Ah ha , I see the Liberal History Group is holding a conference this Saturday (November 1st 2014) on the Liberal Party's position in the First World War.
I am going and intend asking some difficult questions.
I want to find out whether they will be discussing Asquith's great passion for Venetia Stanley during those early years of the war. Will they discuss why Asquith was so depressed and why he agreed to the coalition so quickly in May 1915? Are they going to come clean that the prime minister who headed up the war cabinet during one of the bloodiest conflicts in history was suicidal and close to having a nervous breakdown whilst sending our boys to the trenches and in many cases certain death? He was by all accounts devastated when his young lady friend Venetia Stanley finally left HH Asquith for another cabinet member?
I am going and intend asking some difficult questions.
I want to find out whether they will be discussing Asquith's great passion for Venetia Stanley during those early years of the war. Will they discuss why Asquith was so depressed and why he agreed to the coalition so quickly in May 1915? Are they going to come clean that the prime minister who headed up the war cabinet during one of the bloodiest conflicts in history was suicidal and close to having a nervous breakdown whilst sending our boys to the trenches and in many cases certain death? He was by all accounts devastated when his young lady friend Venetia Stanley finally left HH Asquith for another cabinet member?
If not, why not? And why are the Liberals so keen to keep the story hidden after all these years? Are there still people alive and in high places today that need protecting? And why are the squeaky clean Liberals so squeamish about these very dusty skeletons in their closet?
And the big unanswered question is: would our early war effort - which is documented as being a shambles - have been more successful with someone other than Herbert Asquith in charge? Someone who was FULLY concentrating on saving the lives of the lads on the front. After all if he could write letters to his lover in war cabinet meetings was his mind fully on the job of managing the war?
HH Asquith's letters do not give an impression of a stable prime minister but one of an emotionally troubled one. I look forward to placing questions before the panel.
(A one-day conference organised by the Journal of Liberal History and King’s College, London. Saturday 1 November 2014, Room K2.40, Strand Campus of KCL.)
