Difference between revisions of "Reginald McKenna"

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'''Reginald McKenna''', ([[6 July]], [[1863]] – [[6 September]], [[1943]]) was a leading Liberal politician before the [[First World War]] and occupied the position of [[First Lord of the Admiralty]] in a critical period.
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[[File:Reginald McKenna (LoC).jpg|thumb|right|350px|The Right Honourable Reginald McKenna.<br><small>Photo: Library of Congress.</small>]]
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{{RIGHTHON}} '''Reginald McKenna''', P.C. (6 July, 1863 &ndash; 6 September, 1943) was a leading Liberal politician before the [[First World War]] who served as [[First Lord of the Admiralty]] from 1908 to 1911.
  
 
==Early Life==
 
==Early Life==
McKenna was born in Kensington, London, on 6 July 1863, the fifth son and youngest child of William Columban McKenna (1819–1887), a civil servant with the Inland Revenue, and his wife, Emma (d. 1905), daughter of Charles Hanby. McKenna's father, a Roman Catholic from co. Monaghan, Ireland, was distantly related by marriage to Daniel O'Connell, who in 1838 helped him to obtain a civil service post in London. Later W. C. McKenna converted to protestantism, and his children were raised as protestants. Reginald identified himself as a Congregationalist.
 
 
Because of W. C. McKenna's financial difficulties, arising from the Overend Gurney bank failure in 1866, his family was broken up, the two eldest sons remaining in London with their father to work while Emma McKenna, the daughters, and the youngest sons lived inexpensively in France. Reginald received a European primary education, in St Malo, France, until 1874, and subsequently at Ebersdorf, Germany, until 1877, becoming fluent in French and German. While the family was briefly reunited in England in the late 1870s, he attended King's College School, London. Winning a scholarship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was ranked among the senior optimes in the mathematical tripos list of 1885. In 1916 he became an honorary fellow of Trinity Hall. He gained distinction from rowing in the Cambridge University crews who beat Oxford in the 1887 boat race and who won the Grand Challenge Cup in 1886 and the Stewards' Cup in 1887 at Henley.
 
 
==Early political career==
 
McKenna was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1887 and built up a thriving practice. In 1892 he stood unsuccessfully as Liberal candidate for Clapham, and in 1895 was returned as a Liberal for North Monmouthshire—for which he sat until 1918. In the House of Commons he joined a small group of young radicals mentored by the veteran politician Sir Charles Dilke. Guided by Dilke, McKenna and his allies became accomplished parliamentarians who regularly interpellated Conservative ministers. He was especially close to Dilke, being labelled in the press as his Man Friday. Taking his patron's advice, the young MP chose a special subject, tariffs, in which he became an expert.
 
 
McKenna, representing a Welsh constituency, was also active in the house on behalf of Wales, attacking the Conservative government's Education Bill of 1897 and other legislation offensive to nonconformists. Although much less provocative and nationalistic than his fellow MP David Lloyd George, McKenna was on cordial terms with him and they worked closely together. In 1898 Lloyd George declined his nomination to succeed the recently deceased chairman of the Welsh parliamentary group, Sir George Osborne Morgan.
 
 
Like Lloyd George, but less demonstratively, McKenna was critical of aspects of the South African War (1899–1902). While objecting to the Chamberlain family's connection with war contracts, he also demanded that the families of fallen soldiers be compensated as generously as if they had met with factory accidents—a proposal which Lloyd George seconded. Participating in the Liberals' wartime feud between radicals and imperialists, he stood behind the party leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, against the imperialists led by Lord Rosebery, H. H. Asquith, and R. B. Haldane.
 
 
With peace restored, McKenna joined Lloyd George and other radical, Welsh, and nonconformist MPs in contesting the Balfour government's Education Bill of 1902. As one of the Liberal MPs best informed about tariffs, he fought vigorously against Joseph Chamberlain's protectionist crusade. In 1903 he helped to found the Free Trade Union. His attack (1904) on the discriminatory tobacco duties of the chancellor of the exchequer, Austen Chamberlain, was a masterful performance, reinforcing his claim to ministerial office when the Liberals assumed power. He also strengthened his credentials as a Welsh and radical MP by fighting the government's anti-temperance Licensing Bill of 1904, alongside Lloyd George and the new Liberal recruit, Winston Churchill. He was among the radicals—including Dilke, Lloyd George, and Henry Labouchere—who were critical of the slackness of parliamentary Liberalism, and in 1904–5 canvassed the possibility of forming a radical caucus to ginger the party.
 
