Baldwin

by Roy Jenkins

  I have done something dreadful without consulting you. I do hope you won’t mind. I have been fearfully worried, but I felt that it had to come. I am resigning from the Cabinet. I shall never get a job again. I do hope you won’t mind fearfully, but I’ve said I cannot continue to serve under the G7 any longer.

  He then described the development of the Turkish situation and continued:

  And then at a Cabinet meeting of Unionist Ministers it was decided to have the General Election and go to the country at once (without consulting any of the party) under the L.G. banner as Coalitionists. I arose and spoke and told them that I could not and would not do it. I must be free and stand as a Conservative; I could not serve under L.G. again. The rest of the Unionist Ministers were aghast and they were all apparently against me. At the next meeting of the Unionist Cabinet Ministers Boscawen threw in his lot with me. Curzon was sympathetic, but that was all. So there it is. They will follow the G and I can’t, so it means I shall drop out of politics altogether.4

  Baldwin’s pessimism about the future was probably genuine, although totally misplaced. At any rate he took it sufficiently seriously to be anxious to resign and retreat to Worcestershire immediately, without waiting to see what forces might crystallize around him, and to make tentative plans for spending the winter abroad. In fact his position was very strong, and predictably so. The Coalition was not really a confluence of parties. It was Lloyd George pirouetting on the large base of the Conservative Party. And the overwhelming part of the base was tired of the dance. Baldwin had the support of the Chief Whip (Leslie Wilson)8; the Chairman of the Party (Younger); the Chief Agent; Salisbury and Derby, the Party’s two principal territorial magnates, although the latter as always was a little hesitant; the majority of Conservative junior ministers; a substantial but uncounted number of backbenchers; and the editor of The Times.9 As a team with which to go goat-hunting it was not quite so exiguous as he implied.

  What he thought he needed was someone with the public fame to take over the leadership and to hold a candle to the great names of Lloyd George, Austen Chamberlain, Churchill, Birkenhead and Balfour. He could not at that stage hope to fulfil this rôle himself. There seemed only one man who could, and that was Bonar Law, his fragile health somewhat improved as a result of eighteen months out of the Government, and his loyalty to Lloyd George and Austen Chamberlain weakened by the same cause. The great issue of the next week was whether Law could agree to attend the Carlton Club meeting which Chamberlain had summoned at short notice for the Thursday morning, 19 October. Everything was held to depend on this. And when, as late as the Wednesday morning, Law announced that, as the doctors had passed him as fit for only two years, he could not accept the rôle which attendance implied, the Baldwin forces were sunk in gloom.

  It is difficult not to believe that they attached too much importance to Law’s availability. His reputation amongst Conservative Members of Parliament was high. But his advice was not in doubt, only whether he would lead the independent appeal to the country. No doubt his electoral leadership was of value; but can it have been of decisive importance? He was a sad knight in slightly drooping armour. Those who regarded his attendance as vital were probably taken in too much by the spirit of Birkenhead’s subsequent jibe about cabin boys taking over captains’ jobs. When captains become as distrusted as Lloyd George and Birkenhead himself, crews would rather see almost anyone else in charge.

  In the event there was no test of what would have happened in Bonar Law’s absence. On the Wednesday evening he decided that he would attend. Thursday morning’s newspapers were dominated by this news, accompanied by that of the victory of an independent (i.e. anti-Coalition) Conservative candidate in a by-election at Newport. But Thursday morning’s meeting was dominated not by Law but by Baldwin. Austen Chamberlain began with a half-hour lecture on behalf of the majority of the Conservative members of the Cabinet. Baldwin spoke for eight minutes on behalf of the minority. It was a beautifully judged speech. He had to combat Chamberlain’s appeal for loyalty to his own leadership. He did it by counterposing the need for regard to the greater entity of the Conservative Party. He dealt extremely gently with Chamberlain, who was present and still respected, reserving the edge of his debating power entirely for Lloyd George, who was absent and distrusted:

  [The Prime Minister] is a dynamic force, and it is from that very fact that our troubles, in our opinion, arise. A dynamic force is a very terrible thing; it may crush you but it is not necessarily right. It is owing to that dynamic force, and that remarkable personality, that the Liberal Party, to which he formerly belonged, has been smashed to pieces; and it is my firm conviction that, in time, the same thing will happen to our party. I do not propose to elaborate, in an assembly like this, the dangers and the perils of that happening …. I think that if the present association is continued, and if this meeting agrees that it should be continued, you will see some more breaking up, and I believe the process must go on inevitably until the old Conservative Party is smashed to atoms and lost in ruins.

  I would like to give you just one illustration to show what I mean by the disintegrating influence of a dynamic force. Take Mr Chamberlain and myself. Mr Chamberlain’s services to the State are infinitely greater than any I have been able to render, but we are both men who are giving all we can give to the service of the State; we are both men who are, or try to be, actuated by principle in our conduct; we are men who, I think, have exactly the same views on the political problems of the day; we are men who I believe -certainly on my side—have esteem and perhaps I may say affection for each other; but the result of this dynamic force is that we stand here today, he prepared to go into the wilderness if he should be compelled to forsake the Prime Minister, and I prepared to go into the wilderness if I should be compelled to stay with him. If that is the effect of that tremendous personality on two men occupying the position that we do, and related to each other in the way that Mr Chamberlain and I are, that process must go on throughout the party. It was for that reason that I took the stand I did, and put forward the views that I did. I do not know what the majority here or in the country may think about it. I said at the time what I thought was right, and I stick all through to what I believe to be right.

