Stanley Baldwin

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The Rt Hon. Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin
In office
23 May 1923 – 16 January 1924
4 November 1924 – 5 June 1929
7 June 1935 – 28 May 1937
Preceded by Andrew Bonar Law
Ramsay MacDonald
Succeeded by Ramsay MacDonald
Neville Chamberlain
In office
October 27, 1922 – August 27, 1923
Preceded by Robert Stevenson Horne
Succeeded by Neville Chamberlain
Born 3 August 1867
Bewdley, Worcestershire
Died 14 December 1947
Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire
Political party Conservative
Spouse Lucy Ridsdale

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC (3 August 1867 – 14 December 1947) was a British statesman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on three separate occasions.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Born at Lower Park House, Lower Park, Bewdley in Worcestershire, Baldwin was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he received a third class degree in history), and went into the family business. He married on 12 September 1892.

In the 1906 general election he contested Kidderminster but lost amidst the Conservative landslide defeat. However, in 1908 he succeeded his deceased father, Alfred Baldwin, as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bewdley. During the First World War he became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law and in 1917 he was appointed to the junior ministerial post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury where he sought to encourage voluntary donations by the rich in order the repay the United Kingdom's war debt, notably writing to The Times under the pseudonym 'FST'. He personally donated one fifth of his quite small fortune. In 1921 he was promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade.

In late 1922 dissatisfaction was steadily growing within the Conservative Party over its existing governing coalition with the Liberal David Lloyd George. At a meeting of Conservative MPs at the Carlton Club in October Baldwin announced that he would no longer support the coalition and famously condemned Lloyd George for being a "dynamic force" that was bringing destruction across politics. The meeting chose to leave the coalition -- against the wishes of most of the party leadership. As a result the new Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law was forced to search for new ministers for his Cabinet and so promoted Baldwin to the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the November 1922 general election the Conservatives were returned with a majority in their own right.

[edit] First appointment as Prime Minister

Arms of Stanley Baldwin
Enlarge
Arms of Stanley Baldwin

In May 1923 Bonar Law discovered that he was dying of cancer and retired immediately. With many of the party's senior leading figures standing aloof and outside of the government, there were only two candidates to succeed him: Lord Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, and Stanley Baldwin. The choice formally fell to King George V acting on the advice of senior ministers and officials. It is not entirely clear what deciding factors proved most crucial, but some Conservative politicians felt that Curzon was unsuitable for the role of Prime Minister because he was a member of the House of Lords (though this did not stop other Lords being seriously considered for the premiership on subsequent occasions). Likewise, his lack of experience in domestic affairs, his personal character (found objectionable), and his aristocratic background at a time when the Conservative Party was seeking to shed its patrician image were all deemed impediments. Much weight at the time was given to the intervention of Arthur Balfour.

The King turned to Baldwin to become Prime Minister. Initially Baldwin also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer whilst he sought to recruit the former Liberal Chancellor Reginald McKenna to join the government, but when this failed he instead appointed Neville Chamberlain.

The Conservatives now had a clear majority in the House of Commons and could govern for another five years before being constitutionally required to hold a new general election, but Baldwin felt bound by Bonar Law's old pledge at the previous election that there would be no introduction of tariffs without a further election. With the country facing growing unemployment in the wake of free-trade imports driving down prices and profits, Baldwin decided to call an early general election in December 1923 to seek a mandate to introduce protectionist tariffs and thus drive down unemployment. Although this succeeded in reuniting his divided party, the election outcome was inconclusive: the Conservatives won 258 MPs, Labour 191 and the Liberals 159. Whilst the Conservatives retained a plurality in the House of Commons, they had been clearly defeated on the central election issue of tariffs. Baldwin remained Prime Minister until the opening session of the new Parliament in January 1924 when the government was defeated during a confidence vote. He resigned immediately.

[edit] Return to office

For the next ten months an unstable minority Labour government under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald held office, but it too fell and another general election was held in October 1924. This election brought a landslide majority of 223 for the Conservative party, primarily at the expense of the now terminally declining Liberals. This period included the General Strike of 1926, a crisis which the government managed to weather, despite the havoc it caused throughout the UK.

