Victor Montagu on the cautious prime minister
"We are in sad fears the Tories will win, their beer and money are so wildly flying, and the people they have bribed are getting so fearfully impudent now, demanding spirits and cigars . . . ." Thus Mrs Alfred Baldwin to her sister Aggie during the general election of 1868, a year when little. Stanley was fifteen months old. We could almost say that the future Prime Minister was born with a pipe in his mouth, an inclination to water at Aix-lesBains, fear of great riches and a duty to restrain Tories from excess. The spirit of his great grandfather, James Macdonald, ordained by Wesley himself, must have been present throughout his life.
Mr H. Montgomery Hyde has written a massive biography* of 565 pages, an appendix on the Abdication from Sir Donald Somervell's unpublished journal, and twenty-one pages of notes. The right hand aches as you turn the heavy pages towards the notes and backwards to the script.
The canvas covered by the book stretches over the subject's life-cycle: there is little before Baldwin's birth and nothing after his cremation. The narrative flows freely over early days, his schooling and university years, studded with caustic commentaries on the boy's shortcomings from father Alfred, and we soon arrive at engagement and marriage to Lucy Ridsdale. By 1902 the couple had two sons and four daughters and were installed at Astley Hall. Baldwins Limited had become a public company with Alfred at its head. Two years later 'Master Stan' moved on from the forge to Westminster as MP for Kidderminster. "Yours is an admirable appointment" said Alfred more approvingly, "I wish you many years of prosperity." In that most dreadful election for Conservative fortunes — some say that the Party has not yet recovered — Baldwin pinned his policy to the masthead. "A tariff on imported foodstuffs with preferential treatment for Empire imports would not raise food prices: it would enable the home farmer to divert the source of imported supplies from foreign dumpers to our own Empire." It was imperial inspiration but it was not Empire Free Trade. It enabled Baldwin to quarrel with, and triumph over, Beaverbrook in 1930, but it also contained the essence of what was done at Ottawa in 1932. For all that chairmen of meetings could do to maintain the reputation of the family ("We have here a plain, straightforward man in whose speeches there is a ring of honesty") Baldwin went down to defeat at Kidderminster by 271 votes, as much as 8 per cent of the Unionist poll. Alfred's great bearded head "bowed in sorrow at his son's defeat" and two years later he was dead. Stanley was elected unopposed for West Worcestershire in his place. Biographers must deal faithfully with the minutiae of their subject's lives, as good conductors must with the 'longueurs' of Grand
Baldwin — The Unexpected Prime Minister. H. Montgomery Hyde (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon £6.95)
Opera. Mr Hyde contrives to decorate every page with quirk or anecdote and it is frustrating for reviewers, who have to pull our the plums, to skip with the eye and certainly with the pen. On May 17, 1923 after a medical examination Prime Minister Bonar Law told J. C. C. Davidson to return to London to prepare the way for his resignation. Davidson held the view apparently that the Conservative Party would not stand for a peer as successor and he told Baldwin next day that it was "almost inevitable" that he, Baldwin, would be nominated, news which "genuinely frigh te,ned" him. Mr Hyde skates over much in foreign affairs for the good reason that Baldwin was always more interested in the domestic than the foreign front. We plunge immediately into 'peace in our time' and the general strike. There is no doubt that Baldwin was an eloquent man with much poetry in his soul. Labour relations had been exceedingly uneasy ever since the war, and when a Scottish Conservative MP, Frederick Macquisten, after a failure to make some lesbian practices illegal, launched on a Private Members Bill compelling all trades unionists to contract in to pay their levy to Labour Party funds, Baldwin's wells of conscience overflowed. He obtained the Cabinet's permission to intervene "to prevent the government's great majority being brought to bear in support of a measure which would arouse acute controversy and embitter relations." Birkenhead picked up an envelope, scribbled on it, and tossed it across the table to Baldwin. It read "I think your action shows enormous courage and for that reason will succeed." It did. On March 6, 1925 the House was transfixed. The Clydeside
Labour MP, David Kirkwood, said that the Word had become Flesh, a laudatory article was published in the New York Times, and a shrewd lobby correspondent said that Baldwin "had won the leadership for years•to come" with the speech. It may also have shortened the period of the general strike which occurred a year later.
