Lloyd George resigns after Conservatives pull plug on coalition – Bonar Law set to become new PM
London, 20 October 1922 – The British coalition government which has been led by David Lloyd George since 1916 has ended.
Mr Lloyd George, who headed the British negotiating team that signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, has tendered his resignation as Prime Minister to King George V. An election is expected to be called for next month.
The death knell of the coalition was sounded at a meeting of the Conservative Party MPs, at the Carlton Club in London. At the meeting they voted by a large majority of 186 to 87 to contest any upcoming election as an independent party with its own leader and its own programme.
In doing so, they rejected a proposal from Austen Chamberlain, party leader, that the current coalition be continued. Chamberlain had been greeted on arrival at the club by cries of ‘Traitor!’ by his party’s die hard faction.
Mr Chamberlain’s argument in favour of the coalition saw a repetition of points recently made in a speech in Birmingham where he raised the spectre of the challenge from a Labour Party intent, he maintained, on challenging the principles upon which the national, industrial and commercial greatness of Britain was based. Mr Chamberlain held that the next general election would see a contest between the forces promoting individual freedom and those aimed at state socialism or nationalism.
British Pathé footage of Prime Minister David Lloyd George fishing 1922
The key intervention at the Carlton Club meeting, however, was that of Andrew Bonar Law, who said that he placed more importance on keeping the Conservative Party united than on winning the next election. He also argued that maintaining a government that comprised everyone except the Labour Party would position that party as the only alternative and so would have the effect of making a Labour government some day.
The fallout from the vote has been both rapid and dramatic. Mr Chamberlain has resigned the party leadership and he is expected to be replaced by Mr Bonar Law. The result also precipitated the resignation of Lloyd George as Prime Minister.
Bonar Law has been invited to form a government by King George. According to Press Association reports, however, he informed the king that as his party was currently without an official leader he would have to decline. However, it is fully expected that he will agree once he is elected to the position.
Reacting to events, James Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, leader of the Tory die hards, stated that he believes members of all parties will be glad to have gotten back to the old party system. Addressing the situation in Ireland, Lord Salisbury declared that the union had been destroyed, but that the clock could not be turned back.
‘We must make the best of it… Under the Irish treaty powers are given to the Irish Government, who, so long as they use them properly, we must respect. None of us ought to be party to breaking the word of England. We signed the treaty, and must abide by it as long as the others abide by it.’
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