At the Treasury and the Board of Education
 
When Campbell-Bannerman formed his Liberal government in December 1905 McKenna was among the backbenchers slated for junior ministerial office. His appointment as financial secretary of the Treasury, one of the most prestigious junior posts, offered him valuable training for an eventual cabinet ministry. He was befriended by his superior, Asquith, the chancellor of the exchequer, his adversary during the South African War but with whom he had already worked during the anti-protectionism campaign. He became indispensable to Asquith for his enterprise, quick thinking, and analytical skills. He aided Asquith in creating the distinction in income tax between earned and unearned income, and developing a graduated tax.
 
 
When the presidency of the Board of Education became vacant in January 1907 Campbell-Bannerman had to choose between McKenna and the flashier Winston Churchill, parliamentary under-secretary at the Colonial Office. McKenna's knowledge of Wales, a hot spot of ‘Church v. Chapel’ agitation over education, as well as his very successful record at the Treasury, secured his promotion to cabinet rank—the first since the formation of the ministry.
 
 
McKenna's tenure at the Board of Education was constructive but unspectacular. The government's Education Bill of 1906, intended to rectify nonconformist grievances with the 1902 act, had been vetoed by the House of Lords, and less controversial bills introduced by McKenna in 1907 and 1908 had to be dropped because of nonconformist objections. Establishment of a Welsh department in the Board of Education in 1907 was popular in Wales, but disagreement over appointments to it and over enforcement in Wales of the hated 1902 act produced the first significant disputes between McKenna and Lloyd George. Among McKenna's innovations was the creation of a school medical service which carried out the compulsory physical examination of schoolchildren.
 
  
 
==First Lord of the Admiralty==
 
==First Lord of the Admiralty==
Asquith's succession to the prime ministership in April 1908 resulted in several new cabinet appointments. Asquith—who had warmed to McKenna while they were colleagues at the Treasury and admired his forthrightness and precision in cabinet—chose him to head the Admiralty, once more in preference to Churchill. There is some evidence that Asquith would have liked McKenna to succeed him as chancellor of the exchequer, but Lloyd George's claim to this high office was too strong.
 
 
After a brief engagement, McKenna on 3 June 1908 married the youthful Pamela Jekyll (1889–1943), younger daughter of Sir Herbert Jekyll. Pamela McKenna was a friend of Herbert and Margot Asquith, and one of several young women with whom Herbert Asquith carried on a platonic flirtation. Pamela's relationship with the Asquiths, especially the prime minister, drew her husband into their social circle and enhanced his political status.
 
 
McKenna's service at the Admiralty overlapped the last years as first sea lord of Sir John (later Lord) Fisher, who quickly reached an understanding with his much younger political chief. The new first lord was immediately drawn into the tempestuous admiral's fight to strengthen the British navy, as well as the latter's professional and personal quarrels with rivals, particularly Lord Charles Beresford.
 
 
McKenna forcefully championed Fisher against the latter's enemy, Admiral Beresford, who was critical of the first sea lord and his policies to the point of insubordination. The popular Beresford had many admirers, so it was not until March 1909 that McKenna—over resistance from some of his cabinet colleagues—was able to terminate Beresford's command of the Channel Fleet and effectively retire him. Beresford struck back by charging that under Fisher the navy was badly prepared for war because of poor distribution of the fleets and lack of a planning staff. McKenna ably defended Fisher in the spring of 1909 before a subcommittee of the committee of imperial defence, which generally upheld the first sea lord against Beresford's charges.
 
 
Economical radicals both within and outside the cabinet had expected that McKenna—hitherto an advocate of retrenchment in defence appropriations—would resist Fisher's costly naval construction plans, especially for the phenomenally expensive dreadnought class battleships. Fisher, however, convinced his superior that legitimate supremacy over Britain's chief naval adversary, Germany, and survival in a future war, depended on building state-of-the-art warships on a grand scale. McKenna, as a radical, belonged to the blue water school, which based British defence policy on a ‘wall of ships’, obviating continental military commitments. Although always economy-conscious, McKenna as navy minister viewed timely warship construction as a patriotic necessity.
 
 
During early 1909 McKenna was embroiled in a bitter quarrel within the cabinet over naval construction. On the basis of what later proved to be faulty intelligence, the sea lords had convinced McKenna that Germany was accelerating its building programme, and that to stay ahead Great Britain must appropriate for six dreadnoughts annually in 1909–12 instead of the previously scheduled four. McKenna's expanded estimates brought him into conflict not only with the radical ‘economists’ in the cabinet, but with Lloyd George, Churchill, and other ministers hoping to spend substantially for social reforms. The struggle within the cabinet had as its backdrop a Conservative-inspired naval scare in parliament and the press. Eight new dreadnoughts were demanded immediately with the cry ‘We want eight and we won't wait’. Supported by Asquith, McKenna was able to arrange for the building of eighteen of the giant warships by the end of 1912.
 
