The Cecil Bloc
The extended Salisbury-Balfour political faction that hosted the rising Milner Group from the 1880s onward
Also known as: Cecil Bloc, the Salisbury nexus
Quigley's term for the political-aristocratic faction organized around the Cecil family — Salisbury, Balfour, Hugh Cecil, Robert Cecil — that dominated late-Victorian and Edwardian Conservative politics and supplied the political housing for the rising Milner Group. AAE traces the handoff from Cecil Bloc to Milner Group across the first quarter of the twentieth century (AAE 7). 'The power that was utilized by Milner and his Group was really the power of the Cecil family' (AAE 13).
The Cecil Family Nexus
The Cecil Bloc was built around Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, third Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), Prime Minister for fourteen years between 1885 and 1902 and Fellow of All Souls from 1853 and Chancellor of Oxford University from 1869 to his death (AAE 13). 'The Milner Group was originally a major fief within the great nexus of power, influence, and privilege controlled by the Cecil family,' Quigley writes (AAE 13). The Cecil influence operated through allied families — Lyttelton (Viscounts Cobham), Wyndham (Barons Leconfield), Grosvenor (Dukes of Westminster), Balfour, Wemyss, Palmer (Earls of Selborne and Viscounts Wolmer), Cavendish (Dukes of Devonshire and Marquesses of Hartington), and Gathorne-Hardy (Earls of Cranbrook). It is, as Quigley says, 'not possible to describe here the ramifications of the Cecil influence. It has been all-pervasive in British life since 1886' (AAE 13). The intermarriage was systematic: of Salisbury's eight children, descendants married into the Selborne, Grey, Ridley, Cavendish, Hartington, Devonshire, and Ormsby-Gore (Harlech) lines. Arthur Balfour, Salisbury's nephew, became Prime Minister on his uncle's resignation in 1902 by family fiat as much as by political calculation.
Methods: The Triple Penetration
Salisbury's working method, Quigley argues, was the prototype the Milner Group later refined: '(a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from All Souls) and the linking of these men to the Cecil Bloc by matrimonial alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power; and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the Cecil Bloc in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention' (AAE 13). Salisbury embodied all three personally: Prime Minister, Chancellor of Oxford, paramount influence on The Quarterly Review. His 'shameless nepotism, concealed to some extent by the shifting of names because of acquisition of titles and female marital connections' was nonetheless 'redeemed by the fact that ability as well as family connection was required from appointees' (AAE 13-14). His third government (1895-1902) — and Balfour's continuation of it (1902-1905) — Quigley uses as a textbook case. Premier and Foreign Secretary: Salisbury. First Lord of Treasury: Balfour (Salisbury's nephew). Chief Secretary for Ireland: Gerald Balfour (Salisbury's nephew). Under-Secretary for Colonies: Selborne (Salisbury's son-in-law). Colonial Secretary 1903: Alfred Lyttelton (Balfour's would-be brother-in-law). Foreign Secretary 1900: Lansdowne (Cavendish son-in-law). Viceroy of India: Curzon (Salisbury protégé and All Souls Fellow). 'Most of these persons were related by numerous family and marital connections,' Quigley notes (AAE 16).
Three Social Generations
Quigley divides the Cecil Bloc into three generations whose social character changed materially across half a century (AAE 26-28). The first generation — Salisbury, Gladstone, the seventh Duke of Devonshire, Goschen, the fourth Baron Lyttelton, the first Earl of Cranbrook, the first Duke of Westminster, the tenth Earl of Wemyss — was born in the first third of the 19th century, attended Oxford and Cambridge in the 1830s-1850s, and died around 1890-1915. It was 'not as social (in the frivolous sense) as the second' (AAE 26). The second generation, born in the middle third of the century and educated almost exclusively at Oxford (especially Balliol) in the 1860s-1880s, was 'much more social in a spectacularly frivolous sense, much more intellectual (in the sense that they read books and talked philosophy or social problems) and centered on a social group known at the time as The Souls' (AAE 26). The third generation — born in the last third of the century, educated at New College or Balliol in the 1890s-1900s — 'was dominated and organized about the Milner Group. It was very serious-minded, very political, and very secretive' (AAE 26). The three generations did not regard themselves as one organization. The first two thought of themselves as 'Society' and dined at two exclusive clubs, The Club (founded 1764) and Grillion's (1812). The third generation rebuilt the same network on systematic, conspiratorial lines.
Instruments: Clubs, Colleges, The Times
The Bloc symbolized itself in its dining clubs. The Club — founded 1764 by Joshua Reynolds and at one time including Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Boswell, Gibbon, Fox, Garrick, Adam Smith, Sheridan, and Canning — had under forty members at any time; by 1925 its membership listed nearly every Cecil Bloc figure of consequence, from Gladstone, Salisbury, and Balfour to Asquith, Edward Grey, Haldane, Kipling, Hankey, Halifax, Baldwin, and Austen Chamberlain (AAE 26-27). Grillion's, founded 1812, was virtually identical in membership. Beyond the clubs, the Bloc's institutional anchors were All Souls College (Salisbury Fellow from 1853; every Cecil Bloc cabinet had multiple All Souls fellows), Eton and Harrow on the educational front, and The Times and The Quarterly Review in journalism. One enduring oddity Quigley notes: the Bloc founded the Society for Psychical Research in 1882 — 'by the Balfour family and their in-laws, Lord Rayleigh and Professor Sidgwick' — which held a position in the Cecil Bloc's history 'similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group' (AAE 27). Edwardian séance research and twentieth-century foreign-policy research were institutional twins.
