Contents - Constitutional Court of Georgia

66
Lucas Prakke
However, things were moving far too fast for the King. He did not think the Lords should be
snubbed unnecessarily by rejecting their amendments en bloc and advocated dealing with them
in the normal manner seriatim, with each amendment being considered and decided on individually.
Far more important, however, was the fact that – before it came to creating peers – the King
wanted the Lords to have an opportunity to vote on the Parliament Bill in the form they received
it back from the Commons, in the certain knowledge that if they rejected it the government would
avail itself of the ‘November pledges’, the veil of secrecy surrounding which now had to be lifted.
The government immediately went along with the King’s wishes on both points, which was a not inconsiderable
concession. For if the Lords backed down as they had done in 1832, the House would
not be expanded. Granted, the government would then have its Parliament Act, but Home Rule
could then only be achieved by means of that Act and so would once again be seriously delayed.
* * *
In a letter from Asquith to Balfour and Lansdowne dated 20 July 1911, the two Conservative
leaders were informed of the King’s willingness to ensure through the use of his Prerogative that
the Parliament Act would enter the statute book ‘in substantially the same form in which it left the
House of Commons’. 32 A meeting of the Conservative shadow cabinet was immediately convened,
at which a big difference of opinion emerged on the course to be steered. Lord Lansdowne, who
had tabled the most controversial amendment and until recently had dug in his heels, now thought
further resistance was pointless. He therefore proposed that the Unionist Peers should abstain
from voting in the final decision on the Parliament Bill, thus allowing the bill to pass. Thirteen
colleagues agreed with him, but the other eight announced that they preferred ‘to die in the last
ditch’: the ‘House of Lords wing of the Unionist army’ would therefore have to vote against the bill,
irrespective of the consequences. This difference of opinion continued with great intensity outside
the shadow cabinet. Lord Lansdowne’s ‘hedgers’ were opposed by the ‘ditchers’ or ‘diehards’, who
had chosen the elderly Lord Halsbury as their leader. Lord Curzon, who had initially been a hardliner,
was so worried about the loss of prestige the House of Lords would suffer in the event of a ‘large
creation’ that he began to investigate how many Unionist Peers would be willing, if necessary, to
vote in favour of the bill. As a member of the Conservative shadow cabinet, he felt he should himself
adhere to the policy adopted by majority decision: ‘abstaining with Lansdowne’.
There was great uncertainty about the number of peers that would need to be created if the
House of Lords were to be expanded. In a letter to the members of the shadow cabinet written on
22 July 1911 – but not sent, Balfour considered the appointment of 50–100 new Lords ‘a matter
of indifference’. 33 The ditchers hung on to the illusion that this was the worst that could happen to
them. If a large number of Unionist peers were to abstain with Lord Lansdowne, it would not be
32 Jenkins, op. cit., p. 219.
33 Jenkins, op. cit., p. 226.