Background
Bonar Law was born in Kingston, New Brunswick, Canada, on September 16, 1858, the son of a Presbyterian minister.
Bonar Law was born in Kingston, New Brunswick, Canada, on September 16, 1858, the son of a Presbyterian minister.
He left for Scotland at age twelve where he later began a successful career as banker and iron merchant. In the general election of 1900 Bonar Law entered the House of Commons as Unionist member from Blackfriars, Glasgow, and quickly became an exponent of Joseph Chamberlain's scheme of colonial preference and tariff reform of 1903. Six years later he denounced David Lloyd George's "People's" budget as socialism, preferring instead to pour available revenues into naval construction. At home, he defended Ulster against "the imposition of a tyranny," namely, home rule, and in November 1911, succeeded Arthur James Balfour as leader of the Conservatives, partly with the help of a fellow Canadian, W. M. Aitken.
Bonar Law did not shrink from bringing the country to the verge of civil war over Irish home rule in 1912. A staunch supporter of Sir Edward Carson, he assured Orangemen in July 1913 of the support of the Unionist party in their fight against home rule. However, on July 30, 1914, Bonar Law agreed to postpone the home rule Amending Bill in the face of war clouds in Europe.
On August 2, 1914, Bonar Law assured Prime Minister H. H. Asquith of the wholehearted support of the Unionist party for a war policy. For the next eight months Bonar Law loyally supported Asquith and opposed all pleas for the formation of a national government. He became deeply distressed over the naval debacles at Coronel and at the Dardanelles, blaming these setbacks on the unbalanced, eccentric, and erratic first lord of the Admiralty, Winston S. Churchill, a former Tory. Churchill did not hesitate to pick up the challenge: "You dance like a will-on-the-wisp so nimbly from one unstable foothold to another that my plodding paces can scarcely follow you." The sombre, unpretentious Bonar Law was above all a party man, and on May 17, 1915, he merely reflected the Tory position in demanding that Asquith form a coalition government.
Bonar Law accepted the post of colonial secretary in the Asquith coalition regime from May 1915 to December 1916. He pressed Lord H. H. Kitchener, secretary of state for war, to improve both the quality and quantity of shells sent to the troops in France, and by the fall of 1915, counseled that the Dardanelles expedition be terminated and a new front opened up instead at Salonika, Greece. In November 1915, Bonar Law vetoed Asquith's proposal to take over the War Office permanently, and on the 23rd he voted for the evacuation of British forces from Gallipoli.
In January 1916, Bonar Law ushered in the Compulsory Military Bill, being careful to exclude Ireland from its provisions. When Lord Kitchener went down with the Hampshire on June 5, Bonar Law was largely responsible for blocking Asquith from appointing himself Kitchener's successor and for successfully pressing the rival claim of his erstwhile enemy, Lloyd George.
On December 9, 1916, after days of intrigue and intense backstairs lobbying, Bonar Law, once again enjoying the support of his friends Max Aitken and Edward Carson, joined the new Lloyd George coalition government as chancellor of the Exchequer, leader of the House of Commons, and member of the sovereign war cabinet. The Canadian had by then abandoned his earlier mistrust of the fiery Welshman and, although a junior partner in the firm, worked well with the prime minister, who desired above all that Bonar Law "manage" the Commons while Lloyd George decided the larger issue of the so-called New Imperialism. At the Exchequer he successfully floated several war loans. Bonar Law opposed, to no avail, Sir Douglas Haig's plans for a massive offensive at the Somme in 1917, the very year that he lost his two elder sons, one in Palestine and the other in France. In July 1917, he vigorously, though again unsuccessfully, opposed the prime minister's choice of Churchill as minister of munitions. And in February 1918, Bonar Law, who had become disenchanted with General Sir William Robertson, chief of the Imperial General Staff, supported Lloyd George's decision to replace Wully Robertson with the more facile Sir Henry Wilson.
The Conservative leader agreed in December 1918 to enter the general election as coalition partner with Lloyd George's Liberals; he accepted the post of lord privy seal (1919-1921) in the new cabinet. In June 1919, Bonar Law became one of the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles. Worn out by the exigencies of wartime politics, he retired to southern France in March 1921, but on October 23, 1922 returned to become the first man of colonial birth to be appointed prime minister of Great Britain, an office which he held for only 209 days. Bonar Law died in London on October 20, 1923, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Bonar Law's diffident character did not inspire great enthusiasm. He was the least academically inclined of men and had greatly disliked Asquith's Balliol crowd. Bonar Law had cared for neither music nor art, and had renounced alcohol in favor of tobacco and golf.