Free Past Caring by Robert Goddard

Governor-Generalship of Canada. Asquith deemed that a younger, more vigorous approach at the Home Office was required than Gladstone had brought to bear. In consideration of my work at the Admiralty, he offered me the post. This was more than I had dared hope for. I accepted with alacrity. Asquith remarked that I was to form part of what he considered to be a brilliant team. For the moment, though, I was concerned only with the honour and achievement of becoming Home Secretary at the age of 32. There seemed no limit to my future aspirations.
    It seems generally to be agreed that Asquith’s 1908 Cabinet was a quite remarkable assemblage of political talent: a team for all occasions. With this I would not differ. Indeed, I was proud to join it and my arrival coincided with that of several other rising stars—
    Lloyd George promoted to the Exchequer, Churchill and McKenna admitted to the Cabinet for the first time.
    Proud I was, but not blind to our shortcomings. Asquith had an incisive lawyer’s mind but seemed devoid of originality. The older members of the Cabinet resented us newcomers and, in the conflicts which arose from that, Asquith aligned himself behind those he thought would win the day, a tendency which positively encouraged collusion and intrigue behind the scenes. At this, Lloyd George, for all his apparent openness, excelled and found in Churchill an enthusiastic recruit to his radical cause. Sympathetic though I was to their reforming zeal, I distanced myself somewhat from them, being determined to find my feet before committing myself to any particular stance.
    There was, besides, plenty of work to occupy me at the Home Office, where my predecessor had let matters slide.
    The women’s suffrage movement, by its implications both for the constitution and for civil order, now fell within my purview. I found myself torn between a wholehearted support for their cause in theory and a thorough disapproval of their methods in practice.
    When the Metropolitan Police Commissioner advised me that a mass meeting of all groups supporting female suffrage was to be held in Hyde Park on Sunday, 21 June 1908, I approved his proposals for policing the event and decided, without his knowing, to be present in person.
     
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R O B E R T G O D D A R D
    It was a memorable occasion. I was not sufficiently well-known to the public to be noticed, discreetly clad amongst the vast crowd that gathered, but I took good notice of what took place. There were speeches by Keir Hardie—of the new Independent Labour Party—and Emmeline Pankhurst, pleading their cause with great force and conviction. There was also a stirring contribution from Mrs. Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel, whom I remembered from our encounter in Manchester in October 1905. It was a wholly peaceful gathering and I walked away amidst the departing throng wondering if something could not, after all, be done for them.
    I conveyed my views to the Prime Minister, urging that the government should commit itself to female suffrage on a long-term basis, arguing that this would defuse much ofthe frustration clearly displayed at the meeting I had attended. I received a cursory answer to the effect that this was something against which the Cabinet had already set its face. In private, Lloyd George advanced a more cogent argument to me. What was the point of considering such a move when the House of Lords was certain to veto it anyway? I gained the impression that I was advancing a radical departure from agreed policy rather too soon after my appointment, so resolved to bide my time and say no more on the subject.
    In the event, the suffragists proved quite capable of involving me in their campaign without any effort on my part. Later that summer, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were arrested for in-citing a mob to charge the House of Commons. Their case came up at Bow Street in late October. Much to my astonishment and that of Lloyd George, we were both subpoenaed by the