Herbert Henry Asquith

Herbert Henry Asquith (1852-1928), British statesman, prime minister before and during World War I.

Asquith was born at Morely, in the north of England, on September 12, 1852. He practiced law after graduating from the University of Oxford in 1874 and was elected to Parliament as a Liberal in 1886. He attained national prominence as junior defense attorney for the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, when the latter was under investigation by Parliament in 1888, and in 1892 he became home secretary under Prime Minister William Gladstone. Out of office from 1895 to 1905, he then joined a new Liberal government as chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1908 he succeeded Henry Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister.

Asquith's tenure in office was marked by a series of domestic and international crises. The first began in 1909, when the House of Lords rejected the government budget, causing Asquith to embark on a campaign to abolish the veto power of Britain's nonelective upper house. After a lengthy struggle he succeeded in his aim with the passage of the Parliament Act in 1911. He then set about plans to accomplish another Liberal objective—the enactment of home rule for Ireland. Controversy over this issue divided the country for the next three years. Confronted by threats of armed rebellion by home-rule opponents in Ulster and open encouragement of these threats by British Conservatives, Asquith temporized throughout 1913 and well into 1914, during which time the pressure continued to build. A violent solution was averted only by the outbreak of World War I.

A firm believer in the necessity of supporting France against Germany, Asquith nevertheless adroitly waited to declare war until public indignation was aroused by Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality. As the war dragged on, however, successive military reverses and acute shortages of munitions made his government the object of increasing criticism by Conservatives and Liberals alike. In May 1915, Asquith yielded to demands for a coalition government; in December 1916, the opposition movement forced him to resign in favor of his war secretary, David Lloyd George. Asquith remained in Parliament, but never held office again. He was raised to the peerage in 1925. He died in Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire, England, on February 15, 1928.