National Liberal Club

National Liberal Club
The National Liberal Club
Founded 1882
Home Page www.nlc.org.uk
Address 1 Whitehall Place
Clubhouse occupied since 1887
Club established for Liberals
The National Liberal Club

The National Liberal Club, known to its members as the NLC, is a London gentlemen's club, now also open to women, which was established by William Ewart Gladstone in 1882 for the purpose of providing club facilities for Liberal Party campaigners among the newly-enlarged electorate after the Third Reform Act. The club's impressive neo-gothic building over the Embankment of the river Thames is the second-largest clubhouse ever built. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, it was not completed until 1887.[1] Its facilities include a dining room, a bar, function rooms, a billiards room, a smoking room and reading room, as well as an outdoor riverside terrace overlooking the London Eye. It is located at 1 Whitehall Place, close to the Houses of Parliament, the Thames Embankment, and Trafalgar Square.

Contents

History

The club's foundation stone was laid by Gladstone in 1882, when he declared "Speaking generally, I should say there could not be a less interesting occasion than the laying of the foundation-stone of a Club in London. For, after all, what are the Clubs of London? I am afraid little else than temples of luxury and ease. This, however, is a club of a very different character," and envisioned the club as a popular institution for the mass electorate.[2] However, another of the club's founders, G.W.E. Russell, noted "We certainly never foresaw the palatial pile of terra-cotta and glazed tiles which now bears that name. Our modest object was to provide a central meeting-place for Metropolitan and provincial Liberals, where all the comforts of life should be attainable at what are called 'popular prices'" but added "at the least, we meant our Club to be a place of "ease" to the Radical toiler. But Gladstone insisted that it was to be a workshop dedicated to strenuous labour.".[2]

In the five years between the club's establishment and completion of the building, 1882-7, it occupied temporary premises on the corner of Northumberland Avenue and Trafalgar Square. During this time, a parliamentary question was asked in the House of Commons about the White Ensign being raised on the club's flagpole as part of a prank.[3]

In its late nineteenth century heyday, its membership was primarily political, but had a strong journalistic and even bohemian character. Members were known to finish an evening's dining by diving into the Thames.[4] Of the club's political character, George Bernard Shaw remarked at a debate in the club, "I have never yet met a member of the National Liberal Club who did not intend to get into Parliament at some time, except those who, like our Chairman, are there already."[5] It was also the site of much intrigue in the Liberal Party over the years, rivalling the Reform Club as a social centre for Liberals by the advent of World War I, although its membership was largely based on Liberal activists in the country at large; it was built on such a large scale to provide London club facilities for Liberal activists from around the country, justifying its use of the description 'national'. From late 1916 to December 1919, the clubhouse was requisitioned by the British government for use as a billet for Canadian troops, the club relocating to nearby Northumberland Avenue in the meantime. At the end of the First World War, the Canadian soldiers who stayed there presented the Club with a moose head as a gift of thanks.

During the party's 1916-23 split, the Asquith wing of the party was in the ascendant in the club, with Lloyd George himself was shunned by many NLC members. This was a highly acrimonious time within the Liberal party, with both the Asquithian and Lloyd Georgeite factions believing themselves to be the 'true' Liberal party, and viewing the other faction as 'traitors'.[4] Michael Bentley has written of this period that "The Lloyd George Liberal Magazine, which appeared monthly between October 1920 and December 1923, spent much space attacking the National Liberal Club for its continued Asquithian partisanship - in particular for its refusal to hang portraits of Lloyd George and Churchill and to accept nominations for membership from Coalition Liberals. The creation of a separate '1920 Club' was one reaction to this treatment."[6]

This building temporarily housed the NLC twice; once in 1882-7, whilst the club's own premises were being built; and again 1916-19 when the club building was requisitioned for war work.

There is a well-known story told of the NLC, that the Conservative politician F.E. Smith would stop off there every day on his way to parliament, to use the club's lavatories. One day the hall porter apprehended Smith and asked him if he was actually a member of the club, to which Smith replied "Good god! You mean it's a club as well?" This story, and aprocryphal variations thereof (usually substituting Smith with Churchill), are told of many different clubs. The original related to the NLC, at the half-way point between parliament and Smith's house in Temple. The comment was a jibe at the brown tiles in some of the NLC's late-Victorian architecture.[7]

The building once hosted its own branch of the Post Office,[8] something which another club, the Royal Automobile Club, still does.

