‘Fighting one's own friends is hateful work’: Coalition troubles, January – October 1922

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 1918 election Law believed ‘Lloyd George can be Prime Minister for life if he wants’. In the event, the government survived only four turbulent years. Although 1922 was to be a critical year for the Coalition, the year began auspiciously. For all the problems during 1921, by December the fortunes and confidence of the coalition leadership were greater than for some time. A week after signing the Irish Treaty, the government claimed something of a diplomatic triumph with the four-power treaty in Washington covering Pacific and Far Eastern questions. Thereafter progress was also swiftly made with regard to naval disarmament (finally signed on 6 February 1922). Two days after the Pacific agreement, the Commons debate on the Irish Treaty provided the government with its first notable parliamentary success for some months. For the moment even Law broke the ominous silence he had maintained throughout the negotiations to declare his approval. While in the longer term the Irish Treaty was to prove both ‘Lloyd George's greatest achievement, but … also the greatest single cause of his overthrow’, in December 1921 it had undoubtedly restored the government's fortunes and renewed its sense of policy direction. Moreover, although relations with France had been gravely aggravated by the unilateral Angora agreement with the Turks in November 1921 and even more by French obstructionism at Washington, even Anglo-French relations provided some substance for hope. The ‘conversations’ with Briand in London from 18–22 December thus set in motion a process which led, via Cannes and Genoa, to an attempt to resolve Anglo-French differences over German reparations. With Ireland settled, Washington still hailed a triumph and plans already in progress for a conference offering the prospect of European peace and the restoration of prosperity, the scene was set for an attempt to engineer indirectly that which could not be achieved by direct calls for ‘fusion’. Encouraged by McCurdy's grossly over-optimistic assessments of the prospects, some time before Christmas Lloyd George decided that circumstances were propitious for another coalition election. At a dinner held by Birkenhead after the Irish Treaty debate, the subject was discussed for the first time by the Coalition leaders.