Lord Lexden on Stanley Baldwin Briefings


Lord Lexden on Stanley Baldwin

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The Conservative Party's historian, Lord Lexden, delivered a lecture

:00:22.:00:24.

at the Carlton Club to mark the 150th anniversary of the three

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times Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

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Ladies and gentlemen, one of these days, I'm going to give a lecture

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Which will enable me to be suitably irreverent.

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This evening, in this lecture, I will attempt to discuss

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four aspects of Baldwin's life - his impact on the politics of his time,

:00:52.:00:57.

the nature of the conservatism he espoused, the destruction

:00:58.:01:01.

and subsequent recovery of his reputation and the effect

:01:02.:01:05.

that his family background and career as an industrialist

:01:06.:01:08.

The title of the lecture, as Lord Strathclyde mentioned,

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Stanley Baldwin In A Year Of Anniversaries.

:01:17.:01:20.

Stanley Baldwin, Tory leader from 1923 to 1937,

:01:21.:01:25.

dominated British politics in the interwar era.

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He achieved that domination by altering its direction.

:01:29.:01:32.

He removed Lloyd George, the architect of victory

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over the Kaiser, from the helm of national affairs with a short

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speech, lethal in its political effect at a famous meeting

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which took place on the 19th of October 1922

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at this club, then housed in palatial premises in Pall Mall

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that were to be destroyed 18 years later

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by a Nazi bomb, necessitating the club's move to the fine house

:01:58.:02:02.

in St James' Street where I am speaking.

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The Carlton Club meeting, attended by most Tory MPs,

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was the pivotal moment in the career of Stanley Baldwin,

:02:10.:02:13.

then a little-known politician with brief Cabinet experience.

:02:14.:02:17.

It was also a turning point in British political history.

:02:18.:02:21.

Lloyd George and the section of the Liberal party which included

:02:22.:02:24.

Winston Churchill that supported him had decreed plans with the then

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Conservative leader Austen Chamberlain, son of a famous father,

:02:29.:02:33.

to perpetuate the coilition government that had

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They had it in mind to create a new centre party into which

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His speech at the Carlton Club led his fellow MPs

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"I preserved the Tory party," Baldwin said.

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One of his colleagues, Lord Swinton, wrote later

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that "By his speech at the Carlton Club,

:03:01.:03:03.

SB stood out as the man of the future."

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We all recognise that this was a new force released

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Someone with a new style of eloquence, more effective

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because of its simplicity and control.

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Just seven months later, Baldwin moved into number ten.

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He was to serve three terms as Prime Minister,

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the last two being separated by a term as

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Deputy Prime Minister in the early 1930s in coalition

:03:28.:03:31.

with Ramsay MacDonald and small groups of Labour and Liberal MPs.

:03:32.:03:37.

Baldwin, the almost unknown Carlton Club rebel of 1922,

:03:38.:03:42.

swiftly established himself as a statesman of first rank,

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even in the eyes of members of the Labour Party.

:03:47.:03:49.

They had a high regard for him, not least because

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of the goodwill he showed them as they settled

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into their new role as the second party in the state

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following the decline of the Liberals,

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Many Liberal voters became Tory supporters, attracted by

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Baldwin's emollient style and policies.

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It is impossible to imagine him shouting raucously

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across the House with baying Tory hounds behind him

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Consensus was the hallmark of his politics.

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Social reform, the principal practical ingredient

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of the conservatism with which he won the three largest

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election victories in the party's history.

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"Toryism expounded by him lost many of its repellent features,"

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one leading journalist said in explaining his wide appeal

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Even in the two elections which Baldwin lost,

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those of 1923 and 1929, the Tory party had the largest share

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Under Baldwin, Britain finally became a fully democratic state.

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He gave women the vote on the same terms as men in 1928.

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The Baldwin years saw major advances in housing, education,

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public health, insurance and pensions, foreshadowing a

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distinctive Tory welfare state whose life was cut short when Churchill

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placed responsibility for most of these areas of policy

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in the hands of Labour ministers in his wartime coalition after 1940.

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Atlee completed after 1945 what Churchill allowed

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his party to start as wartime partners.

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All that had happened before the war was lost to memory.

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Who now recalls that with Baldwin in power, new houses were built

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at the rate of 1000 a day, a million in all,

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in just four years in the early 1930s?

