Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman(1836–1908)

Henry Campbell was born at Kelvinside in Glasgow on 7 September 1836, the son of a successful merchant and Lord Provost of the city. He took the additional name Bannerman in 1872 under the will of an uncle, and entered Parliament in 1868, going on to serve as Secretary of State for War and to lead the Liberal Party from 1899.

He became Prime Minister in December 1905, and the office was for the first time formally recognised in the order of precedence under him, making him in the strict constitutional sense the first to hold the title of Prime Minister. He at once led the Liberals to the landslide general election of 1906, one of the largest victories in modern British history.

His defining act of statesmanship was the swift grant of responsible self-government to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony in the immediate aftermath of the South African War. The decision, taken against considerable opposition, did much to reconcile the defeated Boer republics and prepared the ground for the Union of South Africa.

His government opened the era of the great Liberal social reforms and restored the legal position of the trade unions through the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. He resigned through failing health in April 1908 and died days later at 10 Downing Street, the only Prime Minister to die in the official residence.

The Campbell name is among the most powerful of all the Scottish clan surnames, long the name of the Earls and Dukes of Argyll. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman carried it, in its Glasgow merchant line, to the head of the British government and to a landmark act of magnanimity in the making of South Africa.