Asquith's coalition government

On 25 May 1915 a coalition government was formed in Britain. The Liberal Herbert Henry Asquith remained Prime Minister, but the leaders of the opposition Conservative Party, whose members were then generally called Unionists, entered the cabinet, as did a representative of the Labour Party. The era of governments made up solely of members of the Liberal Party was over. As it turned out, this had been the last such government in British history. The date of 25 May appears in official lists. According to the memoirs of Winston Churchill, the full list of ministers was announced, and the new ministers took office, a day later.

Two crises

The change was brought about by two crises within a fortnight or so. The first was the shortage of ammunition. As late as 20 April Asquith had assured an audience in Newcastle that claims that a lack of ammunition was crippling the army’s operations contained “not a word of truth”. On 9 May the First Army’s attack at Aubers broke down with heavy losses, and on 14 May the military correspondent of The Times, Colonel Charles à Court Repington, wrote that the British had lacked high-explosive shells to destroy the German breastworks. His information came largely from the commander of the British Expeditionary Force himself, Field Marshal Sir John French, who through trusted aides passed the same documents to politicians, among them the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, and the Conservative leaders. The affair that broke out became known as the Shell Crisis.

The second crisis was the resignation of Lord Fisher. On 15 May the First Sea Lord walked out of the Admiralty in protest against the Dardanelles expedition. Conservative MPs, whom their leader Andrew Bonar Law was struggling to restrain from an open attack on the government, had no intention of letting this pass in silence. On 17 May Bonar Law came to Lloyd George to make sure that Fisher really had gone. Out of the conversation grew the idea of a coalition. Lloyd George passed it on to Asquith, who summoned Bonar Law to Downing Street. According to the participants’ accounts, the meeting lasted about a quarter of an hour and sealed the fate of the Liberal government. That same evening Asquith asked all his ministers to resign. On 19 May he announced in the House of Commons that the government would be reconstructed “on a broader personal and political basis”, and that its sole aim would remain winning the war.

The new cabinet

The 22-member cabinet comprised twelve Liberals, eight Conservatives (some lists count nine), one Labour member, Arthur Henderson, who took over education, and the non-party Lord Kitchener. The Liberals kept the most important posts. Asquith remained Prime Minister, Edward Grey Foreign Secretary, and the Treasury was taken over by Reginald McKenna. Lloyd George gave up the Exchequer to head the new Ministry of Munitions, which was to take over from Kitchener the supply of shells to the army. Kitchener stayed at the War Office. When on 21 May Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail violently attacked him over the shell shortage, an indignant public burned copies of the paper, among other places at the London Stock Exchange, and the King soon afterwards made the minister a Knight of the Order of the Garter.

The Conservatives received mainly secondary posts. Bonar Law became Colonial Secretary, Austen Chamberlain Secretary of State for India, George Curzon Lord Privy Seal, Lord Lansdowne minister without portfolio, and Edward Carson, the leader of the Ulster Unionists, Attorney General. The only Conservative with real influence on the conduct of the war was the former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, who replaced Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty. The Irish Nationalists refused to join the government.

The price of coalition

The Conservatives set two personal conditions. Churchill, whom they blamed for the Dardanelles and could not forgive for having left their party for the Liberals years before, had to leave the Admiralty and was given the minor post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Lord Chancellor, Richard Haldane, one of Asquith’s oldest friends and the architect of the pre-war army reform, accused by the press of pro-German sympathies, also left the government. His place was taken by Stanley Buckmaster. Many Liberal MPs accepted the coalition with bitterness. At a party meeting on 19 May, as Christopher Addison noted, some of them wept, and so did the Prime Minister himself.

Asquith kept power and forced the Conservatives to share responsibility for the war. The new cabinet met for the first time on 26 May. It soon became clear, however, that it was too large to direct the war efficiently and that the former political opponents were reluctant to trust one another. The coalition lasted until December 1916, when Asquith was replaced by Lloyd George.