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Who now remembers the creation of the first

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Under Stanley Baldwin, the social services budget became the largest

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item in public spending for the first time.

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Britain's welfare provision became the most advanced in the world.

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Baldwin's Britain was disfigured by much grinding poverty.

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In 1925, he visited the Glasgow slums, describing them as terrible,

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though to his surprise, he had an amazing popular welcome with

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Such conditions were not transformed in Baldwin's time, but they were

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tackled with greater vigour than is often realised.

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Baldwin's conservatism was progressive in character

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and national in tone, as befitting a man who loved Scotland,

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the home of his maternal MacDonald forbears,

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and who devoted much time in the 1920s to Ulster's affairs,

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with which he also had distant family connections,

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while showing tact and skill in dealing with the leaders

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of the newly created Irish Free State.

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Thanks to him, goodwill was created between the leaders

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of the two parts of Ireland in the 1920s.

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Sadly, it was destroyed by De Valera's confrontational

:07:14.:07:16.

It was Baldwin, not Disraeli, who first spoke of the need

:07:17.:07:23.

to unite rich and poor in one nation.

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The famous Tory phrase was to echo down the years.

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Disraeli wrote movingly in the 1840s about Britain's deep social divide,

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Baldwin worked hard to try and heal it.

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Addressing his party, on the 4th of December 1924,

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in the aftermath of its biggest election victory ever, he said,

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"We stand for the union of those two nations of which

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Disraeli spoke two generations ago.

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Union among our own people to make one nation of our own people,

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which if secured, nothing else matters in the world."

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After his death in 1881, the Tories put Disraeli

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on a pedestal above their other leaders.

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By the end of his career, Baldwin had been placed beside him.

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Lord Crawford, a former Cabinet minister and Chief Whip,

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wrote in his diary on the 5th of May 1937, that Baldwin "has established

:08:26.:08:31.

comparable only to that felt for Disraeli."

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He was an idealist who told his party what it ought to do

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He insisted in the 1930s that India must have

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full internal self-government, facing down strong opposition

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A rift appeared between the two colleagues who had worked together

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in Government after Churchill's return to the Tory fold in 1924

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After 1930, Churchill adopted the role of die-hard imperialist

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while Baldwin adhere to the liberal views which

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both of them had previously espoused.

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The rift deepened with the years and ended in bitterness

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Baldwin, for his part, never spoke harshly of the man

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whose political career he had rescued.

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They disagreed too on the most important change in economic

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policy that occurred during the Baldwin years -

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the reintroduction of tariffs on imported goods to try and

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protect the country's prosperity at a time of world depression.

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Wrangling on this issue within the Tory party went on for years.

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It nearly brought Baldwin down in 1930-31 as Churchill and others

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colluded with press barons who wanted Baldwin's scalp and formed

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their own political party to try and destroy him.

:10:03.:10:05.

He turned the tables on his unelected persecutors

:10:06.:10:09.

with famous words, accusing them of seeking power without

:10:10.:10:13.

responsibility, the prerogative of a harlot throughout the ages.

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It became the best known, perhaps, of

:10:18.:10:19.

the many vivid phrases that Baldwin produced.

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Baldwin's final dispute with Churchill was the most bitter.

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The issue, of course, Britain's rearmament in the 1930s,

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which was to have a devastating impact on Baldwin's reputation

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During his years of power, Baldwin emerged victorious

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from his many Commons clashes with Churchill.

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Lord Swinton, who served in Government under both of them,

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recalls that Baldwin always got the better of Churchill

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when Churchill was attacking him in the House of Commons.

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Churchill admitted this to me many years later.

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I said, "Winston, you fought him for years

:11:00.:11:01.

and years when he was PM and party leader and you never won a round."

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Winston grunted, but he did not dissent.

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In the mid-19th century, some Tory candidates described

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themselves as liberal conservatives in their election literature.

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The term had died away long before Baldwin's day,

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but a liberal conservative is what he was,

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firmly to the left of centre in the party's spectrum.

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He drew on the liberal tradition in British politics

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The first Tory in the Baldwin family was his father, Alfred,

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a Conservative MP in later life but a Liberal activist

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A cousin of his father's, Enoch Baldwin,

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He married into a liberal family, the Ridsdales.