At Baldwin's instigation Lord Weir headed a committee to 'review the national problem of electrical energy'. It published its report on May 14, 1925 and with it Weir recommended the setting up of a Central Electricity Board, a state monopoly half-financied by the Government and half by local undertakings. Baldwin accepted Weir's recommendations and they became law by the end of 1926. The Board was a success. By 1929 electrical output was up four-fold and generating costs had fallen. Consumers of electricity rose from three-quarters of a million in 1926 to nine million in 1929.[1]

In 1929 Labour returned to office, but by 1931 Baldwin and the Conservatives had entered into a coalition with Labour PM Ramsay MacDonald. This decision led to MacDonald's expulsion from his own party, and Baldwin, as Lord President of the Council became de facto Prime Minister for the increasingly senile MacDonald, until he once again officially became Prime Minister in 1935. His government then secured, with great difficulty, the passage of the landmark Government of India Act 1935. In 1932 he told the Commons: "The bomber will always get through. The only defence is offence". He started a rearmament programme and reorganised and expanded the RAF. During his third term of office, from 1935 to 1937, the worsening political situation on the Continent brought his own foreign policy under greater scrutiny and criticism, and he also faced the abdication crisis of King Edward VIII. With the abdication successfully weathered he would retire after the coronation of the new King George VI and was created Earl Baldwin of Bewdley.

[edit] Later life

Baldwin's years in retirement were quiet. With Neville Chamberlain dead, Baldwin's perceived part in pre-war appeasement made him an unpopular figure during and after World War II. During the war, Winston Churchill consulted him only once, on the advisability of Britain's taking a tougher line toward the continued neutrality of Éamon de Valera's Irish Free State (Baldwin advised against it.)

Yet he appeared in London in October 1947 at an unveiling of a statue of King George V. A crowd, recognizing the former Prime Minister, cheered him, but Baldwin by this time was quite hard of hearing asked, "Are they booing me?". Having been made Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1930, he continued in this capacity until his death in his sleep at Astley Hall on 14 December 1947. He was cremated and his ashes buried in Worcester Cathedral.

His estate was probated at 280,971 pounds sterling.

Baldwin was essentially a one-nation Conservative. Upon his retirement in 1937 he had indeed received a great deal of praise; the onset of the Second World War would change his public image for the worse. Rightly or wrongly Baldwin (along with the dead Chamberlain and MacDonald) was held responsible for the United Kingdom's military unpreparedness on the eve of war in 1939. His defenders counter that the moderate Baldwin felt he could not start a programme of aggressive re-armament without a national consensus on the matter. In truth, pacifist appeasement was the dominant mainstream political view of the time in Britain, France and the United States.

For Winston Churchill, however, that was no excuse. He firmly believed that Baldwin's conciliatory stance toward Hitler gave the German dictator the impression that Britain would not fight if attacked. Though known for his magnanimity toward political opponents such as Neville Chamberlain, Churchill had none to spare for Baldwin. "I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill," Churchill said when declining to send 80th birthday greetings to the retired prime minister in 1947, "but it would have been much better had he never lived".

[edit] First Government, May 1923 - January 1924

[edit] Changes

  • August 1923 - Neville Chamberlain took over from Baldwin as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir William Joynson-Hicks succeeded Chamberlain as Minister of Health. Joynson-Hicks' successor as Financial Secretary to the Treasury was not in the Cabinet.

