Dilke (25 page)

Within a few days he received retrospective sanction from Gladstone, and then felt able to set to work Sir John Lambert, the authoritative permanent secretary to the Local Government Board. Between them they produced a scheme for the Cabinet at its meeting on August 9th, a few days before the prorogation of Parliament. The Cabinet set up a committee—with Dilke in the chair, and Hartington, Childers, Chamberlain, Kim-berley and Lefevre as members—to consider the matter further. “I soon got rid of the committee and went on by myself with Lambert,” was Dilke's comment on this. His second and more detailed draft was ready for the Cabinet by September 18th, after only one meeting of the committee. Boroughs with less than 10,000 inhabitants were to lose their separate representation and be merged in the counties. Two-member boroughs with between 10,000 and 40,000 inhabitants were to lose their second member. The seats gained by this final demise of the semi-rotten boroughs were to be distributed partly to London, partly to the under-represented industrial boroughs, and partly to the counties, which were to be split up for the first time and were to enjoy a net increase of 53 members. Lancashire and Yorkshire, on the somewhat surprising assumption that they were urban throughout, were to be divided into single-member divisions. The remaining English counties were to be split (if their size warranted it) into two-member districts. Ireland, Scotland and Wales were to be somewhat over-represented on roughly the same basis.

This scheme was much less radical than Dilke would have liked. But he was restricted by Gladstone's instinctive conservatism on the one side, and by Hartington's concern for Whig electoral interests on the other. Gladstone's conservatism made him a passionate defender of university representation (which
Dilke would like to have abolished) and a rearguard fighter for the rights of ancient boroughs. The Prime Minister believed in the theory of popular democracy, but thought that it should be accomplished within the framework of an electoral map as similar as possible to that which he had known in his youth. Hartington's approach was more hard-headed. The basis of Whig strength was the two-member constituency. It sustained the practice of the double-harness Liberal team—one advanced candidate to enthuse the faithful and one moderate to broaden the appeal. But in a single-member division a choice would have to be made, and Hartington and his advisers were in no doubt that in these circumstances the faithful, who mostly chose the candidates, would prefer radicals to Whigs.

Dilke's most useful ally proved to be Lord Salisbury. There was an element of extremism in Salisbury's character. It was to enable him first, in 1885, to outflank the Liberals by the extent of the concessions he was prepared to offer the Irish and then, from 1886 onwards, to preside over the most ruthlessly repressive government in the history of the union. In 1884, on redistribution, it enabled him to follow the example set by Disraeli in the franchise struggles of 1866-7. Once he had accepted the need for a change he was prepared for a drastic one. He had less natural respect for the traditional and the familiar than had Gladstone, and he had no interest in pulling Whig electoral chestnuts out of the fire. Pushed on by Randolph Churchill, he was prepared for the moment to put his faith in Tory democracy.

Salisbury's views became known in September. “Now that Salisbury is going in for electoral districts,” Kimberley wrote to Dilke, “it will become a sort of open competition which party can go farthest. I should not be surprised if he were to trump us by proposing to abolish the House of Lords.”
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This was a fairly typical Government reaction, and it made Dilke's task in strengthening his measure a great deal easier.

Informal discussions with the Opposition began towards the end of the month. They were conducted principally by Hicks Beach for the Conservatives and by Hartington and Dilke for the Liberals. They led to little result, although
Beach proposed at one stage the abolition of separate representation for towns with a population of less than 25,000 and the loss of the second seat up to 80,000. Much of the difficulty arose because Beach was not fully authorised as a negotiator by his party. Sometimes he was flying a kite for Lord Salisbury, sometimes he was flying one for himself, and sometimes he was speaking for the whole Conservative party; but it was not easy to tell which occasion was which. The titular leader of the Opposition in the Commons—Northcote—was a constant source of weakness. Gladstone (whose private secretary Northcote had once been) believed that the latter had let him down so badly at the time of the “closure” negotiations in 1881, that it was useless, on grounds of feebleness not of duplicity, to deal with him. Salisbury was the key figure, but it was not possible at this stage to entice him into direct negotiation.