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He had a brother-in-law who was a Liberal MP.

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His mother's family, the McDonalds, had links with the early socialists.

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He may not perhaps have been unduly surprised when his eldest son,

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Oliver, a homosexual who lived openly with a partner

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during the interwar years, joined the Labour Party.

:12:14.:12:17.

Their relations were sometimes strained.

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His father never expressed a word of criticism, only affection,

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even when Oliver joined him in the Commons as Labour MP

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for Dudley in 1929, a seat he held for two years,

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losing it at the next election in 1931.

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Stanley Baldwin is the only party leader to have faced a son

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Oliver returned to the Commons for another two-year stint

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after his father's retirement as a Labour MP for Paisley in 1945,

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before becoming governor of the Leeward Islands,

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from which he had to be recalled in 1950 when gay scandal threatened.

:12:57.:12:59.

Stanley Baldwin was the first Prime Minister whose voice was heard

:13:00.:13:05.

Most people never knew what his predecessors had sounded like.

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He followed their example by addressing large public meetings.

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50,000 came to listen to him at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire

:13:19.:13:22.

Microphones and public address systems meant that his words

:13:23.:13:27.

could be heard by such vast crowds as those of Gladstone

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and others before him had never been.

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Through the newly established BBC, he spoke to millions in their homes,

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talking straightforwardly and avoiding point-scoring.

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As a broadcaster, he was in a class of his own.

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No other politician of the time matched his skill.

:13:49.:13:51.

"He might have been sitting in the chair beside me"

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was a typical comment made to one of his ministers.

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Roosevelt followed were Baldwin had led with his famous fireside chats

:13:58.:14:01.

He was seen as well as heard throughout the land.

:14:02.:14:08.

The Tory party, streets ahead of its opponents

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in organisational terms, dispatched film vans across

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the country spreading images of the Prime Minister about his duties.

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Wherever he went, newsreel cameras and newspaper photographers

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"Bovril does this sort of thing, but ought Baldwin do it?"

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The answer was emphatically in the affirmative.

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This year provides us with a golden opportunity to reflect on this

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unusual, much loved man of deep humanity and understanding who

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became one of our most successful peace time Prime Ministers.

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2017 is replete with Baldwinian anniversaries.

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He was born 150 years ago in 1867 as Disraeli prepared to double

:14:55.:14:59.

the electorate to 2 million through the enfranchisement of

:15:00.:15:02.

He first held Government office 100 years ago in 1917,

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when he was nearing the age of 50, a notably late start for a minister.

:15:13.:15:17.

He retired from political life as Earl Baldwin

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of Bewdley KG amidst almost universal praise at a moment

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of his own choosing, a rare thing in politics,

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80 years ago in 1937, an event commemorated by the fine

:15:29.:15:33.

portrait painted by Oswald Birley which hangs in this club.

:15:34.:15:38.

He died 70 years ago in 1947 at the age of 80.

:15:39.:15:44.

It is surely fitting that this array of anniversaries should be marked by

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the erection this year of a statue of him in Bewdley, Worcestershire,

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his beloved birthplace which gave its name to the constituency

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which he represented for nearly 30 years

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and where he is still remembered with affection.

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Funds to meet the costs of the statue are accumulating

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following the launch of an appeal in the House of Lords

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at the end of January and in Worcestershire last month.

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The halfway mark has been passed with the backing of a long list

:16:13.:16:16.

of patrons drawn from all parties and headed by the Prime Minister.

:16:17.:16:21.

The sculptor is Martin Jennings who possesses a formidable

:16:22.:16:24.

reputation, being best known for his statue of John Betjeman

:16:25.:16:31.

The case for a public memorial to this Tory statesman,

:16:32.:16:35.

who remoulded British politics, today seems overwhelming.

:16:36.:16:39.

But that was not how the matter was seen in 1982

:16:40.:16:43.

when it was proposed that a statue should be placed

:16:44.:16:45.

alongside those of other Prime Ministers

:16:46.:16:48.

Tories were indifferent, the Labour Party, then led by

:16:49.:16:53.

Michael Foot, was hostile and the plan was abandoned.

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Baldwin, once the recipient of so much praise,

:16:58.:17:01.

