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Andrew Bonar Law (16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a Canadian-born British Conservative Party statesman and Prime Minister. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been born outside the British Isles.
lster Scots and Scottish descent, Andrew Bonar Law was born in Rexton, a small village in eastern New Brunswick, Canada. He was the son of the Reverend James Law of Portrush, County Antrim and Elize Anne "Annie" Kidston, who belonged to a Glaswegian banking family.
In 1860, Law's mother died in childbirth.
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Quotations
Whatever steps you may feel compelled to take, whether they are constitutional, or whether in the long run they are unconstitutional, you have the whole Unionist Party, under my leadership, behind you.
Message sent to Belfast (12 July, 1913).
Encyclopedia
Andrew Bonar Law (16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a Canadian-born British Conservative Party statesman and Prime Minister. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been born outside the British Isles.
Early life
Of Ulster Scots and Scottish descent, Andrew Bonar Law was born in Rexton, a small village in eastern New Brunswick, Canada. He was the son of the Reverend James Law of Portrush, County Antrim and Elize Anne "Annie" Kidston, who belonged to a Glaswegian banking family.
In 1860, Law's mother died in childbirth. He worked as a boy on his father's smallholding and for some years after his mother’s death he was in the care of his maternal aunt, Janet Kidston, who lived in her brother-in-law's household until his remarriage, when she decided to return to her native Scotland. She suggested that it might be to her nephew's advantage if she were to take him back to Scotland with her, where he would receive a good education, as the Kidstons were a much wealthier and better connected family than the Laws.
At the age of 12, Law left to live with his late mother's three male cousins, who were rich merchant bankers in Glasgow. As they were all either unmarried or childless, they saw him as a substitute son and heir. He was educated at Gilbertfield School in Hamilton (1870-1873), and then at Glasgow High School (1873-1875).
The Kidstons did not wish him to continue to university, and so at the age of 16 he was employed in the offices of their bank. He did later attend night classes at the University of Glasgow, which gave him an interest in politics and debating. At some time during his life time he lived in the presbyterian Manse on Abbey Street in Coleraine, County Londonderry, belonging to 1st Coleraine Presbyterian Church.
He read voraciously, but had a particular fondness for Dickens, Carlyle, Disraeli and Gibbon. He also became a very able chess player.
Bonar Law's business career went from strength to strength, and well before he was thirty, he had acquired the reputation of a shrewd man of business, who drove others hard but himself far harder. In 1885, he purchased a partnership in William Jacks & Co., a Glasgow firm concerned in the financing of the iron trade. In 1890, at the age of thirty-two, Bonar Law, already a settled and successful man, became engaged to Annie Robley, whom he married in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire on 24 March 1891.
The marriage was to prove very happy and they had seven children, although the first was stillborn. Law’s interest in politics had grown stronger as the 1890s went by, and after he inherited a very large sum on the death of one of the Kidstons, he was able to consider running for Parliament. One of Law's children, Isabel H. Law, married Major General Sir Frederick Sykes, the military commander, politician and statesman. Two of his sons were killed in World War I - Charles Law with the King's Own Scottish Borderers at the Battle of Gaza on 1917 and James Law with the Royal Flying Corps, shot down over the Western Front also in 1917. His youngest son was Richard Law, 1st Baron Coleraine.
Parliament
He was elected to Parliament for Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown as a Conservative in 1900. He associated himself with the Protectionist wing of the party led by Joseph Chamberlain, and after Chamberlain withdrew from politics in 1906, Law came to lead that wing of the party along with Chamberlain's son, Austen. He had a reputation for honesty and fearlessness, and was well regarded as an effective speaker. These qualities helped him to be appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade in 1902.
He lost his seat to future Labour leader George Nicoll Barnes in the anti-Conservative landslide 1906 General Election, but he returned to represent Dulwich at a by-election later that year. Though hit hard by the death of his wife, he continued his political career; after leaving the House of Commons at the December 1910 election, he returned as MP for Bootle at a by-election in 1911.
Conservative Leader
Arthur Balfour resigned the leadership of the Conservative Party (known at that time, after the formal merger with the Liberal Unionists, and until Irish independence in the early 1920s, as "the Unionist Party") in 1911 amid widespread dissatisfaction with his actions over the Parliament Act, which had eliminated the veto of the House of Lords. Following a deadlock between Austen Chamberlain and Walter Long, the two candidates agreed to stand down in favour of Bonar Law, who became Leader as a compromise candidate. Law's closest associate was his fellow Canadian (and New Brunswicker), newspaper mogul William Maxwell Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook). In the years prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Law focused most of his attention on the tariff issue and on Irish Home Rule. Now that the House of Lords had lost its power to veto legislation, the latter had become inevitable, but along with much of his party Bonar Law furiously opposed the Liberals' plans to coerce the Ulster Protestants into a Home Rule Ireland; at a time when the latter were moving towards armed resistance, Bonar Law said that "there were no lengths" to which Ulster could go and not receive his support.
The Great War
He entered the coalition government as Colonial Secretary in 1915, his first senior Cabinet post, and, following the resignation of Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Herbert Asquith, was invited by King George V to form a government, but he deferred to Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and former Minister of Munitions, who he believed was better placed to lead a coalition ministry. He served in Lloyd George's War Cabinet, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. His promotion reflected the great mutual trust between both leaders and made for a well co-ordinated political partnership; their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice. Law's two eldest sons were both killed whilst fighting in the war. In the 1918 General Election, Law returned to Glasgow and was elected as member for Glasgow Central.
