This famous meeting changed the course of British politics. But It did not bring the Conservative 1922 Committee into being, as is widely believed.
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On the morning of 19 October 1922, some 280 Unionist MPs (as Conservatives were known at this time ) crowded into the smoking room-cum-library of the Carlton Club, which then occupied a massive building on the corner of Carlton Gardens and Pall Mall.
They had been summoned by their leader, Austen Chamberlain, eldest son of the great radical Joe. A man of autocratic disposition , he was determined to stamp out the dissension which had been growing within the Party since the start of the year.
Another great radical, David Lloyd George, was the cause of the trouble among Unionists. It was their votes in the Commons which had given him his majority throughout his six-year coalition government, which he had formed with Andrew Bonar Law( who had retired through ill health in 1921) .
Most of his own Liberal Party opposed him. Now a number of his indispensable Unionist allies felt that they too had had enough of him. For many, a public scandal over the sale of honours in July 1922 had been the turning-point.
Amongst the Unionists in the coalition cabinet, the Prime Minister commanded almost complete support. In September they agreed that a general election should be held swiftly to give the coalition a new lease of life. Could Chamberlain face down the critics in his Party and reunite it on a common platform with the Welsh wizard?
That was the issue at the Carlton Club meeting. The general expectation was that Chamberlain would succeed.
There was, however, an ominous development on the eve of the meeting. Bonar Law, his much respected predecessor, now in much better health, decided to attend it.
A vivid account of the historic meeting was recorded by the Earl of Crawford, a coalition cabinet minister, in his diary. “We assembled at eleven”, he wrote, “a thoroughly good-humoured crowd. We were about to begin when a waitress advanced with two immense brandies and soda to lubricate Chamberlain and F.E. [Smith, Lord Birkenhead]. Much cheering. Austen, who spoke from 11.5 to 11.35 was grave, but very rigid and unbending: needlessly so.”
His stubborn insistence that the Party must stick with Lloyd George on the latter’s terms cost him the Party leadership. He was challenged by the then relatively unknown Stanley Baldwin, man of the future, who described Lloyd George as “a dynamic force” by which “ the Liberal Party has been smashed to pieces; and it is my firm conviction that, in time, the same will happen to our Party.”
Bonar Law spoke in the same vein. Crawford noted that “after his speech the issue was unmistakable, and he was hailed as the leader of the Party” once again.
By 185 votes to 88 with one abstention, the meeting resolved that the Party “should fight the election as an independent party, with its own leader and with its own programme.”
Lloyd George resigned that afternoon. Bonar Law led the Party to victory at a snap general election. A number of those elected for the first time at it formed the 1922 Committee in April 1923. None of them had been at the Carlton Club meeting.
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For a more detailed account of these events, visit The downfall of Lloyd George a century ago
