Beddoe Rees - Liberal Divisions

Liberal Divisions

As a Coalition Liberal, Rees was associated with support for Lloyd George. However, according to the historian Michael Bentley, by 1924 Rees was part of ‘a small group of Liberal Imperialists’ numbering about 12 MPs who were presumably beginning to be wary of some of Lloyd George’s policy positions and his place on the political spectrum in relation to the emerging force of the Labour Party. Rees did later back Lloyd George however. His name was on a list of MPs sent to Lloyd George by Freddie Guest on 1 June 1926 with a promise of support for his leadership, as long as he would give an assurance that he would not enter into an alliance with Labour or support nationalisation of industry. Lloyd George’s carefully worded reply was successful in ensuring the support of enough MPs for his continued leadership of the party. In the end Rees did not actually vote for Lloyd George as he was absent from the critical meeting of Parliamentary Liberal Party on 1 February 1926.

Nevertheless, Rees’ association with the Conservatives brought him into conflict with his own party over the issue of support for the formation of a Labour government after the 1923 election. He was unable to support Asquith’s position of allowing Labour to take office, although he told his electors in Bristol that there was no Liberal principle involved it was merely a matter of being true to the position on which he had fought the last election. He was one of ten Liberals to support Baldwin’s attempt to remain in office. He then voted with the Conservatives on numerous occasions during the rest of the Parliament although he was rarely the only Liberal MP to defy the party line. The party was embarrassed by these divisions in their Parliamentary ranks but they were reaping the harvest of the Asquith–Lloyd George split and the problems which developed during Lloyd George’s coalition with the Conservatives. Liberal unity did not really improve until after Asquith’s death in 1928 and the need for the Liberal Party to reunify in the face of the 1929 general election. Rees’ position was not always appreciated by the local Liberals either. At the end of July 1927 a deputation from the Western Liberal Federation went to see the Chief Whip at Liberal Party headquarters. They complained about the political conduct of Freddie Guest, the member for Bristol North and Beddoe Rees, because of the number of occasions they had voted with the Government against the rest of the members of the party. They requested that the whip should be withdrawn from them.