Don't let's be beastly to Baldwin

PERSONAL COLUMN LORD BUTLER

Two centenary celebrations will have taken place within the course of a few months, one of the birth of James Ramsay MacDonald and the other of that of Stanley Baldwin.

Speaking at the celebration connected with the first, I said that MacDonald and Baldwin between them had together made the modern Labour party. This was greeted with some sur- prise, but it is none the less true. Stanley Baldwin's greatest achievement was to ensure the social and political evolution of Britain after a great war in a continuous and peaceful sense. His achievement in politics was to watch and help the transition of the two-party system from a struggle between Liberals and Con- servatives to a confrontation between his own party and the newly created, growing, Labour movement.

I have always found Stanley Baldwin one of the most rewarding of our twentieth cen- tury prime ministers. He had not the adminis- trative ability of Chamberlain, the dynamic urge of Churchill or Lloyd George, the sharp debating quality of Andrew Bonar Law, the gravilas of Asquith, or the philosophical doubt of Balfour. What, then, had he got? He had a great power of expressing himself in simple literary English, a close knowledge of politics and the instinct to rouse himself when the occasion really demanded; that was when on rare occasions he was nearly down and out.

On such occasions, his wife used to refer to him as 'Tiger Baldwin,' because when he came back against the press lords or Churchill on India, and in favour of the abdication, he had a sureness of pounce reminiscent only of our great mammals. - During much of Baldwin's time he ap- peared to be dreaming away. He liked a regular life and regular holidays at Aix.

Although within striking distance of the League of Nations; he took little trouble to acquaint himself with its gyrations. While at Aix, he was not really abroad, but walking, as an English- man likes to, in the woods. And it was while walking in the woods that he decided to give the coup de grace to Lloyd George's govern- ment. His speech was in such trenchant lan- guage that he jumped overnight into the posi- tion of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He settled the American debt and much to the surprise of his colleagues had a press con- ference on it before they could comment. This is where Baldwin is so difficult to follow, because he represented integrity itself, and yet on an occasion like this he would make a political move which really settled the matter before it could be discussed.

Bonar Law's illness brought Baldwin to No 10. He had been there only a short time when he launched into the 'protection' elec- tion, suffering a humiliating defeat and thus giving the Labour party its first chance of office. The story is well known how that first innings came to an end, and despite his pro; tectionist adventure Baldwin came back to be the undisputed controller of the English politi- cal scene for many years until he retired.

I remember holding a fete in my garden which Baldwin came to in 1935. I received a letter from Winston Churchill regretting his inability to come and saying that Baldwin had by then achieved the most powerful position of any man in British politics. Churchill had learned to respect Baldwin as a party adminis- trator. He had fought him ruthlessly over India. I remember well as under-secretary the ding-dong battles in the House of Com- mons.

I am convinced that Churchill played on India as a political harpsichord. His tunes were loud and melodious, but Baldwin and his henchman Samuel Hoare had their way. Baldwin once told me that he thought India's independence was a sufficiently large issue on which he would, if necessary, stake his career. He himself made very few speechds about India, but he backed the policy and guided it throUgh the party machine.

I remember going to see Baldwin after he had retired in 1941. He was staying with his dear friends the Davidsons and sitting in the evening air and holding an old turnip watch so as to see when the time for his supper would come. His evening days were not untinged with sorrow. He felt the country had turned against him due to lack of preparation for the war. He received scores of insulting letters. most of which he either opened himself or left neglected. People could not understand why he had sealed his lips and not told the country more about rearmament at an earlier date.

It must not, however, be forgotten that he spoke on air rearmament to some effect on 30 July 1934. He spoke for an hour, and ex- plained the reasons for expanding the RAE The proposal was to bring up within five years the home defence strength from forty-two to seventy-five squadrons. He said: 'If we do not, we may find ourselves later on in terrible jeopardy.' We were not going for full parity yet, but were still trying to attain it by agree- ment at the lower figure. If we were to wait 'we would run the risk of precipitating that very danger which we seek to avoid.' The pro- gramme could be accelerated or decelerated according to circumstances at Geneva, and 'in the judgment of our experts' it provided 'for our future defensive needs in the air so far as they can be judged in the light of all indica- tions at present available.' Plans for civilian protection had been carried up to a point already, and would later be made public.

He claimed that there was no inconsistency here with his past speeches, including the `bomber will always get through' speech of the autumn of 1932: 'The greatest crime to our own people is to be afraid to tell the truth. . . . The old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover: you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies. . . . Having regard to the circumstances existing in the world today . . . I am confident that I am asking the House today to approve not only what is abso- lutely necessary but what is the least that I think we ought to ask the House to give its assent to. . .

He explained to me on the evening when I saw him that he had been overwhelmed by the League of Nations and by the Peace Pledge movement of the 'thirties. I well remember him being stunned by the result of the East Fulham by-election of 1933, in which Labour turned a 14,000 deficit into a 5,000 majority, seemingly on the disarmament issue. A charitable ex- planation is that he did not feel, astute poli- tician as he was, that he could turn the country against its strong instinct for peace. at almost any price; and yet when we examine things closely, we find he had started rearmament. But if it had been started sooner, an earlier response to Hitler and the need for Munich might not have arisen.

It was this attention to public opinion which created Baldwin's great achievement, whether in the National government or the Conserva- tive government, when encouraging the new types in the Labour party to take their place in public life, and, by his speech- 'Peace in our time,' in getting over the bitterness of the General Strike.

Baldwin was most at home to the sound of the hanimer on the anvil in the village smithy, tfie- sound of the corncrake, the smell of the new-mown hay and the acrid scent of couchgrass burning in the fields. He deeply loved England and we owe it to him, in cele- brating his centenary, to give him back a little of our affection.