Henry Campbell-Bannerman

Biography

Henry Campbell was born in Glasgow in 1836, the son of a prosperous draper who later became Lord Provost. He was educated at the High School of Glasgow, the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, then joined the family firm as a partner. He added the surname Bannerman in 1871 under the terms of an uncle's will.

Elected Liberal MP for Stirling Burghs in 1868, he held the seat for almost forty years. He served as financial secretary to the War Office under Gladstone, then at the Admiralty, entered the cabinet as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1884, and was Secretary of State for War in 1886 and from 1892 to 1895, when a censure vote over cordite supplies brought down Rosebery's government.

In 1899 he became Liberal leader in the Commons and leader of the opposition. He held a divided party together through the Boer War, condemning Britain's concentration camps as 'methods of barbarism', and rallied it around free trade against tariff reform.

Asked to form a government in December 1905, he called an election and won a landslide in early 1906. His ministry passed the Trade Disputes Act, allowed free school meals and granted self-government to the former Boer republics. Ill health forced him to resign in April 1908, and he died at 10 Downing Street nineteen days later.