Lloyd George's coalition government

On 11 December 1916 British newspapers published the composition of the new coalition government of David Lloyd George, who had been prime minister since 7 December. The official list of ministers was issued on the evening of Sunday 10 December. The most important body of the new government, the five-member War Cabinet, had been meeting since 9 December; now the rest of the team became known. The British chronology of the war records several changes at once under 11 December: the formation of the coalition government, the departure of the Foreign Secretary Edward Grey, the move of Arthur Balfour to the Foreign Office, the appointment of Lord Derby as Secretary of State for War and the creation of the Ministry of Labour. It gives the appointment of Edward Carson as First Lord of the Admiralty under 12 December, when it was announced in the official London Gazette.

Who backed the new prime minister

Lloyd George had above all the Conservatives, that is the Unionists, behind him. Their leader Andrew Bonar Law, who on 6 December had given up his attempt to form a government of his own, became Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Just as important was the position of the Labour Party. On 7 December its MPs and national executive decided by a majority to join the government. Participation was strongly advocated by the party leader Arthur Henderson, who entered the War Cabinet. Labour also expressed the hope that the government would at last try to settle the Irish question.

Things were harder with the Liberals, the prime minister’s own party. Almost all the Liberal members of the old cabinet refused to serve under Lloyd George. On 8 December at the Reform Club Herbert Henry Asquith explained to his party’s MPs and peers the reasons for his resignation and announced that he would sit on the opposition benches but would not obstruct the conduct of the war. Those present unanimously expressed their confidence in him as leader of the Liberal Party. At the same time, however, the Liberal War Committee, which grouped MPs dissatisfied with the conduct of the war so far, pledged active support to the new prime minister, and on 11 December the Welsh Liberal MPs did the same, congratulating their compatriot on attaining “the highest office in the Empire”. Lloyd George tried to win over at least one of his former colleagues and offered a post to Herbert Samuel. Samuel declined because, as the prime minister recalled, he did not believe the new government would last.

The new team

According to the tally in the Annual Register, among the 33 names on the list there were 15 Unionists, 12 Liberals, three Labour members and three people from outside both Houses of Parliament. Ten ministers from the old cabinet remained in the government and twelve left: the Conservative Lord Lansdowne, who since November had argued for considering a compromise peace, and eleven Liberals, among them Asquith himself, Grey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna, the President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman, Lord Crewe, Samuel and Edwin Montagu. Only four ministers kept their old posts: Austen Chamberlain at the India Office, Lord Robert Cecil at the Ministry of Blockade, Henry Duke as Chief Secretary for Ireland and the Attorney General Frederick Smith.

The Conservative George Cave became Home Secretary, Walter Long Colonial Secretary and Robert Finlay Lord Chancellor, while the Ministry of Munitions was taken over by the Liberal Christopher Addison, who during the crisis had been gathering the support of Liberal MPs for Lloyd George. A novelty was the appointment of men from outside politics. Albert Stanley, until then head of the London Underground and buses, became President of the Board of Trade; the agricultural expert and historian Rowland Prothero became Minister of Agriculture; the historian Herbert Fisher, vice-chancellor of the University of Sheffield, became Minister of Education; and the Welsh coal magnate Lord Rhondda became President of the Local Government Board. The new posts of Food Controller and Shipping Controller went to the merchant Lord Devonport and the Glasgow shipowner Joseph Maclay.

Grey’s departure

Edward Grey had headed the Foreign Office since December 1905, longer without a break than anyone before or since. It was he who in August 1914 had convinced the House of Commons that Britain could not leave France and Belgium to their fate. In July 1916 he had been created Viscount Grey of Fallodon and moved to the House of Lords. He had long had trouble with his eyesight and was tired, and his critics accused him, like Asquith, of a lack of energy. He left the government together with the prime minister. At the meeting at the Reform Club on 8 December he paid tribute to Asquith, saying that the country would never fully know how invaluable his presence at the head of the government had been. Lloyd George judged him mercilessly years later: according to his memoirs, Grey was unfit for anything that required decision and energy, and responsibility for the conduct of the war paralysed him.

Grey’s successor was Arthur Balfour, the former Conservative prime minister, who since May 1915 had headed the Admiralty. His letter of 5 December, in which he supported Lloyd George’s plan, had contributed to Asquith’s fall. Balfour did not join the War Cabinet, but as Foreign Secretary he often attended its meetings.

Derby at the War Office, Carson at the Admiralty

The War Office, which Lloyd George had vacated on becoming prime minister, went to Lord Derby. The Conservative aristocrat from Lancashire had run the recruitment of volunteers in 1915 and since July 1916 had been Under-Secretary at the War Office. He was regarded as an ally of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, and of the commander of the forces in France, General Douglas Haig, which mattered in the prime minister’s growing dispute with the generals.

The Admiralty passed from Balfour to Edward Carson, the leader of the Ulster Unionists, since the autumn of 1915 the sharpest critic of Asquith’s government in the House of Commons and one of the architects of the December coup. Lloyd George had at first wanted him in the War Cabinet, but the Conservative ministers objected. Carson, a brilliant barrister, had no experience of running a department, which the prime minister later considered a drawback in this post. At the Admiralty he found a new First Sea Lord, Admiral John Jellicoe, who had replaced Admiral Henry Jackson a few days earlier. The most urgent task for both was to be the fight against German submarines.

The Ministry of Labour

Besides Henderson’s seat in the War Cabinet, Labour received two entirely new departments in the government. The Ministry of Pensions was to be headed by George Barnes, and the first Minister of Labour in history was John Hodge, leader of the steel smelters’ union. The new ministry was to take over from the Board of Trade matters of employment, labour exchanges and arbitration in industrial disputes. It received its legal basis only from an act passed before Christmas, but Hodge set to work at once. His first task was a strike of boilermakers in the port of Liverpool, whom he told that he would not open talks until they returned to work.

The House of Commons met under the new leadership on 12 December. The Liberals who wanted to follow Asquith onto the opposition benches could not all fit on them, and many Unionists stayed in their old places. The prime minister, ill with a throat complaint, was unable to deliver his announced statement, which was postponed to 19 December. The government lasted until the end of the war and beyond, until 1922, and the split of the Liberals into supporters of Asquith and of Lloyd George proved permanent.