Later in the autumn this deficiency was repaired. Salisbury agreed on November 4th, in response to an initiative of the Queen, that there should be direct meetings between the party leaders. The first of these took place on the 22nd of the month, although there had already been informal discussions between Salisbury and Dilke on the Housing Commission. The formal meeting took place in Downing Street and was attended by Gladstone, Hartington and Dilke from the Government side and by Salisbury and Northcote for the Opposition. “There never was so pleasant and friendly a meeting,” Dilke wrote enthusiastically; and added in a letter to Chamberlain: “It looks as though Lord Salisbury is really anxious that we should pass our Bill.”

Chamberlain received this information rather sceptically, and within the course of a day or so it looked as though he might be right, for Salisbury suddenly demanded the grouping of small towns, so that the county divisions should be made more completely rural. Dilke was horrified by this proposal, for, independently of its psephological merits or demerits, it would have involved going back on a laboriously reached agreement about the number of county seats. Salisbury, however, withdrew from this position as rapidly as he had
occupied it. He also abandoned a demand for minority representation in the towns, to which Chamberlain, not unreasonably, had taken particular objection. This behaviour did not impress Dilke. “All this shows great indecision,” he noted, adding later: “Lord Salisbury did not seem to me thoroughly to understand his subject.”
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But it certainly assisted the progress of the negotiations.

There was a further meeting of the five negotiators on November 26th, after which the heads of agreement could be put before the Cabinet.

“I announced . . . that the Tories proposed and we accepted single-member districts universally in counties,” Dilke wrote, “boundaries to be drawn by a commission who were to separate urban from rural as far as possible, without grouping and without creating constituencies of utterly eccentric shape. The names of the commissioners had been settled, and both sides were pledged to accept their proposals, unless the two sides agreed to differ from them. The Tories proposed single-member districts almost everywhere in boroughs, and only positively named one exception—the City of London—but were evidently prepared to make some exceptions. They made our agreement on this point the condition of passing the Franchise Bill, of giving up the decrease of the Irish members from 103 to 80 which they urged, of giving up all forms of minority vote, and of giving up grouping. My own opinion and that of the Prime Minister were in favour of agreement.”
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The Cabinet was not so favourably disposed. Apart from Hartington, who was inevitably hostile to single-member districts, Childers threatened resignation on this point; and the Chief Whip, Grosvenor, who had been called in, was equally critical. “We had the enormous advantage, however,” Dilke wrote, “that Chamberlain and I and Mr. Gladstone were the only three people who understood the subject, so that the others were unable to fight except in the form known as swearing at large.”
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This opposition did not prove very effective,
and the Cabinet eventually sent Dilke to tell Salisbury that agreement should be possible, and authorised the three plenipotentiaries to continue their negotiations with the Conservative leaders that afternoon. Following this afternoon meeting documents were exchanged between the parties. On the next day, November 28th, Salisbury and Dilke, in a series of four final meetings, put the finishing touches to the work. These meetings took place at Salisbury's house and the agreement which emerged became known in consequence as “the Arlington Street compact.” The principal last-minute change was that the Conservatives, as a compromise, agreed to keep the two-member constituency for those boroughs outside London which had previously possessed and were still to retain two members. This arrangement persisted in some form until 1950, although its
raison d'être
, the easing of the Whig position within the Liberal party, was to disappear within eighteen months.

The “compact” gave considerable satisfaction to the leaders of the Government. Mary Gladstone, Sir Philip Magnus informs us, observed the Prime Minister, Hartington and Dilke behaving like boys out of school at luncheon on November 27th, and at tea on that day she found her father “splitting and chuckling.” In the evening he wrote a letter to the Queen to thank her for “that wise, gracious and steady exercise of influence on Your Majesty's part which has so powerfully contributed to bring about this accommodation and to avert a serious crisis of affairs”;
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and his gratitude to Dilke was at least as lively, if less rotundly expressed. As for Dilke himself, he was fully but not unreasonably satisfied with his own work. He had decisively re-drawn the electoral map of Britain. Despite the subsequent changes of 1918, 1950 and 1955, to-day's pattern is recognisably based on that of 1884, and on no earlier arrangement. The modern county con-stitutency and the modern divided borough are both Dilke's creations.

