Reginald McKenna (6 July 1863 – 6 September 1943) was a British banker and Liberal politician. His first Cabinet post under Henry Campbell-Bannerman was as President of the Board of Education, after which he served as First Lord of the Admiralty. His most important roles were as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer during the premiership of H. H. Asquith. He was studious and meticulous, noted for his attention to detail, but also for being bureaucratic and partisan.
Throughout his political career, McKenna supported numerous progressive causes such as those related to social security, housing,Reginald McKenna Financier Among Statesmen, 1863–1916 By Martin Farr, Publisher: Taylor & Francis, 2004, P.36 and working conditions.Leaflets, ‘DANGEROUS TRADES’ BY REGINALD MCKENNA, M.P., By National Liberal Federation, 1898Reginald McKenna Financier Among Statesmen, 1863–1916 By Martin Farr, Publisher: Taylor & Francis, 2004
Background and education Born in Kensington, London, McKenna was the son of William Columban McKenna and his wife Emma, daughter of Charles Hanby. Sir Joseph Neale McKenna was his uncle. McKenna was educated at King's College School and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. At Cambridge he was a notable rower. In 1886, he was a member of the Trinity Hall Boat Club eight that won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta. He rowed bow in the winning Cambridge boat in the 1887 Boat Race. Also in 1887 he was a member of the Trinity Hall coxless four that won the Stewards' Challenge Cup at Henley.
Political career
McKenna was elected at the 1895 general election as Member of Parliament (MP) for North Monmouthshire. McKenna was a Liberal Imperialist. After the Khaki Election of 1900, he favoured the return to government of former Liberal Prime Minister Lord Rosebery, although this did not happen.on 17 November 1900, in conversation with Thomas Wemyss Reid, in McKinstry, L. (2005) Rosebery, page 425.
In December 1905 McKenna was appointed, in preference to Winston Churchill, as Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He then served in the Liberal Cabinets of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith as President of the Board of Education, First Lord of the Admiralty (1908–11), and Home Secretary.
He was considered methodical and efficient, but his opponents thought him priggish, prissy and lacking in charisma. McKenna's estimates were submitted to unprecedented scrutiny by the 'economists' David Lloyd George and Churchill. McKenna submitted large naval estimates in December 1908 for the financial year 1909-1910 of £36,000,000. This was the Dreadnought building programme inspired by naval reformer Admiral Fisher.
In 1907 James Bryce was appointed Ambassador to the US, Augustine Birrell replaced him as Chief Secretary for Ireland, and McKenna succeeded Birrell as President of the Board of Education. He was responsible for such reforms as the introduction of free places in secondary schools and the bestowing upon local authorities the powers to deal with the health and physical needs of children, and was promoted to the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty only a year later.
First Lord
At the Admiralty McKenna started the Labour Exchange Bill from May 1909, a policy later associated with Churchill, in an effort to relieve unemployment. He was increasingly attacked in speeches outside Parliament. The number of Dreadnoughts to be built was increased from six to eight ships; four initially and four later. Lloyd George and Churchill had attacked McKenna's position in a plan to persuade the Liberal left of the need for defence cuts. Nonetheless McKenna was on the Cabinet finance committee that discussed Lloyd George's budget proposal of 7 March 1910, and on 12 April refused to contemplate the chancellor's proposed defence cuts.
He held his seat in the General Elections of 1910, and kept his post at the Admiralty in Asquith's government. McKenna had attended the Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) on 17 December 1908 and 23 March 1909, during which periods he had fully comprehended the gravity of the naval threat. He also attended the famous meeting on 23 August 1911, chaired by the Prime Minister, at which Brigadier-General Wilson, over naval opposition, persuaded ministers to deploy an expeditionary force to France in the event of war. Asquith dismissed the Royal Navy's war plans as "wholly impracticable".
McKenna had little support in Cabinet, and Asquith, Richard Haldane, and Churchill wanted the latter to replace him at the Admiralty. Fortunately war was averted despite the Agadir Crisis. On 16 November McKenna accepted the Home Office, swapping jobs with Churchill.
In total McKenna had 'laid the keels' of 18 new battleships that contributed mightily to the British fleet that would fight at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. McKenna commenced the Dreadnought Arms Race: the fundamental strategic basis was for a vast fleet, large enough to intimidate Germany to decline to fight. But in the event Britain's advantage was ephemeral and fleeting.
Peacetime Home Secretary McKenna accepted his move to the Home Office in October 1911 partly because he had recovered from an appendicitis operation. He was one of numerous Cabinet appointments at the time which, according to historian Duncan Tanner, "pushed the (Liberal) party still further to the left". McKenna and Charles Hobhouse were responsible for the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill finally drafted on 20 February 1912. The ODNB calls him a wise and judicious Home Secretary. He was stolidly opposed by the Conservative F.E.Smith.
Another piece of legislation ensued in the Coal Mines Bill regulating pay and conditions. McKenna enthusiastically supported the minimum wage bill in principle, but partly to prevent 'civil war' in the coalfields. With Asquith's approval McKenna left a Cabinet meeting, at which he was on the majority side, to attend on the King, having left behind an "admirable memo."