 
The fight over the dreadnoughts, and subsequently over the land taxes (which McKenna opposed) in Lloyd George's 1909 ‘people's budget’, added to the deepening antagonism between the two ministers—based upon personality differences and perceived slights. McKenna had come to dislike Lloyd George's pragmatism, opportunism, and—he believed—lack of principles, while Lloyd George was irritated by his former political ally's self-assertiveness, didacticism, and stubbornness. There was similar but less intense ill feeling between McKenna and Churchill, at this time an ambitious social reformer.
 
 
The Agadir crisis of 1911 between France and Germany, in which Great Britain went to the brink of war with Germany, created a situation in which McKenna's loyalty to his professional staff, and his confidence in their judgements, told against him. During the crisis Lloyd George and Churchill claimed—like Admiral Beresford two years earlier—to be disturbed by the navy's unpreparedness for war. R. B. Haldane, the war minister, was troubled by the refusal of Admiral Arthur K. Wilson, Fisher's successor as first sea lord, to sanction a naval war staff comparable to the army's.
 
 
These problems came to a head at the 23 August 1911 meeting of the committee of imperial defence. The War Office's plans to send an expeditionary force to Europe to fight beside the French army were articulately outlined by General Henry H. Wilson. They contrasted positively with the Admiralty's less defined plans to defend the British Isles, dominate British seaways, and destroy the German fleets, rather inarticulately explained by Admiral Wilson. McKenna's own blue water views, which he asserted with his usual forthrightness, were challenged by Haldane, Lloyd George, and Churchill.
 
 
The committee of imperial defence meeting was followed by a series of conversations between these ministers and Asquith, who was persuaded that McKenna's cocksureness and unwillingness to bend were unacceptable in a service minister at a critical time. In October 1911 the prime minister ordered McKenna to exchange offices with the home secretary, Churchill. Happy in his Admiralty post and unwilling to leave it, McKenna blamed Lloyd George and Churchill for his predicament. After briefly considering an alternative appointment as permanent secretary of the Treasury, the premier civil service position, he opted for the Home Office.
 
 
==At the Home Office==
 
McKenna's tenure at the Home Office was the nadir of his political career, although he could claim some solid legislative accomplishments including the Mental Deficiency Act (1913) and the Criminal Justice Administration Act (1914). The Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill, over which he and Lloyd George had a temporary rapprochement, occupied a disproportionate amount of the home secretary's time and energy between 1912 and 1914. Under a Parliament Act deadline, he had to guide the complex legislation session by session through parliamentary traps set by embittered Conservatives. Finally, as a concession to party unity at the beginning of the First World War, promulgation of the controversial bill was postponed for the duration.
 
 
McKenna's use of soldiers and police in labour disputes, many of them in the Welsh coalmines, was more restrained than his predecessor's. His stern measures to deal with suffragette agitators were unpopular with many Liberals, especially the despised Discharge of Prisoners (or ‘Cat and Mouse’) Act (1913) which allowed police to release and later rearrest prisoners staging hunger strikes. He urged the government to take a firmer line against Sir Edward Carson's Ulster resistance movement (1912–14). In the Marconi affair (1913) he contended that Lloyd George and other ministers accused of misusing inside information for personal gain should resign.
 
 
After leaving the Admiralty McKenna kept up with defence issues and lost no opportunity to voice his blue water convictions. In 1912 he opposed Churchill's plan, as part of a deal with the French, to move British warships from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. Early in 1914 he condemned Churchill's naval estimates as unnecessarily costly, largely because—he argued—the first lord was concentrating too many ships in home waters. On the eve of war in July–August 1914 he was in close touch with events on the continent through family members and acquaintances. He was certain that the inevitable German invasion of Belgium would bring Great Britain into the war, but he believed that British intervention should be limited to naval warfare. As in 1911, he opposed sending an army expeditionary force to the continent. Once the decision was made to dispatch troops, he wanted to leave the war in the hands of military and naval professionals and—as far as possible—continue with ‘business as usual’.
 