On 22 March 1893, during the Second Reading of the Clubs Registration Bill, the Conservative MP (and later Liberal defector) Thomas Gibson Bowles told the House of Commons "I am informed there is an establishment not far from the House frequented by Radical millionaires and released prisoners, the National Liberal Club, where an enormous quantity of whisky is consumed."[9] Despite this remark, it seems that the club accounted for relatively little alcohol consumption by the standards of the day - Herbert Samuel commented in 1909 that the average annual consumption of alcoholic liquor per NLC member was 31s. 4d. per annum, which compared very favourably with 33s. 5d. for the nearby Constitutional Club, 48s. for the City Carlton Club, and 77s. for the Junior Carlton Club.[10] One possible explanation is the strength of the Temperance movement in the Liberal party at the time.

In the early 1950s, it was a centre of anti-ID card sentiment, and Harry Willcock, a member who successfully campaigned for the abolition of ID cards, tore his up in front of the club as a publicity stunt in 1951. He also died in the club during a debate held there on 12 December 1952, with his last word being "Freedom."[11]

The NLC in literature

The club features in several works of literature:

  • G. K. Chesterton mentions it as a setting in the short story "The Notable Conduct of Professor Chadd" in his collection The Club of Queer Trades (1905).
  • H. G. Wells, who was a member, gave a lengthy description of the NLC in his novel The New Machiavelli (1911), discussing the narrator's experience of visiting the club during the 1906 general election:
I engaged myself to speak at one or two London meetings, and lunched at the Reform, which was fairly tepid, and dined and spent one or two tumultuous evenings at the National Liberal Club, which was in active eruption. The National Liberal became feverishly congested towards midnight as the results of the counting came dropping in. A big green-baize screen had been fixed up at one end of the large smoking-room with the names of the constituencies that were voting that day, and directly the figures came to hand, up they went, amidst cheers that at last lost their energy through sheer repetition, whenever there was record of a Liberal gain. I don't remember what happened when there was a Liberal loss; I don't think that any were announced while I was there.
How packed and noisy the place was, and what a reek of tobacco and whisky fumes we made! Everybody was excited and talking, making waves of harsh confused sound that beat upon one's ears, and every now and then hoarse voices would shout for someone to speak. Our little set was much in evidence. Both the Cramptons were in, Lewis, Bunting Harblow. We gave brief addresses attuned to this excitement and the late hour, amidst much enthusiasm.
"Now we can DO things!" I said amidst a rapture of applause. Men I did not know from Adam held up glasses and nodded to me in solemn fuddled approval as I came down past them into the crowd again.
Men were betting whether the Unionists would lose more or less than two hundred seats.
"I wonder just what we shall do with it all," I heard one sceptic speculating....
Welles later described the State Opening of the new 1906 parliament:
It is one of my vivid memories from this period, the sudden outbreak of silk hats in the smoking-room of the National Liberal Club. At first I thought there must have been a funeral. Familiar faces that one had grown to know under soft felt hats, under bowlers, under liberal-minded wide brims, and above artistic ties and tweed jackets, suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of self-consciousness, from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There was a disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a good Parliamentary style.
About the club more broadly, Wells' narrator reflected:
My discontents with the Liberal party and my mental exploration of the quality of party generally is curiously mixed up with certain impressions of things and people in the National Liberal Club. The National Liberal Club is Liberalism made visible in the flesh—and Doultonware. It is an extraordinary big club done in a bold, wholesale, shiny, marbled style, richly furnished with numerous paintings, steel engravings, busts, and full-length statues of the late Mr. Gladstone; and its spacious dining-rooms, its long, hazy, crowded smoking-room with innumerable little tables and groups of men in armchairs, its magazine room and library upstairs, have just that undistinguished and unconcentrated diversity which is for me the Liberal note. The pensive member sits and hears perplexing dialects and even fragments of foreign speech, and among the clustering masses of less insistent whites his roving eye catches profiles and complexions that send his mind afield to Calcutta or Rangoon or the West Indies or Sierra Leone or the Cape....