When it came, it lasted little more than ten days, but they were anxious days and they told on Baldwin's mental equipment. Despite a month of rest at Aix-les-Bains, a lobby correspondent thought Baldwin was !'sick in body, far more sick in mind." Cunliffe-Lister said that at times "he was completely out of gear" and Chamberlain said "he sniffed blotting paper and I knew he wasn't paying attention." Soon an illness came on and Lord Dawson spoke of "the heart of a very tired man going on strike." But the loss of the 1929 general election, the traumas of national economic crises and three million unemployed did nothing to worsen Baldwin's health. When five years later I joined his staff in a junior capacity and went with the Lord President (as he then was) to the Ottawa Conference, he was in the best of health. Hyde spends less than two pages on this imperial mission, paving scant regard, as do overwhelming numbers of reporters and publicists today, to the great themes of Protection and Empire. Yet at that time the governing party was overwhelmingly protectionist and the years that followed were more vital to a build-up for our survival as a great power than any comparable period in this century. Trade and economics, one must suppose, are not good material for biographers. All Baldwin's biographers have dwelt on facets of his character ranging from Christian uprighteousness to hesitation, inadequacy, weakness and even sloth. None, except his son Windham, have built on his cautious crea-, tivity, sometimes too immaculate to be noticed at once, or deduced from the occasional flashes of ideological partisanship that there was a bedrock of historic conservatism somewhere at the base,
Mr Hyde comes directly to 1933 and with Hitler looming the next ninety pages are on rearmament, chiefs of staff committees, peace pledge ballots and frontiers on the Rhine. After leaving Baldwin's service in 1934 I breakfasted with him at intervals until the beginning of the war. He was getting older and was franker and less careful than formerly with the novice in his office of five years before. My diary for February, 1938 reads "S.B.'s conscience is clear about rearmament. He said that in 1934 when the peace ballot was held and the country was still wedded to disarmament they had had rumours of German arming, but nothing more. He said 'we never had the facts for another year and then I determined to go ahead and the country gave me their mandate at the election.' He believes sincerely that the country would not have stood for rearmament a moment sooner, nor had the government the information with which to acquaint the country."
There is something wrong with this entry, and what is wrong with it is that it contains no reference to the 'appalling frankness' speech to the Commons in October, 1936. Either master or pupil were still too scared to defend or question it. But the extract supports Mr Hyde's view of the famous occasion, put
courteously and succinctly on page 461: "Baldwin's .detractors . . . charge that he deliberately kept quiet about the need for rearmament until after the General Election of 1935. The charge is completely baseless. It is clear from the whole context that what he had in mind was not the 1935 election but a purely hypothetical election in 1933 or 1934 which the National Government would not have succeeded in winning if it had sought a. mandate for rearmament . ."
My own view is more tortuous and cynical, but defensible within the disciplines of democratic haute politique, namely, that what was in error was the 'appalling frankness' itself and that statesmanlike silence or prevarication about the need for rearmament in 1935 was wholly justifiable if the certainty was that a party would be returned to power which would not, shall we say, have had a single Spitfire in the skies in September 1940. 'The King's Matter' is a chapter of over seventy pages starting with cuttings from American newspapers laid on Baldwin's desk on October 12. 1936 and ending with a fatherly letter from Baldwin, now an Earl, to Edward VIII, now a Duke, and about to be married in France. Mr Hyde has drawn sentiment and quotation from thirty nine sources and the shattering tale is told as well as it could be. I might perhaps be allowed to be a fortieth source. On February 26, 1937 Baldwin said to me that he was always conscious that one part of the King's mind had never grown up. He seemed to have no spiritual or religious quality to guide him in times of crisis. He said that George V had foretold that the King would bring ruin on himself within twelve months of accession. In Baldwin's opinion he had not the vital gifts that make a King — patience and devotion to duty. It was fortunate for the country that he went when he did: the downfall would have been more catastrophic in later years.
The two antagonists' final parting was amicable. The night before the King left the country there was a pause in the talks when drinks were brought. When the servant had gone Baldwin said "Well, Sir, to forget for a moment all that we have been saying — there are not two people in the country who have shared your anxiety of the last few weeks to a greater extent nor wish for your happiness more than the missus and myself." The King appeared moved and thanked him. Later S.B. heard from a secretary that the King had said to him "The Prime Minister is the only man who has said any kind word to me about the future, or wished me good luck."
The stately biography moves peacefully towards its close. Dealing as he has to do with most profound situations the author lightens the matter where he can with deft touches. But there are no chuckles. Baldwin has never succeeded in making his chroniclers laugh. The only phrase in this very serious work which grates with me is the sub-title. Why is Baldwin an 'unexpected' Prime Minister? I have always thought of him as designed by Nature, Heaven sent, to take charge of his beloved country in those times.
Victor Montagu, formerly Earl of Sandwich, was Stanley Baldwin's Private Secretary from 19321934.
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