitor General, Attorney General and Home Secretary under Asquith and then had emerged in the 1920s as the main heir to the Asquith wing of the party in the clashes with Lloyd George. He was also appointed as the chair of the "Simon Commission" to study constitutional reform in India.

Sir Herbert Samuel had also held high office under Asquith, including as Home Secretary, but then spent most of the 1920s out of Parliament and instead served as the first High Commissioner for Palestine for five years, then returning to the United Kingdom and heading the "Samuel Commission" that investigated the coal industry and sought to solve its problems before the General Strike. He returned to active Liberal politics and was re-elected to Parliament in 1929.

The 1929-1931 Parliament saw the Liberals hold the balance of power between Labour and the Conservatives and like today the party found itself divided over what course of action to follow and which party to back, complicated further by the harsh economic climate. A minority Labour government was formed which tried to govern and made some concessions to the Liberals, including introducing a Bill to change the voting system to the Alternative Vote, but the Liberals still badly divided with Simon and Lloyd George at the head of rival factions. Eventually in the summer, Simon and some followers resigned the Liberal whip.

The events of August 1931 (see Coalition forming for more details) totally changed the situation. The Labour government fell over proposals to cut public spending and a special "National Government" that drew together politicians from all three parties was formed. Lloyd George was ill so Samuel was acting leader of the party and entered the Cabinet as Home Secretary once more. Although the Liberal ministers were all drawn from the loyalist wing of the party, unity broke out in support of the government. But it couldn't last.

The Conservatives in the National Government proposed to seek an electoral mandate to introduce protectionist tariffs to help British industry and the Liberals split three ways over this. Lloyd George and a few followers (mainly his family) completely withdrew their support from the National Government and sought an informal alliance with the Labour Party over free trade. Meanwhile the bulk of the Liberals split in two. One group under Samuel were opposed to tariffs but wished to fight the battle within government. The other group under Simon were prepared to accept tariffs. The "Samuelites" retained control of the official party apparatus and a formal faction called the "Liberal Nationals" emerged under Simon. The government won an enormous majority in the November 1931 election and in the following government reshuffle, Simon became Foreign Secretary, with both factions of Liberals now represented.

The split continued over the next two years as the Samuelites tried to resist being part of the implementation of tariffs. First the government suspended the principle of collective responsibility to allow Liberal ministers to openly oppose government policy (something we might see again in the coming years), then the Liberal ministers resigned their posts whilst still sitting on the government benches in the Commons, and then finally in November 1933 they moved to the opposition benches. In the course of these events the Samuelites and Simonites became ever more divided with the result that the Liberal Nationals had become a separate party from the Liberals.

There were attempts to reunite the various strands of the Liberal family over the next few years but apart from Lloyd George's followers rejoining the Samuelites (now the "Sinclairites" after Samuel lost his seat and was succeeded as leader by Sir Archibald Sinclair) it was not to be. The Samuelites became established as The Liberal Party and served in the wartime coalition, then went through a long history in the wilderness, eventually merging with the Social Democrats to form the Liberal Democrats. The Simonite Liberal Nationals remained strong allies of the Conservatives, formalising their alliance in 1947 before finally merging completely into the Conservatives in 1968.

The fate of the Liberal Nationals has haunted the Liberals for decades and made them wary of too closely allying with one party or another without changing the voting system. Now they’ve entered another coalition but already there are signs that some senior Liberal Democrats are not entirely happy with the new arrangements (e.g. BBC News: Charles Kennedy refused to back Lib Dem-Tory pact). Could we see the Liberal Democrats once more permanently divide over a coalition? And which side of the divide will Nick Clegg be on?

An inability to get the figures right or just whatever will benefit?

Whilst doing a search to see which candidate for the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leadership election has the misfortune to be backed by Lembit Öpik I came across a couple of pages that indicates that perhaps Öpik and his local party either can't make their minds up or can't count properly.

First, from this BBC News story, Öpik stated at the time of Charles Kennedy's fall:

They've got what they wanted and we lose the most successful party leader we've had for 83 years...

And yet the Lib Dems only had 62 MPs at that point, when there were 72 Liberal MPs elected in 1931.

Now traditionally the excuse is made that in 1931 the Liberals were split in three and that only those following Sir Herbert Samuel were the "official Liberals". Any other MPs with "Liberal" in their description would be ignored, including Clement Davies, then MP for what is now Öpik's seat. But a scan of the Montgomeryshire Liberal Democrats website shows that this line of reasoning is not followed by Öpik and his local party when they triumphantly proclaim:

The area has been represented by a Liberal/Liberal Democrat MP for over a hundred years except for a four-year period (1979-83).
...
Clement Davies (1929-1962)

So Davies was considered a Liberal throughout his political career. Therefore the National Liberals could be counted as Liberals, and presumably also the four members of Lloyd George's family who decided to sit the National Government out completely from this point, meaning that in 1931 there were more than 62 Liberal MPs elected - 72 in total (and proportionally even more in a smaller House of Commons). And 1931 was only 75 years ago, not 83!

So are the Lib Dems unable to count or are they selective about which parts of their history they will and will not acknowledge? Or will they just say whatever will benefit them at the time?