It happened swiftly following the outbreak of

:17:02.:17:05.

the Second World War in 1939, two years after his retirement.

:17:06.:17:11.

Relentless, unsparing denigration began.

:17:12.:17:18.

Indeed, few political reputations have soared so high or

:17:19.:17:22.

Bishops of the church of England do not normally sing the praises of

:17:23.:17:30.

Tory politicians, but they bestowed lavish blessings on Baldwin

:17:31.:17:36.

"He is really a very great man, a genuine member of

:17:37.:17:43.

the goodly fellowship of the prophets," infused Hensley Henson,

:17:44.:17:48.

At the coronation of George VI, on the 12th of May 1937,

:17:49.:17:55.

Baldwin's carriage was greeted only slightly less enthusiastically

:17:56.:17:59.

then that conveying the new monarch and his consort.

:18:00.:18:04.

Yet, a few years later, after the outbreak of war

:18:05.:18:08.

when the now lame and arthritic former Prime Minister was travelling

:18:09.:18:11.

on a packed train, no one would give up their seat for him.

:18:12.:18:15.

An infamous act of pettiness took place.

:18:16.:18:20.

The iron railings and gates around his country home

:18:21.:18:24.

were removed on the utterly spurious pretext that

:18:25.:18:27.

the war effort would falter without them.

:18:28.:18:32.

He became accustomed to unpopularity.

:18:33.:18:35.

On his last visit to London in 1947, a few bystanders

:18:36.:18:39.

"Are they booing me?" he asked a companion.

:18:40.:18:45.

The cause of this sharp reversal of fortune is no mystery.

:18:46.:18:51.

It became lodged more firmly in the public mind

:18:52.:18:54.

than anything else relating to Baldwin.

:18:55.:18:57.

He was charged retrospectively with failing to rearm Britain

:18:58.:19:00.

in the mid-1930s as the fascist dictators in Germany and Italy

:19:01.:19:05.

began to make themselves ready for war in Europe.

:19:06.:19:09.

The case for the prosecution had no stronger advocate

:19:10.:19:13.

than Winston Churchill, the unsuccessful Tory rebel of the

:19:14.:19:17.

1930s, who came to be regarded as infallible as a result

:19:18.:19:21.

Baldwin was too old and infirm to rebut the charge.

:19:22.:19:28.

It stuck, grossly unfair though it was.

:19:29.:19:32.

His second son, Windham, amassed the relevant documents and

:19:33.:19:36.

replied in detail in a persuasive book, My Father: The True Story,

:19:37.:19:41.

Historians have endorsed his conclusions

:19:42.:19:46.

The results can be seen most clearly in the authoritative study

:19:47.:19:53.

by Professor Philip Williamson entitled

:19:54.:19:56.

Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership And National Values

:19:57.:20:00.

In this year of anniversaries, the injustice of the attacks

:20:01.:20:06.

to which Baldwin was subject must be firmly underlined.

:20:07.:20:11.

It was Baldwin who, in the face of a largely hostile public

:20:12.:20:14.

opinion and sustained attacks by Labour in Parliament,

:20:15.:20:19.

began an ambitious rearmament programme to deter the dictators,

:20:20.:20:23.

In 1934, the year after Hitler came to power,

:20:24.:20:35.

he ordered 41 new RAF squadrons and another 39 the following year.

:20:36.:20:41.

At the 1935 election, he sought and won a mandate

:20:42.:20:45.

to remedy the deficiencies which had accrued in our defences.

:20:46.:20:51.

Further steady increases in air strength followed.

:20:52.:20:54.

Rearmament had grown massively by the time of

:20:55.:20:57.

Baldwin's political career then is a story of triumph and tragedy.

:20:58.:21:07.

The triumph deserved, the tragedy unjust.

:21:08.:21:11.

Outside politics, his success was almost unbroken.

:21:12.:21:16.

He loved his native Worcestershire as passionately

:21:17.:21:21.

as that county's other famous contemporary son

:21:22.:21:24.

Edward Elgar, though curiously they had little to do with one another.

:21:25.:21:29.

As a young man, he served the county diligently

:21:30.:21:32.

His parents, Alfred and Louisa Baldwin, were devoted

:21:33.:21:38.

to each other and to him, their only child.

