Winter and Discontent: The December Crises of the Asquith Coalition, 1915–1916

Abstract

Where the Lloyd George Coalition presided over ultimate victory – much though the term was contested – in 1918, its predecessor came to be regarded as a model of how not to wage war. An agglomeration of crises, the Asquith Coalition was wracked by two in particular: the first concerned the adoption of military conscription; the second the reconstruction of the executive. Both resulted from wider dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war. The crisis of December 1915 was surmounted; that of December 1916 destroyed the Government. The first concerned a matter of principle subsumed by circumstance into expediency; the second combined an incompatibility of personnel with a signal divergence of political orientation. One hitherto overlooked participant was central to each. By rescinding his resignation as Chancellor of the Exchequer in December 1915, Reginald McKenna enabled the Government to continue in an unreconstructed form for a further year; by emboldening the Prime Minister's resistance to change in December 1916, he ensured the destruction of the ministry, the accession of Lloyd George, and the emasculation of the Liberal Party. Both crises have been examined exhaustively, though never comparatively, and never with the papers of the ‘principal wrecker’.