  The effect was dramatic. Baldwin received an enthusiastic reception. It was the first of many speeches in which by the measured and skilful deployment of moderate words he visibly affected the opinions of a crucial audience. The debate proceeded. A motion to withdraw support from the Coalition was moved by a senior Essex backbencher.10 Bonar Law added a few effective but unremembered sentences at the end. The motion was then carried by 185 to 88.11

  That afternoon Lloyd George resigned. Bonar Law waited to be confirmed as leader at a full Hotel Cecil party meeting on the Monday before accepting the King’s commission. His strength was as a representative figure, not as an ‘independent statesman’ like those whose advice had been swept aside at the Carlton Club, and he wished this to be underlined by a meticulous attention to proper procedure. This did not prevent his offering Baldwin the Exchequer before he had kissed hands. Baldwin undoubtedly wanted the job. He had done so four years before, and nothing had happened in the meantime either to abate his ambition or to make him less qualified—in the latter case very much the reverse. Furthermore, the offer could hardly have been a surprise to him. He had done more than anyone else to make the new Government.

  Yet he declined. He suggested that Reginald McKenna, Asquith’s last Chancellor, who was currently out of Parliament and chairman of the Midland Bank, should be approached instead. Law accepted the suggestion. McKenna took three days to consider the offer before refusing, nominally on health grounds. Law called on Baldwin with the news. Baldwin then accepted the post and was very pleased with himself. He went upstairs to his wife and said: ‘Treat me with respect; I am the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

  His nolo episcopari phase cannot be easily explained. At the end of the day he got exactly what he wanted�
��high office, achieved not merely without push but with a positive and recorded show of reluctance. Yet a cynical explanation does not stand up. He could not possibly have been confident that McKenna would refuse: the former Chancellor’s three days of hesitation is proof against this. It is difficult to reject the view that he was genuinely anxious, first not to appear to profit from his own actions in bringing about the downfall of the Coalition, and second to strengthen the new Government, which he thought, probably mistakenly, that McKenna would do.

  The new Government needed strength, for without Austen Chamberlain, Balfour, Birkenhead or Horne it looked weak on paper, and it had to face an immediate general election. The result was a substantial triumph. The Conservatives won an overall majority of ninety, with the opposition split into three factions, but the Labour Party much stronger than either the Asquithian or the Lloyd George Liberals. Baldwin’s most notable contribution to the campaign was to exploit Lloyd George’s remark that Bonar Law was ‘honest to the verge of simplicity’. ‘By God,’ he commented, ‘that is what we have been looking for.’

  The election won, Baldwin prepared to move, both into 11 Downing Street, which was his by right, and into Chequers, which Bonar Law did not want. Eaton Square was sold. It was a correct decision. He was to spend most of the next fourteen years in official residences.

  Baldwin’s Chancellorship was notable principally for his American debt settlement. This was one of the most tangled of post-1918 issues. It involved the questions of reparations from Germany, Britain’s claims on her European allies, her credit in the United States, and the possibility of American help towards stabilisation in Europe—the German economy being sunk in inflationary disarray. Furthermore Baldwin had to negotiate against the background of a damaging partial commitment by the Coalition Government, including the elegantly drafted but ill-judged Balfour note of July 1922, and an American public opinion which was inward-looking and brashly commercial. ‘They hired the money, didn’t they?’ was a simpler appeal than intricate arguments about Britain’s countervailing claims, the difference between a war debt and a normal commercial transaction, and the problems (however vividly exemplified by Germany) of making large payments across the exchanges without upsetting international trade. Still greater than these difficulties was Bonar Law’s stubborn (and in many ways sensible) resolve not to accept a massive continuing burden. He had said that he regarded all-round cancellation as the only fair solution to inter-Allied debts, and this remained his basic position throughout. Reluctantly, however, he authorised Baldwin to make a settlement which did not exceed a payment of £25 million a year.

  Baldwin’s mission to Washington took him away from 27 December to 27 January. There were fluctuating negotiations, and some acerbity in the flow of telegrams from London. ‘Is it not possible that you are too much under the influence of Washington which is not even the New York atmosphere?’5 In spite of such warnings Baldwin’s desire for a settlement was fortified by the views of the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, who was with him, and of Auckland Geddes, the ‘political’ Ambassador in Washington. Baldwin tabled proposals which involved payments of £34 million a year. The Americans countered by accepting this for the first ten years, but adding an extra ½ per cent interest, bringing the annual figure to £40 million for the remaining fifty-two years.

  Baldwin thought the counter-offer acceptable, but as a rump Cabinet of the Prime Minister and six other members unanimously rejected it, he was forced to return with the matter unconcluded. At Southampton he made his own position devastatingly clear to the waiting journalists. He disclosed the terms of the American offer, he left no doubt that they were in his opinion the best that could be obtained and should be accepted, and he rounded things off with what were inter preted as some highly uncomplimentary remarks about the quality of the Congressional opinion which had to be accommodated.