I was not infrequently that pensive member. I used to go to the Club to doubt about Liberalism. About two o'clock in the day the great smoking-room is crowded with countless little groups. They sit about small round tables, or in circles of chairs, and the haze of tobacco seems to prolong the great narrow place, with its pillars and bays, to infinity. Some of the groups are big, as many as a dozen men talk in loud tones; some are duologues, and there is always a sprinkling of lonely, dissociated men. At first one gets an impression of men going from group to group and as it were linking them, but as one watches closely one finds that these men just visit three or four groups at the outside, and know nothing of the others. One begins to perceive more and more distinctly that one is dealing with a sort of human mosaic; that each patch in that great place is of a different quality and colour from the next and never to be mixed with it. Most clubs have a common link, a lowest common denominator in the Club Bore, who spares no one, but even the National Liberal bores are specialised and sectional. As one looks round one sees here a clump of men from the North Country or the Potteries, here an island of South London politicians, here a couple of young Jews ascendant from Whitechapel, here a circle of journalists and writers, here a group of Irish politicians, here two East Indians, here a priest or so, here a clump of old-fashioned Protestants, here a little knot of eminent Rationalists indulging in a blasphemous story sotto voce. Next to them are a group of anglicised Germans and highly specialised chess-players, and then two of the oddest-looking persons—bulging with documents and intent upon extraordinary business transactions over long cigars....
I would listen to a stormy sea of babblement, and try to extract some constructive intimations. Every now and then I got a whiff of politics. It was clear they were against the Lords—against plutocrats—against Cossington's newspapers—against the brewers.... It was tremendously clear what they were against. The trouble was to find out what on earth they were for!...
As I sat and thought, the streaked and mottled pillars and wall, the various views, aspects, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, the partitions of polished mahogany, the yellow-vested waiters, would dissolve and vanish, and I would have a vision of this sample of miscellaneous men of limited, diverse interests and a universal littleness of imagination enlarged, unlimited, no longer a sample but a community, spreading, stretching out to infinity—all in little groups and duologues and circles, all with their special and narrow concerns, all with their backs to most of the others.
What but a common antagonism would ever keep these multitudes together? I understood why modern electioneering is more than half of it denunciation. Let us condemn, if possible, let us obstruct and deprive, but not let us do. There is no real appeal to the commonplace mind in "Let us do." That calls for the creative imagination, and few have been accustomed to respond to that call. The other merely needs jealousy and bate, of which there are great and easily accessible reservoirs in every human heart.[12]
  • Foe-Farrell (1918) by Arthur Quiller-Couch features a scene in which the intoxicated title character is apprehended after a night of drunken excess, and pleads that he is a member of the NLC. The narrator tells him "the National Liberal Club carries its own recommendation. What's more, it's going to be the saving of us...They'll admit you,and that's where you'll sleep to-night. The night porter will hunt out a pair of pyjamas and escort you up the lift. Oh, he's used to it. He gets politicians from Bradford and such places dropping in at all hours. Don't try the marble staircase—it's winding and slippery at the edge."[13]
  • The club is referred to in passing in several P. G. Wodehouse stories:
  • In a Mulliner tale in the short story collection Young Men in Spats (1936), Mr. Mulliner describes a state of complete pandemonium as being "more like that of Guest Night at the National Liberal Club than anything he had ever encountered. "
  • In the short story collection Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (1940), Bingo Little makes an ill-considered bet on a horse after a perceived omen: "On the eve of the race he had a nightmare in which he saw his Uncle Wilberforce dancing the rumba in the nude on the steps of the National Liberal Club and, like a silly ass, accepted this as a bit of stable information."
  • In the novel The Adventures of Sally (1922), it is said that an uncle of Lancelot "Ginger" Kemp is "a worthy man, highly respected in the National Liberal Club".[14][15]

