The Dardanelles Commission was an investigation into the disastrous 1915 Dardanelles Campaign. [1] It was set up under the Special Commissions (Dardanelles and Mesopotamia) Act 1916. [2] The final report of the commission, issued in 1919, found major problems with the planning and execution of the campaign. [1]
Winston Churchill had been largely blamed for the failures of the British forces during the campaign since, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he had been responsible for instigating the plan and obtaining Cabinet approval to carry it out. The resignation of First Sea Lord Admiral Fisher in May 1915, because of escalating disagreements between himself and Churchill, triggered the collapse of Asquith's Liberal government. Asquith formed a new coalition government, with Churchill's removal from the Admiralty a price of Conservative support. Churchill remained in the new Cabinet in the sinecure post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and served on the Dardanelles Committee. When the Dardanelles Committee was dissolved and replaced by the new War Committee, Churchill was not included in the new committee, so he resigned from the government in November 1915. For a time, he took up a position as a battalion commander on the Western Front (while remaining a Member of Parliament). He returned to parliamentary duty in 1916, where he attempted to rehabilitate his reputation, when the battalion was amalgamated with another.
Churchill sought to obtain the release of government papers, which, he felt, would vindicate his own actions. In May Bonar Law had indicated on behalf of the Prime Minister that this might be possible, but by June, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, had decided that it could not be done. Matters were complicated by the death of Field Marshal Kitchener, who had been Secretary of State for War, on 6 June 1916.
Instead, Asquith agreed to the setting up of a Commission of Enquiry into the affair, which was announced on 18 July 1916. The Earl of Cromer, known to Churchill, was to be the chairman. Churchill anticipated that he would be able to attend meetings of the commission, but they were held in secret. Instead he had to be content with giving evidence himself in September and arranging for other witnesses whom he felt important to be heard by the commission. [3]
Witnesses of those involved in the expedition were interviewed, with its final report issued in 1919. It concluded that the expedition had been poorly planned and executed and that difficulties had been underestimated; problems were exacerbated by supply shortages and by personality clashes and procrastination at high levels.
The following were appointed: [4]
The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State for Air.
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British politician and statesman who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. He was the last Liberal Party prime minister to command a majority government, and the most recent Liberal to have served as Leader of the Opposition. He played a major role in the design and passage of major liberal legislation and a reduction of the power of the House of Lords. In August 1914, Asquith took Great Britain and the British Empire into the First World War. During 1915, his government was vigorously attacked for a shortage of munitions and the failure of the Gallipoli Campaign. He formed a coalition government with other parties but failed to satisfy critics, was forced to resign in December 1916 and never regained power.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is a ministerial office in the Government of the United Kingdom. Excluding the prime minister, the chancellor is the highest ranking minister in the Cabinet Office, immediately after the Prime Minister, and senior to the Minister for the Cabinet Office. The role includes as part of its duties the administration of the estates and rents of the Duchy of Lancaster.
A war cabinet is a committee formed by a government in a time of war to efficiently and effectively conduct that war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers, although it is quite common for a war cabinet to have senior military officers and opposition politicians as members.
Reginald McKenna 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.
John Colin Campbell Davidson, 1st Viscount Davidson,, known before his elevation to the peerage as J. C. C. Davidson, was a British civil servant and Conservative Party politician, best known for his close alliance with Stanley Baldwin. Initially a civil servant, Davidson was private secretary to Bonar Law between 1915 and 1920. After entering parliament in 1920, he served under Baldwin as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1923 and 1924 and as Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty between 1924 and 1926. From 1926 to 1930 he was Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was once again Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1931 and 1937, firstly under Ramsay MacDonald and from 1935 onwards under Baldwin. On Baldwin's retirement in 1937, Davidson left the House of Commons and was ennobled as Viscount Davidson. Despite being only 48, he never took any further active part in politics. His wife Frances, Viscountess Davidson, succeeded him as MP for Hemel Hempstead. Lord Davidson died in London in 1970.
The Shell Crisis of 1915 was a shortage of artillery shells on the front lines in the First World War that led to a political crisis in the United Kingdom. Previous military experience led to an over-reliance on shrapnel to attack infantry in the open, which was negated by the resort to trench warfare, for which high-explosive shell were better suited. At the start of the war there was a revolution in doctrine: instead of the idea that artillery was a useful support for infantry attacks, the new doctrine held that heavy guns alone would control the battlefield. Because of the stable lines on the Western Front, it was easy to build railway lines that delivered all the shells the factories could produce. The 'shell scandal' emerged in 1915 because the high rate of fire over a long period was not anticipated and the stock of shells became depleted. The inciting incident was the disastrous Battle of Aubers, which reportedly had been stymied by a lack of shells.
