page_title: F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead
section_title: Postwar Coalition: Lord Chancellor
hierarchical_section_title: F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead / Postwar Coalition: Lord Chancellor
caption_attribution_description: English: en:F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead on his appointment as Lord Chancellor of England &amp; Wales
context_page_description: Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead GCSI PC DL, known as F. E. Smith, was a British Conservative politician and barrister who attained high office in the early 20th century, in particular as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He was a skilled orator, noted for his staunch opposition to Irish nationalism, his wit, pugnacious views, and hard living and drinking. He is perhaps best remembered today as Winston Churchill's greatest personal and political friend until Birkenhead's death aged 58 from pneumonia caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
context_section_description: In 1919, he was created Baron Birkenhead, of Birkenhead in the County of Chester following his appointment as Lord Chancellor by Lloyd George. At the age of 47, he was the youngest Lord Chancellor since Judge Jeffreys. The Morning Post dismissed his appointment as "carrying a joke beyond the limits of pleasantry", while the King urged Lloyd George to reconsider. Birkenhead proved an excellent Lord Chancellor, but tales of his drunkenness begin from this time, very likely as he grew bored with the job and as it dawned on him that he had probably ruled himself out from the premiership by accepting a peerage.
  That year, in the House of Lords debate on the Amritsar Massacre, he courageously denounced Tories who declared General Dyer (the responsible officer) a hero. He played a key role in the passage of several key legal reforms, including the reform of English land law which was to come to fruition in the mid-1920s. He also unsuccessfully championed a reform of the divorce laws, which he judged caused great misery and which favoured the wealthy.
  Despite his Unionist background, Smith played an important role in the negotiations that led to the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, which led to the formation of the Irish Free State the following year. Much of the treaty was drafted by Smith. His support for this, and his warm relations with the Irish nationalist leaders Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, angered some of his former Unionist associates, notably Sir Edward Carson. Upon signing the Treaty he remarked to Collins, "I may have just signed my political death warrant", to which Collins dryly and with prescient accuracy replied, "I have just signed my actual death warrant". Collins was killed by opponents of the treaty eight months after the signing, during the Irish Civil War.
  Also in 1921, he was responsible for the House of Lords rejecting a proposal, put forward by Frederick Alexander Macquisten, MP for Argyllshire, to criminalise lesbianism. During the debate, Birkenhead argued that 999 women out of a thousand had "never even heard a whisper of these practices".
  Smith was created Viscount Birkenhead, of Birkenhead in the County of Chester, in the 1921 Birthday Honours, then Viscount Furneaux, of Charlton in the County of Northampton, and Earl of Birkenhead in 1922. By 1922 Birkenhead and Churchill had become the leading figures of the Lloyd George Coalition. The Anglo-Irish Treaty, the attempt to go to war with Turkey over Chanak (which was later vetoed by the governments of the Dominions) and a general whiff of moral and financial corruption which had come to surround the Coalition were all hallmarks of his tenure in office.
  A scandal erupted in 1922 when it became known that Lloyd George, through the agency of Maundy Gregory, had awarded honours and titles such as a baronetcy to rich businessmen in return for cash in the range of £10,000 and more. At an earlier meeting before Parliament broke up for the summer, and more famously at the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922, Birkenhead's hectoring of the junior ministers and backbenchers was one of the factors leading to the withdrawal of support from the Coalition.
caption: Sir F. E. Smith, newly created Lord Birkenhead, on his appointment as Lord Chancellor
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