Decline and revival

The fortunes of the NLC have mirrored those of the Liberal Party - as the Liberals declined as a national force in the 1940s and 1950s, so did the NLC. The club also suffered a direct hit by a Luftwaffe bomb during the Blitz which utterly destroyed the central staircase and caused considerable damage elsewhere, meaning the cost of reconstructing the staircase in the early 1950s placed a considerable strain on the club's finances. By the 1970s it was in a serious state of disrepair, its membership dwindling, and its finances losing almost a thousand pounds a week. In 1976 Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe handed over the club to Canadian businessman George de Chabris, who, unknown to Thorpe, was a confidence trickster. De Chabris spent nine months running the club, relaxing membership rules and bringing in more income, but also moving his family in rent-free, running several fraudulent businesses from its premises, paying for a sports car and his children's private school fees from the Club's accounts, and he eventually left in a hurry owing the club £60,000, even emptying out the cash till of the day's takings as he went. He eventually agreed to pay back half of that sum in instalments. In his time at the club he also sold it a painting for £10,000, when it was valued at less than £1,000.[16] One of his more controversial reforms was to sell the National Liberal Club's library and archive (which included the largest library of 17th-20th century political material in the country, including 35,000 books and over 30,000 pamphlets) to the University of Bristol for £40,000.[17] Ian Bradley described it as "a derisory sum" for the sale, particularly in light of the unique collection of accumulated candidates' manifestos from nineteenth century general elections.[18] The collection is still housed at Bristol today. However, the papers referring to the history of the club itself have been returned to the NLC on permanent loan since the 1990s.

As the Liberal Party's lease on its headquarters expired in 1977, the party organisation moved to the upper floors of the NLC, the negotiations also being arranged by de Chabris. The Liberals occupied a suite of rooms on the second floor, and a series of offices converted from bedrooms on the upper floors. The party continued to operate from the NLC until 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party to form the Liberal Democrats, and moved to occupy the SDP's old headquarters in Cowley Street. During this time, party workers were known to avail themselves of the club downstairs, and the NLC bar became known as the "Liberal Party's 'local'" and a Liberal Party song "Down at the Old NLC" was written in response to this:

"Come, come, roll up your trouser leg/ Down at the old NLC./ Come, come, stuff your coat on the peg/ Down at the old NLC./ There to get your apron on:/ Learn the secret organ song;/ Bend your thumb when you shake hands./ Come, come, drinking till the dinner gong/ Down at the old NLC." (1985. Words: Mark Tavener. Tune: Down at the Old Bull and Bush)[19]

In 1985, the club sold off its second-floor and basement function rooms, and the 140 bedrooms from the third floor to the eighth floor (including two vast ballrooms and the Gladstone Library, which contained 35,000 volumes) to the adjoining Royal Horseguards Hotel, which is approached from a different entrance. This was not without some dissent among the membership, but the sale ensured that the club's financial future was secure, and the remaining part of the club still operating, mainly on the ground and first floors of the vast building, remains one of the largest clubhouses in the world.[20] Originally built for 6,000 members, the club still provides facilities for around 2,000.

The club's calendar includes an Annual Whitebait Supper, where members depart by river from Embankment Pier, downstream to the Greenwich tavern which Gladstone used to take his cabinet ministers to by boat, as well as the Political and Economic Circle, which was founded by Gladstone in the 1890s.

Reciprocal arrangements

The club is open to members from Mondays to Fridays, 8am-midnight. During the weekend members may use either the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall, or the East India Club in St. James's Square. The club's link with the latter relates to the East India incorporating the now-defunct Devonshire Club, which was another Liberal-affiliated club of the nineteenth century. There are also reciprocal arrangements with over 80 other clubs worldwide, granting members a comfortable place to stay when abroad. The club does not affiliate with the NULC (National Union of Liberal Clubs), which represents the interests of Liberal Working Men's Clubs in the country nationwide.

Membership

The NLC is a private members' club, with membership needing the nomination of an existing member, and a waiting period of a month. Members are either Political Members, who sign a declaration that they are a Liberal in their politics, or Non-Political Members, who sign a declaration that they shall not use the club's facilities for 'political activities adverse to Liberalism.' In keeping with its liberal roots, it was the first gentlemen's club to allow ethnic minorities as members, as early as the 1890s. It did not admit women as full members until 1978, although this was much earlier than most major London clubs, many of which did not integrate until the 1990s or 2000s, and it offered women an 'associate membership' category from 1962 until 1978. A stringent dress code is still strictly enforced: male members must wear a jacket and tie at all times, with female members maintaining a similar level of formality, and items such as jeans and trainers banned. Formal military wear and religious wear are acceptable alternatives. A single exception to the dress code is on hot summer days, when members are permitted to remove their jackets on the club's terrace, but not within the club itself.

It is one of the few London clubs to contain another club within — since 1990, the NLC has also been home to the Savage Club, which lodges in some rooms on the ground floor.

Members of the Old Millhillian's Club are also given access to the London facility. They are not, however, automatically members of the NLC and do not have the benefits of the reciprocal arrangements unless they join the NLC in their own right.

