Stanley Baldwin Baldwin

BALDWIN, STANLEY BALDWIN, 1ST EARL, OF BEWD LEY (1867— ), British statesman, was born at Bewdley Aug. 3, 1867, the only son of Alfred Baldwin, Chairman of the Great Western Railway and for 16 years M.P. for Bewdley. Descended from a family, which had long been small landowners in Shrop shire, Baldwin's great-grandfather, toward the end of the 18th century, migrated into Worcestershire and established at Bewd ley an iron foundry which expanded with the passage of time into the great combination of iron and steel manufactories and collier ies known as Baldwin's, Ltd. Stanley Baldwin is thus, on one hand, a son of the soil, on the other, a son of the forge and the factory, and his economic and social outlook was the result of close personal experience of the evolution of modern industry.

Besides the territorial and the industrial there was a third strain in Baldwin's character which came to him from his father's and his mother's people. It was that of Puritanism. Both his parents were of Puritan stock; both, indeed, were brought up as Wesleyan Methodists. His mother, who lived to see her son twice prime minister, was Louise, one of the five remarkable daughters of the Rev. G. B. Macdonald, a Wesleyan minister. Of Mrs. Baldwin's sisters, one became the wife of Sir Edward Burne-Jones; a second of Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A., and a third of J. L. Kipling. Stanley Baldwin is thus a first cousin of Rudyard Kipling. His mother was a great favourite with Rossetti and William Morris, and it was in this circle and from his close and constant association with his gifted relations that Baldwin derived an abiding taste for the best things in art and literature. In 1881 he went to Harrow and in 1885 to Trinity college, Cam bridge, where he took his B.A. in 1888.

After leaving Cambridge Baldwin went into his father's busi ness; and when his father entered parliament in 1892 Stanley Baldwin became virtually the head of the concern. For nearly 20 years the business was the central interest of his life. He became a county magistrate and a county councillor, and lived the life of a country gentleman, with scholarly tastes and large business interests. In 1892 he had married Lucy, the eldest daughter of E. L. J. Risdale of Rottingdean, by whom he had two sons and four daughters. In 1906 he served his apprenticeship to politics by unsuccessfully contesting Kidderminster in the Conservative interest. Two years later his father died, and Stan ley Baldwin succeeded to the chairmanship of the business, now converted into a joint stock company, to a seat on the board of the Great Western Railway and to the representation of the Bewdley division of Worcestershire.

On March 3, 1908, the future prime minister took his seat in the House of Commons, and on June 22 made his maiden speech. It was a characteristically modest and sensible contri bution to a debate on a subject of which he had intimate knowl edge. He spoke in opposition to the Coal Mines (Eight Hours) bill from the point of view of the class which he and his family had represented for four or five generations. In the session of 1909 he had the chance of making a private member's motion. He chose as his theme the investment of British capital abroad, and in the course of his speech revealed himself as an ardent Protectionist. But, although the House listened to him respect fully on the several occasions on which he spoke, he gave no special promise of future distinction. For nine years he did his work as a private member, quietly, effectively and modestly.

Official Career.

Lord Edmund Talbot, later Viscount Fitz alan and then chief whip, noted Baldwin's ability and advised Bonar Law to make him his parliamentary private secretary. This was done in Dec. 1916, and from that moment Baldwin's advancement was astonishingly rapid. In Jan. 1917, he became a junior lord of the Treasury, but instead of going into the whip's office, he was kept busy "on the bench," deputizing for the financial secretary who had no seat in the House. In June he be came joint financial secretary to the Treasury and in that capacity gave valuable assistance in debate to Bonar Law and Austen Chamberlain—successively chancellors of the exchequer. Accustomed to control the policy of a great business concern, Baldwin was not perhaps well fitted for a subordinate place in the official hierarchy, but his efficient work in parliament was rewarded by admission to the Privy Council in 1920 and to the cabinet when, in 1921, he became president of the board of trade. It was there that he first gave proof of the stuff that was in him; but in party politics he was still almost an unknown factor.

His chance, however, came in 1922. The Coalition formed by Lloyd George in Dec. 1916, and cemented by the general election of 1918, was by that time manifestly breaking. Many Liberals, and still more Conservatives, found that the Coalition imposed too great a strain on their political consciences. Lloyd George and his personal followers were anxious to appeal again to the electors as a coalition. The majority of the Conservatives were opposed to them. The crisis came in Oct. 1922, when, in fear of a coup d'etat by the Coalition ministers, a meeting of the Con servative M.P.'s was called at the Carlton club on Oct. 19. Austen Chamberlain presided, and his weight, with that of almost all his colleagues in the cabinet, was thrown into the scale of the Coalition. But they did not prevail with the rank and file of the party, who decided, there and then, by 187 votes to 87 to cut themselves adrift from Lloyd George and the Liberal wing of the Coalition, and to appeal to the country as Conservatives sans phrase. That meeting was the turning-point in the history of modern Conservatism, and in the career of Stanley Baldwin.

The result was due, apart from the determination of the rank and file, pre-eminently to two men : Bonar Law and Baldwin. The former emerged from retirement, to rescue his party from the Coalition. His action was heroic ; the hand of death was already on him, and nothing but a high sense of duty induced him to essay a task manifestly beyond his strength. But Baldwin's was the greater courage. Only recently admitted to cabinet rank, yet plainly destined to a high place in politics; just approaching the zenith of his powers, physical and intellectual; with every thing to lose politically by a false step, he took his courage in both hands and did simply what he believed to be right. His speech was characteristically brief and direct. He went at once to the "root of the whole difficulty—the position of the prime minister," and expressed his conviction that if the "present asso ciation" were continued, the disintegrating process in the Con servative ranks, already far advanced, would "go on inevitably until the old Conservative Party was smashed to atoms and lost in ruins." Accordingly he declared himself "prepared to go into the wilderness if he should be compelled" by the dynamic force of Lloyd George to "stay with him." The die was cast. The meeting voted with Bonar Law and Baldwin; Austen Chamberlain and other Unionist leaders went into the wilderness—temporarily—with Lloyd George; Bonar Law became prime minister—the first Conservative to hold the office in 16 years; Baldwin became chancellor of the exchequer and principal lieutenant in the Commons ; Lord Curzon remained foreign secretary and leader in the House of Lords.