[edit] Second Cabinet, November 1924 - June 1929

[edit] Changes

  • April 1925 - On Lord Curzon of Kedleston's death, Lord Balfour succeeded him as Lord President. Lord Salisbury becomes the new Leader of the House of Lords, remaining also Lord Privy Seal.
  • June 1925 - The post of Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs is created and held by Leo Amery in tandem with Secretary of State for the Colonies.
  • November 1925 - Walter Guinness succeeds E.F.L. Wood as Minister of Agriculture.
  • July 1926 - The post of Secretary of Scotland is upgraded to Secretary of State for Scotland.
  • October 1927 - Lord Cushendun succeeded Lord Cecil of Chelwood as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
  • March 1928 - Lord Hailsham (former Sir D. Hogg) succeeded Lord Cave as Lord Chancellor. Lord Hailsham's successor as Attorney-General was not in the Cabinet.
  • October 1928 - Lord Peel succeeded Lord Birkenhead as Secretary of State for India. Lord Londonderry succeeded Lord Peel as First Commissioner of Public Works

[edit] Third Cabinet, June 1935 - May 1937

[edit] Changes

  • November 1935 - Malcolm MacDonald succeeds J.H. Thomas as Dominions Secretary. Thomas succeeds MacDonald as Colonial Secretary. Lord Halifax succeeds Lord Londonderry as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. Duff Cooper succeeds Lord Halifax as Secretary for War. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister becomes Viscount Swinton and Bolton Eyres-Monsell becomes Viscount Monsell, both remaining in the Cabinet.
  • December 1935 Anthony Eden succeeds Sir Samuel Hoare as Foreign Secretary and is not replaced as Minister without Portfolio.
  • March 1936 - Sir Thomas Inskip enters the cabinet as Minister for the Coordination of Defense. Lord Eustace Percy leaves the cabinet.
  • May 1936 - William Ormsby-Gore succeeds J.H. Thomas as Colonial Secretary. Lord Stanhope succeeds Ormsby-Gore as First Commissioner of Works.
  • June 1936 - Sir Samuel Hoare succeeds Lord Monsell as First Lord of the Admiralty.
  • October 1936 - Walter Elliot succeeds Collins as Secretary for Scotland. William Shepherd Morrison succeeds Elliot as Minister of Agriculture. Leslie Hore-Belisha enters the Cabinet as Minister of Transport.

[edit] Miscellaneous

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[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), pp. 393-4.

[edit] References

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by:
Alfred Baldwin		 Member of Parliament for Bewdley
1908–1937		 Succeeded by:
Roger John Edward Conant
Political offices
Preceded by:
Sir Hardman Lever		 Financial Secretary to the Treasury
1917–1921		 Succeeded by:
Edward Hilton Young
Preceded by:
Sir Robert Horne		 President of the Board of Trade
1921–1922		 Succeeded by:
Sir Philip Lloyd-Greame
Preceded by:
Sir Robert Horne		 Chancellor of the Exchequer
1922–1923		 Succeeded by:
Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by:
Andrew Bonar Law		 Leader of the British Conservative Party
1923–1937		 Succeeded by:
Neville Chamberlain
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1923–1924		 Succeeded by:
Ramsay MacDonald
Leader of the House of Commons
1923–1924
Preceded by:
Ramsay MacDonald		 Leader of the Opposition
1924		 Succeeded by:
Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by:
Ramsay MacDonald		 Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1924–1929		 Succeeded by:
Ramsay MacDonald
Leader of the House of Commons
1924–1929
Preceded by:
Ramsay MacDonald		 Leader of the Opposition
1929–1931		 Succeeded by:
Arthur Henderson
Preceded by:
The Lord Parmoor		 Lord President of the Council
1931–1935		 Succeeded by:
Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by:
The Viscount Snowden		 Lord Privy Seal
1932–1934		 Succeeded by:
Anthony Eden
Preceded by:
Ramsay MacDonald		 Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1935–1937		 Succeeded by:
Neville Chamberlain
Leader of the House of Commons
1935–1937
Honorary Titles
Preceded by:
The Viscount Haldane		 Chancellor of the University of St Andrews
1929–1947		 Succeeded by:
The Duke of Hamilton
Preceded by:
The Earl of Balfour		 Chancellor of the University of Cambridge
1930–1947		 Succeeded by:
Jan Smuts
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by:
New Creation		 Earl Baldwin of Bewdley
1937–1947		 Succeeded by:
Oliver Baldwin
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Flag of the United Kingdom
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The Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, The Earl of Derby, Benjamin Disraeli, The Marquess of Salisbury, Arthur Balfour, Andrew Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, David Cameron
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