Post-war and Prime Minister
At war's end, he gave up the Exchequer for the less demanding sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal, but remained Leader of the Commons. In 1921, ill health forced his resignation as Conservative leader and Leader of the Commons in favour of Austen Chamberlain. His departure weakened the hardliners in the cabinet who were opposed to negotiating with the Irish Republican Army, and the Anglo-Irish War ended in the summer.
By 1921-2 the coalition had become embroiled in an air of moral and financial corruption (e.g. the sale of honours). Besides the recent Irish Treaty and Edwin Montagu's moves towards greater self-government for India, both of which dismayed rank-and-file Conservative opinion, the government's willingness to intervene against the Bolshevik regime in Russia also seemed out of step with the new and more pacifist mood. A sharp slump in 1921 and a wave of strikes in the coal and railway industries also added to the government's unpopularity, as did the apparent failure of the Genoa Conference, which ended in an apparent rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia. In other words, it was no longer the case that Lloyd George was an electoral asset to the Conservative Party.
Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill (still distrusted by many Conservatives) wished to use armed force against Turkey (the Chanak Crisis), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand, but not Canada, Australia or South Africa; an anonymous letter appeared in "The Times" supporting the government but stating that Britain could not "act as the policeman for the world", and it was an open secret that the author, "A Colonial", was in fact Bonar Law. At a famous meeting at the Carlton Club, Conservative backbenchers, led by the President of the Board of Trade Stanley Baldwin and influenced by the recent Newport by-election which was won by a Conservative standing against the Coalition, voted to end the Lloyd George Coalition and fight the next election as an independent party. Austen Chamberlain resigned as Party Leader, Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister and Bonar Law returned on 23 October 1922 in both jobs.
Many leading Conservatives (e.g. Birkenhead, Arthur Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Robert Horne) were not members of the new Cabinet, which was contemptuously referred to as "the Second Eleven". Although the Coalition Conservatives numbered no more than thirty, they hoped to dominate any future Coalition government in the same way that the similarly-sized Peelite group had dominated the Coalition Government of 1852-5 - an analogy much used at the time.
Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a General Election ensued. Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates (including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless). Despite the confused political arena the Conservatives were re-elected with a comfortable majority.
Questions were raised about whether the elderly Conservative Party Treasurer, Lord Farquhar, had passed on to Lloyd George (who during his premiership had amassed a large fund, largely from the sale of honours) any money intended for the Conservative Party. The Coalition Conservatives also hoped to obtain Conservative Party money from Farquar. Bonar Law found Farquar too "gaga" to properly explain what had happened, and dismissed him.
One of the questions which taxed Bonar Law's brief government was that of inter-Allied war debts. Britain owed money to the USA, and in turn was owed four times as much money by France, Italy and the other Allied powers, although under the Lloyd George government Balfour had promised that Britain would collect no more money from other Allies than she was required to repay the USA; the debt was hard to repay as trade (exports were needed to earn foreign currency) had not returned to prewar levels. On a trip to the USA Stanley Baldwin, the inexperienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed to repay £40 million per annum to the USA rather than the £25 million which the British government had thought feasible, and on his return announced the deal to the press when his ship docked at Southampton, before the Cabinet had had a chance to consider it. Bonar Law contemplated resignation, and after being talked out of it by senior ministers, once again vented his feelings in an anonymous letter to "The Times".
Resignation, Death
Bonar Law was soon diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and, no longer physically able to speak in Parliament, resigned on 22 May 1923. George V sent for Baldwin, whom Bonar Law is rumoured to have favoured over Lord Curzon. However Law did not offer any advice to the King. Bonar Law died later that same year in London at the age of 65.
Bonar Law's estate was probated at £35,736.
Bonar Law was the shortest serving PM of the twentieth century. He is often referred to as "the unknown Prime Minister", not least because of a biography of that title by Robert Blake; the name comes from a remark by Asquith at Bonar Law's funeral, that they were burying the Unknown Prime Minister next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
He is also the only British Prime Minister to have been born outside the British Isles.
A tiny hamlet (unincorporated village) named Bonarlaw is named after the British Prime Minister. It was formerly known as "Big Springs" and then "Bellview" and is located in the municipality of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, Canada.
Bonar Law's Government, October 1922 - May 1923
For a full list of Ministerial office holders, see Conservative Government 1922-1924
Changes
- April 1923 - Griffith-Boscawen resigns as Minister of Health after losing his seat and is succeeded by Neville Chamberlain.
Bibliography
- Adams, R. J. Q. Bonar Law, London: John Murray, 1999. ISBN 0-7195-5422-5
- Blake, Robert The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858-1923, London: 1955.
- Smith, Jeremy "Bluff, Bluster and Brinkmanship: Andrew Bonar Law and the Third Home Rule Bill" pages 161-178 from Historical Journal, Volume 36, Issue #1, 1993.
- Deane, Ciarán The Guinness Book of Irish Facts & Feats. Guinness Publishing 1994 ISBN 0851127932
- Taylor, A. J. P. Beaverbrook, 1972.
Popular Culture
Bonar Law plays a supporting, if off-screen role in Upstairs, Downstairs. He is even said to have recommended family patriarch, Richard Bellamy, to be offered a seat in the peerage.
External links
- on the Downing Street website.
- at the UK Parliamentary Archives
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