Handoff to the Milner Group
By the time Salisbury died in 1903, leadership of the Cecil Bloc had passed to Balfour — 'rather indifferent hands' compared to Salisbury's 'masterful grasp,' as Quigley puts it (AAE 7). With Rhodes dying in 1902, Milner — Goschen's protégé, made High Commissioner of South Africa in 1897 through Cecil patronage — was free to build his own apparatus on the Cecil Bloc's foundations. 'By 1902, when the leadership of the Cecil Bloc had fallen from the masterful grasp of Lord Salisbury into the rather indifferent hands of Arthur Balfour, and Rhodes had died, leaving Milner as the chief controller of his vast estate, the Milner Group was already established and had a most hopeful future' (AAE 7). The instrument was Goschen: Salisbury's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Milner's employer and patron, and from 1903 Chancellor of Oxford in succession to Salisbury himself. 'Goschen became one of the instruments by which the Milner Group merged with All Souls. But more important than this, Goschen introduced Milner, in the period 1886-1905, into that extraordinary circle which rotated about the Cecil family' (AAE 13). The Bloc did not collapse; it was absorbed. Cecil Bloc members continued to staff Cabinets through the 1920s and 1930s, but increasingly as junior partners to (or members of) the Milner Group.
Politics and Imperialism
The Cecil Bloc's politics were unambiguously imperial and Unionist. After the 1886 split over Irish Home Rule, the Conservative-Unionist coalition Salisbury assembled — incorporating the Liberal Unionists under Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain — became the political base of the Bloc. Gladstone himself, Quigley notes, 'remained socially a member of it, and so did his protégé, John Morley, but almost all the other members of the Bloc were Unionists or Conservatives. The chief exceptions were the four leaders of the Liberal Party after Gladstone, who were strong imperialists: Rosebery, Asquith, Edward Grey, and Haldane. These four supported the Boer War, grew increasingly anti-German, supported the World War in 1914, and were close to the Milner Group politically, intellectually, and socially' (AAE 26). The Bloc's imperialism was less doctrinaire than the Milner Group's: it was the imperialism of dynastic continuity, not of federation projects. But on the Boer War, on opposition to Home Rule, on anti-Germanism after 1900, and on the necessity of preserving an Anglo-Saxon world order, Bloc and Group were one. The Bloc supplied the Cabinet seats; the Group supplied the analysis, the money, and the propaganda.
Quigley's Use of the Category
The 'Cecil Bloc' is Quigley's own term — he does not claim contemporary documentary use of it (AAE 13). He needed a name for the political-social formation that preceded and contained the Milner Group, and 'Cecil Bloc' captures its kinship core. The category is analytical, not strict — many figures Quigley assigns to the Bloc would also count as Milner Group members in the inner or outer circles. The Bloc is therefore best read as the Milner Group's institutional substrate: the pre-existing network of titled families, Oxford colleges, dining clubs, and journalistic chairs into which the smaller, more conspiratorial Group was lowered. Without the Bloc, the Group has no Cabinet posts; without the Group, the Bloc has no programme. Together, in Quigley's reading, they form the Anglo-American Establishment on its British side from the 1880s to roughly 1940 — at which point the centre of gravity migrates westward, leaving the Cecil descendants in the House of Lords and the Milner Group descendants in Council on Foreign Relations board chairs.
Cited in
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 7 Quigley
Milner was able to dominate this Group because he became the focus or rather the intersection point of three influences. These we shall call 'the Toynbee group,' 'the Cecil Bloc,' and the 'Rhodes secret society.'
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 7 Quigley
The Cecil Bloc was a nexus of political and social power formed by Lord Salisbury and extending from the great sphere of politics into the fields of education and publicity.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 7 Quigley
By 1902, when the leadership of the Cecil Bloc had fallen from the masterful grasp of Lord Salisbury into the rather indifferent hands of Arthur Balfour, and Rhodes had died, leaving Milner as the chief controller of his vast estate, the Milner Group was already established.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 13 Quigley
The power that was utilized by Milner and his Group was really the power of the Cecil family and its allied families such as the Lyttelton, Wyndham, Grosvenor, Balfour, Wemyss, Palmer, Cavendish, and Gathorne-Hardy.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 13 Quigley
The Milner Group was originally a major fief within the great nexus of power, influence, and privilege controlled by the Cecil family. It is not possible to describe here the ramifications of the Cecil influence. It has been all-pervasive in British life since 1886.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 13 Quigley
These methods can be summed up under three headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from All Souls); (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the Cecil Bloc in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 13 Quigley
He practiced a shameless nepotism, concealed to some extent by the shifting of names because of acquisition of titles and female marital connections, and redeemed by the fact that ability as well as family connection was required from appointees.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 16 Quigley
Most of these persons were related by numerous family and marital connections which have not yet been mentioned.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 26 Quigley
Socially, the Cecil Bloc could be divided into three generations. The first . . . was not as 'social' (in the frivolous sense) as the second.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 26 Quigley
This second generation was much more social in a spectacularly frivolous sense, much more intellectual (in the sense that they read books and talked philosophy or social problems) and centered on a social group known at the time as 'The Souls.'
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 26 Quigley
This third generation of the Cecil Bloc was dominated and organized about the Milner Group. It was very serious-minded, very political, and very secretive.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 27 Quigley
One of the enduring creations of the Cecil Bloc is the Society for Psychical Research, which holds a position in the history of the Cecil Bloc similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 26 Quigley
The chief exceptions were the four leaders of the Liberal Party after Gladstone, who were strong imperialists: Rosebery, Asquith, Edward Grey, and Haldane.