62 Facts About Henry Campbell-Bannerman

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was a British statesman and Liberal politician.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman served as the prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1908 and leader of the Liberal Party from 1899 to 1908.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman served as secretary of state for war twice, in the cabinets of Gladstone and Rosebery.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the first first lord of the treasury to be officially called the "prime minister", the term only coming into official usage five days after he took office.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman remains the only person to date to hold the positions of prime minister and Father of the House at the same time, and the last Liberal leader to gain a UK parliamentary majority.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was born on 7 September 1836 at Kelvinside House in Glasgow as Henry Campbell, the second son and youngest of the six children born to Sir James Campbell of Stracathro and his wife Janet Bannerman.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman served as the Lord Provost of Glasgow from 1840 to 1843.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was educated at the High School of Glasgow, the University of Glasgow, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he achieved a Third-Class Degree in the Classical Tripos.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was commissioned as a lieutenant into the 53rd Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteer Corps, which was recruited from employees of the firm, and in 1867 was promoted to captain.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman had an older brother, James Alexander Campbell, who in 1876 inherited their father's 4000-acre Stracathro estate.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities from 1880 to 1906.

In 1860, Henry Campbell-Bannerman married Sarah Charlotte Bruce, and he and his new bride set up house at 6 Clairmont Gardens in the Park district of the West End of Glasgow.

For several years an aunt occupied the big house at Hunton which Henry Campbell-Bannerman had inherited in 1871.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman spoke French, German and Italian fluently, and every summer he and his wife spent a couple of months in Europe, usually in France and at the spa town of Marienbad in Bohemia.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman rose quickly through the ministerial ranks, being appointed as Financial Secretary to the War Office in Gladstone's first government in November 1871, serving in this position until 1874 under Edward Cardwell, the Secretary of State for War.

When Cardwell was raised to the peerage, Henry Campbell-Bannerman became the Liberal government's chief spokesman on defence matters in the House of Commons.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was appointed to the same position from 1880 to 1882 in Gladstone's second government, and after serving as Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty between 1882 and 1884, Campbell-Bannerman was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1884, an important role with ongoing Home Rule debates.

In Gladstone's third and fourth governments, in 1886 and 1892 to 1894 respectively, as well as the Earl of Rosebery's government from 1894 to 1895, Henry Campbell-Bannerman served as the Secretary of State for War.

Therefore, Henry Campbell-Bannerman extended the eight-hour day to the Army Clothing Department.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman persuaded the Duke of Cambridge, the Queen's cousin, to resign as Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces.

In 1895, Henry Campbell-Bannerman lobbied strongly to be appointed Speaker of the House of Commons, in part because he sought a less stressful role in public life.

Rosebery, backed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer William Harcourt, refused since Henry Campbell-Bannerman was viewed as indispensable to the Government's front-bench team in the lower House.

On 6 February 1899, Henry Campbell-Bannerman succeeded Sir William Vernon Harcourt as Leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons, and Leader of the Opposition.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman faced the difficult task of holding together the strongly divided party, which was and unsurprisingly defeated in the "khaki election" of 1900.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman caused particular friction within his own party when in a speech to the National Reform Union in June 1901 and shortly after meeting Emily Hobhouse, he described the concentration camps set up by the British in the Boer War as "methods of barbarism".

Henry Campbell-Bannerman saw off both of these issues by offering the positions of chancellor of the exchequer, foreign secretary and secretary of state for war to Asquith, Grey and Haldane respectively, which all three accepted, whilst immediately dissolving Parliament and calling a general election.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the last Liberal to lead his party to an absolute majority in the House of Commons.

Now with a majority of 125, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was returned to Downing Street as a considerably-strengthened Prime Minister.

Whereas in the past it had never been used formally, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the first First Lord of the Treasury to be given official use of the title "Prime Minister", a standard that continues to the present day.

In 1907, by virtue of being the member of Parliament with the longest continuous service, Henry Campbell-Bannerman became the Father of the House, the only serving British prime minister to do so.

The government of Henry Campbell-Bannerman allowed local authorities to provide free school meals and strengthened the power of the trade unions with their Trade Disputes Act 1906.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was not informed of these at first but when Grey told him about them he gave them his blessing.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman did not inform the rest of the Cabinet of these staff talks because there was no binding commitment and because he wanted to preserve the unity of the government.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman visited France in April 1907 and met the Radical prime minister, Georges Clemenceau.

Clemenceau believed that the British would help France in a war with Germany but Henry Campbell-Bannerman told him Britain was in no way committed.

Grey and Haldane did not inform the Cabinet is astonishing; that a true-hearted apostle of peace like Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman should have known of the danger and yet concealed it from his colleagues is incredible, and I am happy to conclude.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman's government granted the Boer states, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, self-government within the British Empire through an Order in Council so as to bypass the House of Lords.

The first South African Prime Minister, General Louis Botha, believed that "Henry Campbell-Bannerman's act [in giving self-government back to the Boers] had redressed the balance of the Anglo-Boer War, or had, at any rate, given full power to the South Africans themselves to redress it".

Not long after he became Father of the House in 1907, Henry Campbell-Bannerman's health took a turn for the worse.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman remained both a Member of Parliament and Leader of the Liberal Party, and continued to live at 10 Downing Street in the immediate aftermath of his resignation, intending to make other arrangements in the near future.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman remains to date the only former prime minister to die within 10 Downing Street.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was buried in the churchyard of Meigle Parish Church, Perthshire, near Belmont Castle, his home since 1887.

John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, paid tribute to Henry Campbell-Bannerman by saying that "We all feel that Ireland has lost a brave and considerate friend".

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was not merely admired and respected; he was absolutely loved by us all.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was absolutely the bravest man I ever met in politics.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was not ashamed, even on the verge of old age, to see visions and to dream dreams.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman had no misgivings as to the future of democracy.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman had a single-minded and unquenchable faith in the unceasing progress and the growing unity of mankind.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman never put himself forward, yet no one had greater tenacity of purpose.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the least cynical of mankind, but no one had a keener eye for the humours and ironies of the political situation.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was a strenuous and uncompromising fighter, a strong Party man, but he harboured no resentments, and was generous to a fault in appreciation of the work of others, whether friends or foes.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman met both good and evil fortune with the same unclouded brow, the same unruffled temper, the same unshakable confidence in the justice and righteousness of his cause.

Robert Smillie, the trade unionist and Labour MP, said that, after Gladstone, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the greatest man he had ever met.

Historians agree that in his 28 months as prime minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was relatively undistinguished with few significant reforms enacted.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman had no apparent plan to circumvent the Lords' veto and did little to stimulate the social reform program.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was passive and uninvolved in his dealings with the cabinet, leading to diffuse debates and ill-focused methods of handling business.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman failed to supervise Grey's foreign policy, Henry Campbell-Bannerman failed to consult the full cabinet before initiating momentous discussions on defense interests with the French in 1906.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was part of a period of Scottish dominance in the Prime Minister role and he represented Scotland's full integration into the political realm.

Additionally, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the first Prime Minister with direct business experience and not from a landed, Anglican background.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had believed in Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform, those amiable deities who presided so complacently over large portions of the Victorian era.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman held firmly to the Liberal principles of Richard Cobden and William Ewart Gladstone.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the subject of several parody novels based on Alice in Wonderland, such as Caroline Lewis's Clara in Blunderland and Lost in Blunderland.