In addition to making a long-term settlement Dilke had also looked after immediate radical interests. He had obtained more seats for London (an increase from 22 to 55) and the
other big towns than he had originally believed possible, and he had in consequence produced a much nearer approach to the equal weighting of votes than had ever before been attempted.
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Furthermore, on most prognostications, he had strengthened the electoral prospects of the Liberal party generally and of the radical wing in particular, and he had done it all without a fatal breach with Hartington and in agreement with Salisbury. This last point gave him peculiar pleasure. “Lord Salisbury had always been so extremely soft and sweet to me,” he wrote with satisfaction three weeks after the conclusion of the negotiations, “that it is a revelation to find him writing to Spencer in the style of Harcourt or of Chamberlain in a passion.”
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Dilke's triumph had been secured without much help from Chamberlain. At times, indeed, he had found it almost as difficult to persuade the President of the Board of Trade as to prevent a breach with Hartington. In part this arose out of differences between Dilke and Chamberlain about the merits of particular proposals. Chamberlain, for example, was much more attached to the double-member constituency than was Dilke. But in part, also, it arose from doubts on Chamberlain's side as to the wisdom of engaging in negotiations at all. The difficulty was that any discussions with the Opposition about redistribution inevitably merged into the possibility of a compromise on House of Lords resistance to the Franchise Bill; and Chamberlain, having nailed his flag with a great public flourish to the mast of victory over the Lords, was against any such arrangement. Suggestions that Gladstone was preparing for compromise roused him to bitter private denunciation and the threat of resignation. Morley and he engaged in a spate of condemnatory correspondence. “For weeks,” Garvin informs us, “Chamberlain did not realise that even Dilke was undergoing a modification of mind.”
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When he did realise it and the practical advantages which might follow, Chamberlain withdrew much of his opposition. But he remained somewhat sceptical throughout, and as late as November 27th Dilke recorded that, in the midst of his negotiations with the Conservative leaders, he had to conduct parallel ones with his ally, who was in another room at 10, Downing Street and “somewhat hostile.” Dilke had kept up his sleeve the card of a seventh seat for Birmingham, and this ace, played at the decisive moment, did much to bring Chamberlain along. When the compact was complete Chamberlain wrote to Morley outlining and defending the arrangement. But his final comment—“Not bad for a Tory Bill!”—was resigned rather than enthusiastic.

The conclusion of the compact by no means completed Dilke's work on the subject. First he had the task of appointing the Boundary Commissioners. The English ones gave rise to no difficulty, but the Irish ones led him into sharp conflict with Spencer and a charge of having appointed them over the head of the Lord Lieutenant and without any consultation with Dublin Castle. The Scottish appointments gave rise to still more trouble, but here it was with the Conservatives and not with a Cabinet colleague. “Perhaps I may take the opportunity of mentioning that I have been asked by some of our friends in Scotland about Mr. Crawford's appointment,” Northcote wrote to Dilke on December 18th. “They say he is the Lord Advocate's Political Secretary, and that, if we are to be bound by the decisions of the Commission, his weight will tell heavily. We were not, I think, consulted as to his appointment.”
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Crawford was a distant family connection of Dilke's. His wife, whom he had married in 1881, was a younger sister of Mrs. Ashton Dilke.

Apart from these appointments there was the task of preparing the bill and piloting it through the House of Commons. At first the plan was that Hartington, whose succession to the leadership of the party was generally regarded as imminent, should share with Dilke the responsibility for this work. With this end in view Dilke went for a few days in January to visit Hartington at Hardwick Hall. He was impressed by the
splendours of the Elizabethan mansion, which justified its local description of being “all window and no wall” to the extent that, “in spite of heavy hanging curtains, the candles are blown out if you go near the windows,” but little useful business was transacted.
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The house was full of other guests, and Hartington showed no eagerness to concentrate upon the details of redistribution. The result was that when the bill came before the House the responsibility remained with Dilke. Sir Henry James was deputed to help, but he did not in practice do much, and, in any event, as he was not in the Cabinet, his rôle was a junior one.