Number 10 at War
World War One
In 1912, Herbert Henry Asquith found himself at odds with Ulster and the Tory Opposition following renewed attempts to introduce Irish Home Rule. This unrest and fierce opposition would continue, and civil war in Ireland was only averted with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
The Cabinet Room at Number 10 was the nerve-centre of Britain’s war effort. Asquith’s Cabinet included future Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in their posts as Chancellor and First Lord of the Admiralty respectively. Asquith had previously been forced to take on the additional role of Secretary of State for War following the resignation of the incumbent in March 1914, but quickly appointed Lord Kitchener following the outbreak of war.
On 16 April 1915, Number 10 was the site of a meeting between General Haig, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in France, and the Cabinet to go over the detail of the planned Somme offensive, later known as the Battle of the Somme.
During a Cabinet split on 25 May 1915 caused by public outcry at allegations the army had been under-supplied with shells and the failed offensive in the Dardanelles (for which Kitchener and Churchill respectively were blamed), Kitchener was stripped of his control over munitions and strategy, and Churchill lost his post as First Lord of the Admiralty. As a result of the split, Asquith formed a coalition Government with the opposition Conservatives, whose leader was future Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law.
Asquith would remain leader of the coalition until his resignation on 5 December 1916. After Andrew Bonar Law refused to form a government, David Lloyd George became leader of the coalition and Prime Minister on 7 December 1916.
Under Prime Minister Lloyd George the number of staff at Number 10 expanded and offices spilled out into the garden to cope with the demands of the administration of the war.
Lloyd George immediately formed his ‘War Cabinet’, whose members included Lord Curzon, Bonar Law and Arthur Henderson. In the first 235 days of its existence, the War Cabinet met 200 times.
This Cabinet took total responsibility for the war, and on three occasions it sat as the Imperial War Cabinet when Prime Ministers from the Dominions attended. It provided a vigour previously lacking from the war effort.
Highly able young men were appointed to collect and collate data and to bypass slow moving government departments. These men were nicknamed the ‘Garden Suburb’ because they lived in huts at the end of gardens near to Downing Street. They were not liked by die-hard Civil Servants, whom they continually bypassed. However, the men from the Garden Suburb gave Lloyd George the one thing Asquith seemingly never had—up-to-date, meaningful statistics. Their work was invaluable, providing the War Cabinet with data on merchant ships sunk and UK farm production in the, issues essential to address if the country was not to be starved into defeat.
When armistice was finally declared on 11 November 1918, crowds thronged Downing Street chanting ‘LG’. Lloyd George made an appearance at one of the first-floor windows to acknowledge them.