The Landship Committee was a small British committee formed during the First World War to develop armoured fighting vehicles for use on the Western Front. The eventual outcome was the creation of what is now called the tank. Established in February 1915 by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, the Committee was composed mainly of naval officers, politicians and engineers. It was chaired by Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt, Director of Naval Construction at the Admiralty. For secrecy, by December 1915 the name was changed to "the D.N.C.'s Committee" to disguise its purpose.
Liberal David Lloyd George formed a coalition government in the United Kingdom in December 1916, and was appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom by King George V. It replaced the earlier wartime coalition under H. H. Asquith, which had been held responsible for losses during the Great War. Those Liberals who continued to support Asquith served as the Official Opposition. The government continued in power after the end of the war in 1918, though Lloyd George was increasingly reliant on the Conservatives for support. After several scandals including allegations of the sale of honours, the Conservatives withdrew their support after a meeting at the Carlton Club in 1922, and Bonar Law formed a government.
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was an English war correspondent during the First World War. Through his reporting of the Battle of Gallipoli, Ashmead-Bartlett was instrumental in the birth of the Anzac legend which still dominates military history in Australia and New Zealand. Through his outspoken criticism of the conduct of the campaign, he was instrumental in bringing about the dismissal of the British commander-in-chief, Sir Ian Hamilton – an event that led to the evacuation of British forces from the Gallipoli peninsula.
Joseph Albert Pease, 1st Baron Gainford, known as Jack Pease, was a British businessman and Liberal politician. He was a member of H. H. Asquith's Liberal cabinet between 1910 and 1916 and also served as Chairman of the BBC between 1922 and 1926.
Admiral of the Fleet Rosslyn Erskine Wemyss, 1st Baron Wester Wemyss,, known as Sir Rosslyn Wemyss between 1916 and 1919, was a Royal Navy officer. During the First World War he served as commander of the 12th Cruiser Squadron and then as Governor of Moudros before leading the British landings at Cape Helles and at Suvla Bay during the Gallipoli campaign. He went on to be Commander of the East Indies & Egyptian Squadron in January 1916 and then First Sea Lord in December 1917, in which role he encouraged Admiral Roger Keyes, Commander of the Dover Patrol, to undertake more vigorous operations in the Channel, ultimately leading to the launch of the Zeebrugge Raid in April 1918.
The Liberal government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that began in 1905 and ended in 1915 consisted of two ministries: the first led by Henry Campbell-Bannerman and the final three by H. H. Asquith.
The Special Commissions Act 1916 was set up to investigate the World War I operations in the Dardanelles Campaign and the Mesopotamian campaign.
This article documents the career of Winston Churchill in Parliament from its beginning in 1900 to the start of his term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in World War II.
The 1917 Dundee by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Dundee in the county of Angus held on 30 July 1917.
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Statesmen of World War I is an oil on canvas painting by Sir James Guthrie, completed in 1930, shortly before Guthrie's death. It was commissioned by South African financier Sir Abraham Bailey, 1st Baronet to commemorate the politicians and statesmen of Britain and its Dominions who held office during the First World War. It was donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 1930, shortly after it was completed.
The Royal Naval Division Memorial is a First World War memorial located on Horse Guards Parade in central London, and dedicated to members of the 63rd Division (RND) killed in that conflict. Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the memorial, which was unveiled on 25 April 1925—ten years to the day after the Gallipoli landings, in which the division suffered heavy casualties. Shortly after the war, former members of the division established a committee, chaired by one of their leading officers, Brigadier-General Arthur Asquith, to raise funds for a memorial. Progress was initially slow. The committee planned to incorporate its memorial into a larger monument proposed by the Royal Navy for Trafalgar Square. When the navy abandoned that project, the RND's committee decided to proceed independently. They engaged Lutyens, who, after negotiation with the Office of Works, produced a design for a fountain connected to the balustrade of the Admiralty Extension building.
Sir Edward Grimwood Mears was a British barrister, who gave up his practice at the bar to work on the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, which looked at the 1914-15 German atrocities in Belgium. He was appointed secretary of the Dardanelles Commission in return for a knighthood, worked on the reply to The German White Book, and in 1916 was part of the Royal Commission on the Easter Rising in Ireland.