Everything about Robert Reid 1st Earl Loreburn totally explained
Robert Threshie Reid, 1st Earl Loreburn,
GCMG,
PC (
3 April 1846 –
30 November 1923) was a
Liberal politician in the
United Kingdom. He was educated at
Balliol College, Oxford.
Reid's national political career began in
1880, when he was elected to the
House of Commons as
MP for
Hereford. He stayed there until
1886, when he became MP for
Dumfries Burghs. He remained in the House of Commons until
1905; during this time period, he was appointed to the offices of
Solicitor General (
1894) and
Attorney General (
1894–
1895). He left the House of Commons in
1905, though, and became
Lord Chancellor under
Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
During the
1900s and
1910s, many Liberal politicians took up the ideology of
Liberal Imperialism, led by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer (
Herbert Henry Asquith), the
Secretary of State for War (
Richard Burdon Haldane) and the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (
Sir Edward Grey). This troika of politicians was strongly in favor of an with
France, along with the creation of a
British Expeditionary Force, in the event of a war between France and
Germany. These three politicians made their views known, and when Campbell-Bannerman appointed his cabinet, he appointed Reid Lord Chancellor as a counter to the Liberal Imperialists.
Reid became
Baron Loreburn, of Dumfries in the County of Dumfries, in
1906, and in
1911 he was created
Earl Loreburn. In
1908, Asquith became Prime Minister, and
David Lloyd George (who was promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer) "defected" onto the Liberal Imperialists. Lord Loreburn's disagreements with Lord Haldane, Sir Edward, Asquith, and eventually Lloyd George became more prominent, and it seemed that the Imperialists would get their way and force British military action onto the Continent.
However, events wouldn't turn out that way. Asquith, Lloyd George, Grey,
Churchill, and Haldane thought they could force the rest of the Cabinet into their eventual goals, but they were sorely mistaken. The five Imperialists had met secretly on
23 August 1911, and when certain Cabinet members found out, they were furious.
Reginald McKenna had recently been deprived of his position as
First Lord of the Admiralty for refusing to provide military aid to the French, and he led the majority (whose members included Loreburn, McKenna,
Colonial Secretary Lewis Vernon Harcourt, and
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Joseph Pease) in "a strong line about Cabinet supremacy over all other bodies in the matter of sea and land defence".
Lord Esher wrote, "There has been a serious crisis. Fifteen members of the Cabinet against five. The Entente is decidedly imperilled."
Unfortunately, Lord Loreburn's health began declining, and in the summer of
1912, he resigned his Lord Chancellorship. In a parting, "valedictory" letter to Lord Haldane, he wrote:
| My differences with you've always been this, you've been an Imperialist "au fond" and always in my opinion it's quite impossible to reconcile Imperialism with the Liberal creed which we professed, and on the force of which we received the support of the country. In this way we became hopelessly estranged on the greatest of all issues. |
Nonetheless, Lord Loreburn survived for more than a decade hence, passing on 30 November 1923, his earldom and all subsidiary titles becoming extinct upon his death.
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