Henry Campbell-Bannerman

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (7 September 1836 – 22 April 1908) was a British Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister from February 5 1906 until resigning due to ill health on April 3 1908. No previous First Lord of the Treasury had been officially called "Prime Minister"; this term only came into official usage 5 days after he took office.

Campbell-Bannerman was born at Kelvinside House in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1836 as Henry Campbell. Educated at Glasgow High School. The surname Bannerman was added to his surname in 1871 as required by his maternal uncle's will. It was a condition of his inheritance of his uncle's Kent estate, Hunton Court.

He was the son of Sir James Campbell, who was Lord Provost of Glasgow 1840-1843, and his wife Janet Bannerman. Campbell-Bannerman was educated at the High School of Glasgow (1845-1847), the University of Glasgow (1851), and Trinity College, Cambridge (1854-1858), where he achieved a Third-Class Degree in Classical Tripos. After graduating, he joined J.& W. Campbell & Co., his family's firm, who were warehousemen and drapers in Glasgow.

In 1868, he was elected to the House of Commons as Liberal Member of Parliament for Stirling Burghs - a constituency he was to represent for forty years.

He was appointed as Financial Secretary at the War Office in November 1871, serving in this position until 1874, and again from 1880 to 1882. After serving as Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty from 1882 to 1884, he entered Gladstone's second cabinet as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1884.

In Gladstone's Third (1886) and Fourth (1892-1894) Cabinets and Rosebery's Government (1894-1895) he served as Secretary for War, where his most notable accomplishment was persuading the Duke of Cambridge, the Queen's cousin, an obstacle to necessary army reforms, to resign as Commander-in-Chief. This earned Campbell-Bannerman a knighthood. In 1898 Sir Henry succeeded Sir William Vernon Harcourt as leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons. Campbell-Bannerman had a difficult job holding together the strongly divided party, and when the Liberals returned to power in 1906, he became Prime Minister.

Campbell-Bannerman's premiership was a frustrating one, as the Conservative Lords blocked most of the Liberals' reform measures, but it did see the achievement of an Entente with Russia in 1907 by his Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. In that same year, Campbell-Bannerman achieved the honour of becoming the Father of the House, the only serving British Prime Minister to do so to date. But his health soon took a turn for the worse, and he resigned as Prime Minister on 3 April 1908, to be succeeded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Henry Asquith. Campbell-Bannerman remained in residence at 10 Downing Street in the immediate aftermath of his resignation, and became the only Prime Minister to die there, on 22 April 1908.

His last words were "This is not the end of me." ^*.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Government, February 1906 - April 1908

Changes

January 1907 - Augustine Birrell succeeds Bryce as Irish Secretary. Reginald McKenna succeeds Birrell at the Board of Education.
March 1907 - Lewis Vernon Harcourt, the First Commissioner of Public Works, enters the Cabinet.

Political offices

External links

Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman 1836-1908 biography from the Liberal Democrat History Group

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Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Government, February 1906 - April 1908

Changes

Political offices

External links