The Written Word
for June 16, 1999

Canadians are famous for refusing to countenance any heroes. We’ve had plenty of them, of course, but we prefer to knock them down before they even have a chance to mount a pedestal.

How many of us know that a Canadian was once Prime Minister of Great Britain? A man born and raised in Kingston, County of Kent, Province of New Brunswick, Andrew Bonar Law was Britain’s premier for less than two years in 1922-3 but he was no John Turner or Kim Campbell for he won, in 1922, a watershed victory for the Tories.

The Conservatives, after Balfour lost in 1906, had been in the wilderness ever since. Worse than that, it had been a Liberal government under the charismatic David Lloyd George that had been in power during the First World War. But Bonar law brought them back.

When the Liberals took office in 1906, and especially after Herbert Asquith took over in 1908, they were bound on reform and reform they had. With the likes of Lloyd George and Churchill directing social reform and with a party bent on reducing to nothing the powers of the House of Lords the Liberals looked as if they had become the natural governing party they’d been in Gladstone’s day.

In the middle of the First World War, the Liberals sagged and under enormous pressure from the Conservative and Labour parties, changed leadership from Asquith to Lloyd George and a coalition government was formed. Bonar Law, the leader of the Tories after Balfour resigned in 1911, became Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible for financing the war effort. He was, in effect, Lloyd George’s partner for the remaining three years of the war. After the war, the Coalition won what was known as the Khaki election but it was clear that the coalition had in fact come apart if only because the Liberal party split between the Asquith Liberals and the Lloyd George Liberals. In a famous meeting at the Carleton Club in October 1922 the Conservatives voted to dissolve the coalition and in short order Bonar Law was Prime Minister. A few months later he called an election and won a resounding victory with a young man named Stanley Baldwin thus brought into cabinet. Baldwin would succeed him a few months later to the surprise and dismay of George, Lord Curzon. With the exception of two minority Labour governments, which only held power at the sufferance of the Tories, the Conservatives remained in power until 1945.

When Law died of throat cancer in 1923 he was given a state funeral and buried in Westminster Abbey prompting a wag to observe how fitting it was that the Unknown Prime Minister was buried next to the Unknown Soldier.

Bonar Law may have only been Prime Minister for a few months but his services were great indeed and the successes of the Conservative party until a couple of years ago were in large measure the result of his efforts.

There is a fine new biography out called Bonar Law by R.J.Q. Adams published by John Murray publishers out of London. So far as I know it has not come out in Canada but there is, of course, the Internet. It’s expensive at 25 pounds but worth every penny just to read about a Canadian who made an enormous contribution, albeit in another land, and who is only now being recognized.