 
McKenna, whose department was in charge of internal security, was sharply criticized in parliament and the press for his lenient treatment of enemy aliens, few of whom the home secretary believed endangered public safety. His refusal to take seriously a press-inspired spy scare, and his discouragement, through the Home Office's press bureau, of atrocity stories about enemy troops led to charges that he was pro-German. Along with the German-educated Lord Haldane, he was a favourite scapegoat of the right-wing press. During the government reorganization of May 1915 it was widely predicted that he would be dropped. Nevertheless McKenna not only survived, but in the new coalition cabinet was promoted to the Treasury to replace Lloyd George, who was appointed munitions minister.
 
 
==Chancellor of the exchequer & After==
 
In contrast to the disappointing years at the Home Office, when his political career seemed to be in eclipse, McKenna as chancellor was at the height of his powers. His two budgets, of September 1915 and April 1916, attempted through judicious mixes of taxation and borrowing to pay for the war without crippling Great Britain's economic future. The 1915 budget included sharply increased income taxes, an unprecedented excess profits tax, and the ‘McKenna duties’ on luxury consumer goods—attacked by many Liberals as a major crack in free trade. McKenna defended these tariffs as necessary and temporary war measures, although they were fated to become permanent. Both McKenna budgets distributed the tax burden between the middle and working classes more evenly than before the war.
 
 
In July 1915, with the value of the pound against the dollar falling rapidly, McKenna boldly negotiated new loans from the British government's American bankers secured by collateral advanced by the Prudential Assurance company. This incident confirmed his fear that the war's enormous costs were dangerously weakening Great Britain's international financial position, especially vis-à-vis the United States.
 
  
In late 1915 McKenna and most of his Liberal cabinet colleagues strenuously fought demands for military conscription by Lloyd George and the Conservative ministers. In contrast to the other Liberal ministers, who simply denounced conscription as violating Liberal principles, McKenna and the Board of Trade president, Walter Runciman, asserted that it would ruin the economy, and possibly lose the war, by stripping British industry of manpower. McKenna's conviction that Germany would eventually be defeated by the British naval blockade ran counter to the position of Lloyd George and the War Office that a large British army was needed to sustain France and Russia in the war. McKenna threatened resignation, but stayed on after conscription was adopted.
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==Home Office and After==
  
In the political crisis of December 1916 McKenna joined most Liberal ministers in urging Asquith to call Lloyd George's bluff when the war minister demanded the establishment of a small executive war committee headed by himself. The failure of this strategy, and Lloyd George's success in forming a new coalition ministry, meant loss of office for McKenna and his Liberal colleagues. During the rest of the war McKenna sat with Asquith and other Liberal former ministers on the front opposition bench, where they rather ineffectually criticized Lloyd George's war policies. A major parliamentary confrontation in May 1918 between the Asquithians and the government, the ‘Maurice debate’, in which the opposition challenged Lloyd George's veracity about the strength of British forces in Europe, contributed to the prime minister's decision to split the Liberal Party. In the December 1918 election McKenna and other Asquithian former ministers lost their seats.
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==Bibliography==
Chairman of the Midland Bank
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{{refbegin}}
In April 1917 McKenna had become a director of the Midland Bank, with the understanding that if his political career went into abeyance he would be the next chairman of the bank. In 1919 he succeeded to the chairmanship, a post he would occupy for the rest of his life. In the financial world of inter-war London, McKenna's acumen was highly respected. His annual addresses to the Midland's shareholders—a selection of which were published in 1928 as Post-War Banking Policy—were lucid examinations of current economic issues.
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*"Mr. Reginald McKenna" (Obituaries). ''The Times''. Tuesday, 7 September, 1943.  Issue '''49644''', col D, p. 6.
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*Farr, Martin (2008). ''Reginald McKenna: Financier among Statesmen, 1863-1943''. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9781135776596.
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{{refend}}
  
Twice a return to political office, as chancellor of the exchequer, failed to materialize. After the fall of Lloyd George in 1922 the new Conservative prime minister, Andrew Bonar Law, possibly hoping to establish an alliance with the Asquith Liberals, offered posts to McKenna and another Liberal; but the former declined as he doubted that Bonar Law would win the forthcoming election. McKenna in 1923 provisionally accepted a similar offer from Bonar Law's successor, Stanley Baldwin, but this time his demand for a safe seat representing the City of London could not be granted. It was speculated that had he taken office on either occasion, he might have gone on to become prime minister. During the twenties he was sporadically mentioned in the press as prime ministerial material. He still described himself as a Liberal.
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==Papers==
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{{refbegin}}
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*[http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FMCKN Papers in the possession of Churchill Archives Centre.]
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{{refend}}
  
