Andrew Bonar Law and the Fall of the Asquith Coalition: The December 1916 Cabinet Crisis

Abstract

With the coming of World War I, Unionist party leader Andrew Bonar Law concluded that the best way to maintain national unity was to suppress interparty strife, and therefore he led his party into a coalition under the Liberal premier, H.H. Asquith, in May 1915. This essay suggests that he continued to support the Asquith coalition only so long as he thought it the best path to unity and victory. In December 1916, however, he lost patience with Asquith’s desultory war leadership and acted decisively to drive him from the premiership and bring about an alternative Government under David Lloyd George. After the celebrated Nigeria debate of 8 November 1916, Bonar Law realised that the profound frustration of Unionists with Asquith’s leadership held the potential for a party revolt which could upset the government and provoke a divisive wartime election. He concluded that a small executive committee for war management would solve both of these problems and came to cooperate with two powerful colleagues who thought similarly: the War Secretary, Lloyd George, and the Irish Unionist, Sir Edward Carson. Though his part in the crisis is typically depreciated by historians, once it became clear that Asquith rejected the idea of an independent war executive (which he assumed would be made up of his three antagonists) as well as the ceremonial role assigned him, Bonar Law acted decisively and in close cooperation with Lloyd George in destroying the government. Acting largely independently of his senior Unionist colleagues. Bonar Law brought his party into a reorganized Government in which he became the second leading force. Much previously unexploited evidence supports the thesis that Bonar Law was a key decision-maker in the demise of the Asquith coalition and that his part in this important episode has been undervalued and misunderstood.