The electors endorsed the verdict of the Carlton club meeting; 344 Conservatives were returned, a clear though small majority over all other parties ; but the premier was a stricken man and after a few months in office resigned. Length and distinction of service, no less than intellectual pre-eminence, pointed to Lord Curzon as his successor; but the King was persuaded that, since the Labour Party had become the official Opposition, a peer premier was no longer practicable. Accordingly Baldwin was in vited to form a ministry, and, assured of the loyal support of his colleagues, consented. The Ministry was easily reformed under the new premier, but some of the ablest and most experienced Conservatives still remained outside the Ministry and the loss of Bonar Law was severely felt.

Baldwin's first Ministry was short-lived. In Nov. 1923, de spite the fact that his parliamentary majority was intact, he decided to ask the electors for a vote of confidence in himself and in the policy which he believed could alone cure trade de pression and relieve unemployment—protection for native in dustries. The country ref used its assent. Out of the three parties none commanded an absolute majority in the new parlia ment. Consequently the Baldwin Ministry, with 259 supporters, met parliament. The Liberals, however, coalesced with the Social ists and turned out the Conservatives. Ramsay MacDonald, thereupon, became the head of a Socialist Government and re mained for nine months in office, until a hostile vote in the House of Commons compelled him to appeal to the country, with the result that Baldwin found himself at the head of a solid phalanx of 414 Conservatives. Commissioned to form a ministry he not only invited Austen Chamberlain and other Conservative exiles to rejoin the cabinet, but entrusted the chancellorship of the exchequer to Winston Churchill. Growing steadily in political stature, having won an electoral victory almost without parallel in recent history, he refused to exploit a party triumph, and made a heroic effort to secure, by conciliation and consent, the peace which industry so sorely needed. He failed. His pacific overtures were misinterpreted by the Socialists, who responded to them by proclaiming a general strike. This conspiracy failed ignominiously but parliament could not ignore the danger so narrowly averted, nor neglect precautions against its recurrence. Consequently, an important amendment of the law relating to trade disputes was enacted in 1927 (see STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS).

Personality and Character.

The career thus outlined is one of the most remarkable in English political history. Fortune has undoubtedly been kind to him, though in politics fortune rarely smiles except on those whom she suspects to be worthy of her favours. Baldwin has still to win a place in the select company of great statesmen, but fate has given him an opportunity and he himself has given promise that he can take advantage of it. He starts with several initial advantages. The first, and not the least, is that his countrymen know him to be, like Pitt, pecuniar ily disinterested. Pitt was a poor man, but his refusal of the Clerkship of the Pells proved that he counted money as dross compared with the public interest. Baldwin, a rich man, proved his public spirit when in June 1919 he presented to the exchequer for cancellation f 15o,000 of the new War Loan, a sum represent ing approximately 20% of his total fortune. He hoped, in this way, to set an example of personal sacrifice. He clearly per ceived that the country was in grave danger of "being sub merged in a wave of luxury and materialism," and he believed that "a fool's paradise is only the ante-room to a fool's hell." With the ideals of a patriot, Baldwin combines the instincts of a Puritan. He appeals, therefore, if not like Gladstone to the Non-conformist conscience, to the best feelings of all good men, whatever their creed. "I stick all through to what I believe to be right." So Baldwin said at the Carlton club meeting, and his countrymen instinctively recognized that he spoke with sincerity and simplicity. There is no pose about Baldwin, though his briar pipe' comes (thanks to the photographers) perilously near one. Simple, sincere, disinterested, he is also shrewd. Keen of intel lect, and many sided in interests (as is proved by a volume of non-political addresses On England published in 1926), he dis dains ostentation and advertisement. He is slow of speech and a curious working of the face and puckering of the brows gives the impression that his thoughts are, like his speech, laboured. "My mind moves slowly," he wrote of himself.

His speeches reveal a fund of dry and rather caustic humour, but in verbal wit he does not excel, though his judgments on men and things are expressed, especially in private, with pungent force and directness. Rhetoric he profoundly mistrusts; oratory he regards with Froude as "the harlot of the arts." Yet he has a keen appreciation of style in literature, and though he is im patient of the intrusion of the intellectual into politics or in dustry, few men have a higher sense of the value of real educa tion. Less of the scholar, in the narrower sense, than Gladstone or Peel, he belongs like them to the aristocracy of commerce. He loves good art and good literature, but above all he loves nature, and his joy in the sights and sounds and smells of the English countryside is drawn from that quiet worship which is the basis of all true poetry. No one who was not at once patriot and poet could have made the speech which he delivered on St. George's day, 1924, reprinted in On England. (J. A. R. M.) Apart from the general strike of 1926 and its consequences, the main features of the Baldwin administration of 1924-29 were the passing of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act (1928), which brought universal adult parliamentary suffrage; and the Local Government Act (1929), by which the Boards of Poor-Law Guardians were replaced by Public Assistance Commit tees (see PooR LAW). In May 1929 the Labour Party returned to office. On the formation of the National Government, 1931, Baldwin became Lord President of the Council and, June 1935 to May 1937, Prime Minister. On his retirement in May 1937 he was created an earl and K.G. See ENGLISH HISTORY.