Although no longer a professional politician, McKenna throughout the twenties and thirties remained active in public affairs. He was in regular communication with the economist John Maynard Keynes, whose innovative theories gradually modified McKenna's Gladstonian concepts. He advised the Bonar Law government about its debt negotiations with the United States in 1922–3, and accepted, while disliking it, the settlement achieved by Stanley Baldwin, the chancellor of the exchequer. He was critical of British reparations policy as too burdensome upon Germany, and in 1924 chaired a committee of the revisionist Dawes commission. When his old adversary, Winston Churchill, became chancellor in 1925, he was consulted by him about restoration of the gold standard; McKenna's view was that the policy was unsatisfactory but unavoidable.
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==See Also==
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{{refbegin}}
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{{refend}}
  
McKenna was in frequent demand for advice and committee service to the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929–31, notably service on the Macmillan committee on finance and industry (1930–31), which subjected Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England, to searching examination. He was also consulted by Lord Beaverbrook, a friend for many years, during the press magnate's empire crusade in 1930. McKenna no longer believed that free trade was sacrosanct, but remained convinced that British prosperity depended on international networks of trade and earnings. In the thirties he thought that nothing was to be gained from treating the communist and fascist powers as outcasts, but shared Churchill's distaste for appeasement.
 
  
McKenna was of medium height, but his spare build and athletic physique, even in old age, made him look taller. To correct a tendency to stammer, he began each day by declaiming famous orations. Assertive and waspish in public, possibly as a defence against shyness, he was genial and kindly in private, relaxing especially among family and friends. People who found him distant on early acquaintance often were charmed once his barriers were down. He mellowed considerably after leaving politics. He rowed, swam, golfed, and walked for physical recreation, enjoyed chess, and was an accomplished bridge player. He was a client of the architect Edwin Lutyens.
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{{TabAppts|Political Appointments}} 
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{{Appt
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|[[First Lord of the Admiralty]]|[[Edward Marjoribanks, Second Baron Tweedmouth|The Rt. Hon. The Lord Tweedmouth]]|1908 &ndash; 1911|[[Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill|The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill]]
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}}
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{{TabEnd}}
  
Suffering from various ailments from time to time during his earlier years, McKenna in later life was in good health until almost eighty. After a short illness he died in his London residence, above the Midland Bank's 70 Pall Mall branch, on 6 September 1943, and his ashes were buried near his country house at Mells Park, Somerset. Pamela McKenna only briefly survived her much-loved husband, dying the same year. The elder of their two sons predeceased them.
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<div name=fredbot:appts></div name=fredbot:appts>
  
Historians have viewed McKenna as an elusive figure, partly because he left behind few personal papers and never wrote a memoir. His permanent officials, and even so hostile a colleague as Lloyd George, praised his administrative competence, which was carried over into his banking career. McKenna's political ability was less impressive, and its impact less positive. His inflexibility handicapped him severely. It resulted in the loss of his Admiralty post, and—in the form of bad advice to Asquith in December 1916 and after—contributed to the downfall of the Liberal Party. On the other hand, his breadth of vision was greater than that of most of his contemporaries, not least respecting the outcome and effects of the First World War.
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==Footnotes==
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{{reflist}}
  
'''Wealth at death;''' £89,948 1''s''. 4''d''.: Probate, [[2 Dec]], [[1943]].
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{{DEFAULTSORT:McKenna, Reginald}}
  
[[Category:1863 births|McKenna]]
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{{CatPerson|UK|1863|1943}}
[[Category:1943 deaths|McKenna]]
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{{CatBritannia|Unknown}}
[[Category:Personalities|McKenna]]
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[[Category:First Lords of the Admiralty|McKenna]]
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Revision as of 04:48, 12 June 2019

The Right Honourable Reginald McKenna.
Photo: Library of Congress.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE Reginald McKenna, P.C. (6 July, 1863 – 6 September, 1943) was a leading Liberal politician before the First World War who served as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1908 to 1911.

Early Life

First Lord of the Admiralty

Home Office and After

Bibliography

  • "Mr. Reginald McKenna" (Obituaries). The Times. Tuesday, 7 September, 1943. Issue 49644, col D, p. 6.
  • Farr, Martin (2008). Reginald McKenna: Financier among Statesmen, 1863-1943. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9781135776596.

Papers

See Also


Political Appointments
Preceded by
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Tweedmouth
First Lord of the Admiralty
1908 – 1911
Succeeded by
The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill

Footnotes