  There then ensued one of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of British Cabinet government. There was no discussion between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor for two days. Then they together met the American Ambassador. Law denounced the proposed settlement. Baldwin remained silent. But he defended his attitude firmly at the Cabinet on the same day. The Prime Minister argued against him, and when opinion swung heavily in the Chancellor’s favour he indicated that he would resign rather than accept the settlement. An adjournment was then agreed to. The next morning (30 January) The Times carried an anonymous letter, rather quaintly signed ‘Colonial’, which repeated several of the arguments and phrases used by Law the previous afternoon. It was in fact written by the Prime Minister.

  That same morning the entire Cabinet, with the exception of the Prime Minister, met in the Lord Chancellor’s room. Only Lord Novar, the Scottish Secretary, was in favour of repudiating the Baldwin settlement. A deputation of Baldwin, the Lord Chancellor (Cave) and the Duke of Devonshire was appointed to wait upon Bonar Law and persuade him not to resign. Law agreed, although not with a very good grace. He had discovered that City opinion, for the interpretation of which he relied upon McKenna and which he had previously been informed was strongly against acceptance, had swung overwhelmingly in favour. The terms were endorsed at a five-minute Cabinet that afternoon.

  Not surprisingly, neither Law’s relations with Baldwin nor his authority in the Government ever fully recovered from these incidents. Beaverbrook, indeed, who knew Law very well but was also addicted to dramatic interpretations, believed that the collapse of Law’s health stemmed partly from this destruction of his position as undisputed captain, maybe of ‘the second eleven’ in Churchill’s phrase, but at least of a team of like-minded, straightforward and loyal men. And there is some indication that Baldwin, from this time forward, felt that he was dealing with a time-expired Prime Minister. He began to flex his political muscles.

  The first overt expression of this came in a House of Commons speech on 16 February, replying to a Labour amendment in the debate on the Address. He ranged far wide of any possible Treasury brief or of the broadest interpretation of his Exchequer responsibilities. He replied to MacDonald and Lloyd George. He discussed the basis of the Government’s foreign policy as well as the debt settlement and unemployment. He envisaged not the possibility but the certainty of a Labour Government—‘when the Labour Party sit on these benches’. And he ended with a homily, trite or profound according to taste.

  Four words, of one syllable each, are words which contain salvation for this country and for the whole world, and they are faith, hope, love and work. No Government in this country today which has not faith in the future, love for its fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through, or the world through.6

  It was the first of a whole series of his ruminative House of Commons orations, at once homespun and high-flown, which, whatever else may be thought about them, rarely failed to capture the ears of his listeners. Even more notably it was the speech, not of a subordinate minister, but of a leader, striking a new note, and invoking an enthusiastic response from a broad segment of the electorate.

  Baldwin’s next major public appearance was his Budget speech in April. It was a dull Budget, but not a dull speech. Almost its only significant proposal was concerned with debt management and the creation of a new sinking fund. But the speech was brief and unplatitudinous and earned many compliments. It did nothing to impair his rising reputation. This was important, for Bonar Law’s health was on the point of finally breaking up. On 1 May he left for a Mediterranean cruise in the vain hope that this might cause an improvement. It did not. He had cancer of the throat, and on 19 May, too ill to go to Buckingham Palace, he resigned by letter.

  The drama of the succession, whether it should go to Curzon or to Baldwin, has always been treated as one of the great hair’s-breadth decisions of British constitutional history. In retrospect, however, it is difficult to see how, unless the King had shown most
remarkable misjudgment, it could have been decided other than it was. No doubt there was room for argument as to whether in 1923 it was still possible to have a peer as Conservative Prime Minister. It was only twenty-one years since Salisbury had concluded his long and successful period of power, and only twenty-eight years since another peer (Rosebery) had presided (although less successfully) over a Liberal Government. And no doubt it needed Balfour’s subtle reasoning12 to convince the King of this constitutional point, particularly as there were others—Salisbury, for example -strongly urging the claims of Curzon.

  The constitutional point, however, was by no means the only one at issue. There was also the personal one. Curzon had a long record of devoted although doubtfully successful public service. He was a weak man, and in some ways a slightly ridiculous one. Davidson, who was of course a committed partisan of Baldwin’s, but a sufficiently skilful one to couch his arguments in moderate terms, probably got nearest to the nub of Curzon’s failings in a memorandum which he wrote for Stamfordham and through him for the King. After beginning by saying that the case for either candidate was ‘very strong’ and paying a tribute to Curzon’s long experience, he continued:

  On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Lord Curzon, temperamentally, does not inspire complete confidence in his colleagues, either as to his judgment or as to his ultimate strength of purpose in a crisis. His methods, too, are inappropriate to harmony. The prospect of his receiving deputations as Prime Minister from the Miners’ Federation or the Triple Alliance, for example, is capable of causing alarm for the future relations between the Government and Labour -between moderate and less moderate opinion.7