Throughout the summer of 1912 he opposed the escalation of the naval race, occasioned by Churchill's plan to build a new Mediterranean fleet.
He opposed a Temperance Bill. He also made a radical proposal to let prisoners out on short licence (the Cat and Mouse Act), which he sponsored to deal with militant suffragists, a bill unanimously approved by cabinet.On 13 March 1913 he voted against compulsory military training.
At a "council of war" with Lloyd George on 13 June, McKenna was left in no doubt that Asquith had refused the chancellor's resignation over the Marconi scandal. McKenna himself was categorical as to their innocence of the share dealings. This advice may have saved the Welsh Wizard's career. He made it clear that the Government could not secure any contracts for favours whether from Marconi or Lord Cowdray.
With Irish parentage in his own family, McKenna was happy to support the half-cash, half-stock scheme on 16 July for the Irish Purchase Act introduced by Augustine Birrell, as the prospect for Irish Home Rule drew ever nearer. Dublin was in turmoil, to McKenna and others on the Left (Walter Runciman, Charles Hobhouse, and John Burns) it was as much Edward Carson's fault as James Larkin's.
McKenna blamed Churchill for stirring up the Northcliffe press against the cabinet's plans to boost the army's budget by £800,000 and a proposed increase of £6 million in the Royal Navy's bi-annual estimate. In the new year McKenna was one of Lloyd George's group to analyse Churchill's plans for Dreadnought construction; they insisted that expenditure must be reduced to that of 1912–13.
In late January 1914 his friends Charles Hobhouse and Sir John Simon agreed to lobby the Chancellor. The following day at the Treasury their "entire sitting was taken up" by the group's tirade against Churchill's management of the Admiralty. They retired the next morning to Smith Square to discuss the Home Rule crisis in Ireland; a dissolution "would be a complete practical triumph for the Tory Party", wrote Hobhouse; their group was expanded to include Beauchamp and Runciman. On 29 January the group sent a petition to Asquith protesting against the Naval Estimates, now assumed to total £52.5 million.
McKenna had been receiving messages of grave concern from Irish leader John Redmond. On 17 July, before the weekend, McKenna proposed an Amending Bill to the Government of Ireland Bill to allow any Ulster county to opt out of Home Rule.
Wartime Home Secretary The problems of Ireland paled into insignificance in early August. Broadly-speaking McKenna, an Asquithian, supported the pledge to go to war to defend Belgium's neutrality, but he did not want to send the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Charles Masterman, Runciman and McKenna all wanted to stall the Kaiser for invaluable time.Cabinet Discussions, 1 August 1914 Most of the cabinet opposed armed intervention in France, almost up until the declaration of war.
The Home Secretary remained in charge of State Security: more than 6,000 espionage cases were investigated, none of which produced any traitors. The smuggling of German arms during the Irish Home Rule Crisis had sparked fears that Britain was infiltrated by a network of spies. In response cable telegraphs were laid from Dartmouth to Brest in Brittany to guarantee Allied communications links. On 20 October a warrant went out for the arrest of 23,000 Germanic aliens, and food supplies to Belgium were cut lest they fell into German hands. McKenna refused to allow the publication of the sinking of HMS Audacious; in the event it was 'leaked' to The Evening News anyway. And on 30 October the Cabinet announced a general policy of censorship. In the Wilhelmina case he again referred to the legal situation, seeking a solution in international law.
McKenna disliked the autocratic and dismissive Lord Kitchener, appointed Secretary of State for War at the start of the war. Immediately on his appointment their relations soured: the policy of voluntary recruitment continued as the Army needed one million men, until the Adjutant-General complained there were too many new recruits. On 5 March 1915 McKenna reported that the Ritz Carlton Hotel, New York was being used as a spy network to inform on British intelligence; the government, determined to prevent the USA entering the war on Germany's side, informed Washington. McKenna supported Asquith and gradually fell out with Lloyd George.
Internal wrangling in Cabinet conversations reached fever pitch: Edwin Montagu, a cousin of Herbert Samuel and ally of Lloyd George suggested that Asquith was jealous of Sir Edward Grey's prowess in the Foreign Office. When in April 1915 the Home Secretary banned Montagu from his home for six months, the scene was set for a final split in the party. McKenna was a Teetotaller, something he had impressed upon the King was necessary for good government. His Majesty "took the pledge" for the duration of the war, an example which Lord Chancellor Haldane felt he had to follow for the remainder of his time in office.
Asquith's Liberal Chancellor In May 1915 Asquith formed a coalition government. McKenna, a reluctant coalitionist, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the meantime, McKenna oversaw the issue of the Second War Loan in June 1915, at an interest rate of 4.5%, although his first budget was actually on 21 September 1915 was a serious attempt to deal with an impending debt crisis. Revenues were rising, but not by enough to cover the £1.6 billion government expenditure. McKenna increased income tax rates and introduced a 50% excess profit tax, and increases in indirect taxation of goods such as tea, coffee, and tobacco. Post Office charge increases could not be included in the Budget (as they would have endangered its status as a money bill), and were instead introduced in a Post Office and Telegraph Bill.
McKenna duties