Film and Television appearances

The club has been used as a location in numerous films and television programmes, including:

Notable members

Additionally, the left-wing playwright Harold Pinter worked as a waiter at the club in the 1950s, and was fired for daring to interrupt the conversation of several diners.[31]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Lejeune, Anthony, with Malcolm Lewis, The Gentlemen's Clubs of London (Bracken Books, 1979 reprinted 1984 and 1987) chapter on National Liberal Club
  2. ^ a b c G.W.E. Russell, Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography(Thomas Nelson, London,undated), Chapter XXII
  3. ^ "THE NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB. (Hansard, 4 May 1883)". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1883/may/04/the-national-liberal-club. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
  4. ^ a b R. Steven, The National Liberal Club: Politics and Persons (Robert Holden, 1925)
  5. ^ George Bernard Shaw, 'The Case for Equality: speech at a National Liberal Club debate of 1913', in ed. James Fuchs, The Socialism of Shaw (New York, 1926) p.58
  6. ^ Michael Bentley, The Liberal Mind 1914-29 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007) p.81
  7. ^ "Identity Cards Scheme (Hansard, 23 June 1992)". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1992/jun/23/identity-cards-scheme#S5LV0538P0-01343. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
  8. ^ "Hansard". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. 1911-06-02. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1911/jun/02/whitehall-place-post-office#S5CV0026P0-04268. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
  9. ^ "Hansard". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1893/mar/22/second-reading-1#S4V0010P0-02268. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
  10. ^ "Hansard". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. 1909-05-11. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1909/may/11/duty-in-respect-or-intoxicating-liquor#S5CV0004P0-04751. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
  11. ^ Plaque in the NLC smoking room
  12. ^ H.G. Wells, The New Machiavelli (1911) retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1047/1047-h/1047-h.htm
  13. ^ The Project Gutenberg EBook of Foe-Farrell, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
  14. ^ "The Adventures of Sally by P. G. Wodehouse - Project Gutenberg". Gutenberg.org. 2005-02-01. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/dvsll10h.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
  15. ^ P.G. Wodehouse, The Adventures of Sally (Herbert Jenkins, 1922)
  16. ^ Lewis Chester, Magnus Linklater and David May, Jeremy Thorpe: A Secret Life (Fontana, 1979) p.190-194 for a detailed description of de Chabris' involvement in the club in the 1970s. See also The Times, Thursday, Oct 21, 1982; pg. 8; Issue 61368; col B
  17. ^ The Times, Wednesday, Nov 10, 1976; pg. 1; Issue 59857; col G; The Times, Friday, Nov 19, 1976; pg. 4; Issue 59865; col G
  18. ^ The Times, Thursday, Oct 21, 1982; pg. 8; Issue 61368; col B
  19. ^ ed. Ralph Bancroft, Liberator songbook, 2004 edition - notes for the song "Down at the old NLC"
  20. ^ The Standard, Friday 19 April 1985, p.2
  21. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag The National Liberal Club - List of Members October 2008 (National Liberal Club, 2008 - distributed to all members)
  22. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao Who Was Who, 1897-present
  23. ^ The National Liberal Club - List of Members October 2009 (National Liberal Club, 2009 - distributed to all members)
  24. ^ Lewis Chester, Magnus Linklater and David May, Jeremy Thorpe: A Secret Life (Fontana, 1979) p.86
  25. ^ "ALLOCATION OF TIME. (Hansard, 10 October 1912)". Hansard.millbanksystems.com. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1912/oct/10/allocation-of-time#S5CV0042P0-01765. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
  26. ^ The National Liberal Club - Club rules, standing orders, and a list of members, 1912
  27. ^ The National Liberal Club - List of Members October 2006 (National Liberal Club, 2006 - distributed to all members)
  28. ^ David Marquand, Ramsay Macdonald: A Biography (Jonathan Cape, 1977)
  29. ^ Jonathan Fryer, Dylan: The Nine Lives of Dylan Thomas (Kyle Cathie, 1993) p.51
  30. ^ Plaque inside the NLC smoking room
  31. ^ Obituary: Harold Pinter, by Mel Gussow and Ben Brantley, New York Times, 25 December 2008

External links

Coordinates: 51°30′23″N 0°07′25″W / 51.5063°N 0.1237°W / 51.5063; -0.1237


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