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

Early life

Born at Lower Park House, Lower Park, Bewdley in Worcestershire, he 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 an anti-Conservative landslide. In 1908 he succeeded his deceased father, Alfred Baldwin , as 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 not all that substantial fortune. In 1921 he was promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade.

In late 1922 dissatisfaction grew within the Conservative Party about the coalition it was in with 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 despite the views of most of the party leadership. As a result the Conservatives' new leader, Andrew Bonar Law was forced to find new ministers for his Cabinet and so he promoted Baldwin to the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. In November a general election was held and the Conservatives were returned with a majoirty.

First appointment as Prime Minister

In May 1923, when Bonar Law discovered that he was dying of cancer, he retired immediately. Due to many of the party's leading figures' standing aloof from 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 factors were the most crucial, but many felt that Curzon was unsuitable to be Prime Minister, due to his being 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, which many found objectionable, and his aristocratic background at a time when the Conservative Party sought to shed its image as bastion of the establishment, were deemed as impediments to his advancement. Much weight at the time was given to the intervention of Arthur Balfour.

The King then 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 had a clear majority in the House of Commons and could govern for another four years before being constitutionally required to hold a new general election, but Baldwin felt bound by a pledge given by Bonar Law at the previous election that there would be no introduction of tariffs without a further election. With the country facing growing unemployment due to cheap imports, Baldwin decided to call an early general election in December 1923 to seek a mandate to introduce protectionist tariffs. Although this succeeded in reuniting his divided party, the election produced an inconclusive outcome. The Conservatives won 258 MPs, the Labour Party 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 unemployment. Baldwin remained Prime Minister until the opening session of the new Parliament in January 1924 when the government was defeated on a confidence vote and he resigned immediately.

Return to office

For the next ten months a minority Labour government was in office but it too fell and a further general election was held in October 1924. This election resulted in a landslide majority of 223 for the Conservatives, primarily at the expense of the Liberals who lost ground due to a depleted organisation and limited funds. This period included the General Strike of 1926, a crisis which the government managed to weather, despite the havoc it caused nationally. At Baldwin's instigation Lord Weir headed a committee to 'review the national problem of electrical energy'. Its report was published on May 14 1925 and 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. By 1929 electrical output was up four-fold whilst generating costs had fallen. Consumers of electricity rose from three-quarters of a million in 1926 to nine million in 1929.Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), pp. 393-4.

In 1929 Labour returned to office. In 1931 Baldwin and the Conservatives entered into a coalition with Labour Party Prime Minister 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 over the next four years, when he, once again, became Prime Minister. His government obtained, with great difficulty, the passage of the landmark Government of India Act 1935. In 1932 he had told the Commons that '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, his foreign policy was much criticised, and he also faced the problem of the abdication of King Edward VIII. With this successfully achieved, he retired after the coronation of the new King George VI and was created Earl Baldwin of Bewdley.

Later life

Baldwin spent a secluded retirement. With Neville Chamberlain dead, his part in pre-war appeasement made him an unpopular figure during and after World War II. It is said that he did not dare to show his face in Central London for fear of attack. 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.) However, he appeared in London in October 1947 at an unveiling of a statue of King George V. A crowd, some of whom recognised him, cheered him but Baldwin who was hard of hearing by then, asked "Are they booing me?". Having been made Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1930, he continued in this capacity until his death, which occurred 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 moderate one-nation Conservative. When he finally retired in 1937, he received a great deal of praise. The onset of the Second World War changed the country's attitude to him; he was seen as being responsible for the calamitous military unpreparedness of the country for war. Baldwin was a moderate, and felt unable to start a programme of re-armament without national consensus. In truth this was the mainstream political view of the time both in Britain and France.

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 magnaminity 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."

First Government, May 1923 - January 1924

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.

Second Cabinet, November 1924 - June 1929

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

Third Cabinet, June 1935 - May 1937

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.

Miscellaneous

Notes

References

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom | Leaders of the British Conservative Party | Chancellors of the Exchequer | Lord Presidents of the Council | Lords Privy Seal | Earls in the Peerage of the United Kingdom | Knights of the Garter | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | Members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada | Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge | Old Harrovians | Chancellors of the University of Cambridge | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament from English constituencies | 1867 births | 1947 deaths

Stanley Baldwin | Stanley Baldwin | Stanley Baldwin | スタンリー・ボールドウィン | Stanley Baldwin | Stanley Baldwin | Stanley Baldwin | 斯坦利·鲍德温

 

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