:21:39.:21:41.

His mother was a published author and a member of a remarkable family,

:21:42.:21:47.

the McDonalds, who combined devotion to Methodism

:21:48.:21:50.

with a rich creative talent in painting, prose and poetry.

:21:51.:21:55.

He was Richard Kipling's first cousin and close friend,

:21:56.:21:58.

who flattered him by saying, "Stan is the real writer in the family."

:21:59.:22:03.

Baldwin knew the works of the great British authors -

:22:04.:22:06.

Dickens, Scott and Browning particular favourites - inside out

:22:07.:22:09.

and quoated then repeatedly in the countless speeches

:22:10.:22:12.

he delivered to learned societies, religious gatherings,

:22:13.:22:16.

universities and many other bodies outside politics.

:22:17.:22:20.

Speeches that helped to increase his stature

:22:21.:22:22.

as a national rather than a party figure.

:22:23.:22:25.

No other Prime Minister has addressed so large a range

:22:26.:22:29.

In Downing Street, he was often found dipping into the classics.

:22:30.:22:35.

Perhaps Virgil one day, Cicero the next.

:22:36.:22:38.

He was formidably well read, the equal of Anthony Eden

:22:39.:22:41.

and Harold Macmillan, surpassed only by Churchill

:22:42.:22:44.

in an age when national leaders had well-stocked minds.

:22:45.:22:49.

however, during the years of education.

:22:50.:22:55.

After collecting several prizes at the start of his career

:22:56.:22:58.

at Harrow, his interest in studies slackened.

:22:59.:23:02.

He was caught sending pornography, described as Harrow filth,

:23:03.:23:06.

to a cousin at Eton, for which he was beaten by

:23:07.:23:09.

His parents made light of it and the effects of the disgrace

:23:10.:23:14.

may not have been profound but whatever the cause,

:23:15.:23:17.

his academic promise was not fulfilled.

:23:18.:23:21.

It was no indication of his real talents.

:23:22.:23:26.

Later, the university was proud to have him as its Chancellor

:23:27.:23:31.

and the Carlton Club's portrait of him shows him

:23:32.:23:33.

After Cambridge, he returned home to join his successful father

:23:34.:23:42.

in the family ironworks in Worcestershire.

:23:43.:23:45.

The impression is sometimes given that it was a sleepy,

:23:46.:23:48.

unenterprising little concern, leaving Baldwin with plenty

:23:49.:23:52.

of time for rural diversions like leaning over pigsties,

:23:53.:23:56.

the kind of setting in which he would be depicted as Prime Minister

:23:57.:23:59.

as if country pursuits were his predominant preoccupation.

:24:00.:24:05.

It is true that he loved and idealised rural England and walked

:24:06.:24:09.

through miles and miles of it, though he greatly disliked hunting,

:24:10.:24:12.

But industry was his calling and he excelled at it.

:24:13.:24:18.

Far from standing still, Baldwin's firm

:24:19.:24:20.

was constantly diversifying to keep ahead of changing markets and

:24:21.:24:26.

expanding through the acquisition of other businesses which included

:24:27.:24:30.

steelworks in the Midlands and collieries in Wales.

:24:31.:24:34.

By the time he entered Parliament in 1908, Stanley Baldwin

:24:35.:24:38.

was a leading industrialist of 25 years' standing

:24:39.:24:42.

and a managing director of Baldwin's Limited

:24:43.:24:45.

How did Baldwin the industrialist influence Baldwin the statesman?

:24:46.:24:55.

The chief purpose of his public life was to extend to British society

:24:56.:25:00.

as a whole the stability and harmony that existed in his own firm

:25:01.:25:05.

where management and men worked closely together,

:25:06.:25:08.

where strikes were unknown, where an income continued to be paid

:25:09.:25:13.

if work was disrupted by strikes elsewhere.

:25:14.:25:16.

In his first broadcast in 1924, he said that

:25:17.:25:21.

"my one desire is to get people in this country to pull together,

:25:22.:25:25.

and the love of brethren in place of class strife."

:25:26.:25:31.

A heavy responsibility, in his view, rested with the rich.

:25:32.:25:36.

He himself gave a fifth of his wealth

:25:37.:25:37.

anonymously to the state after the First World War.

:25:38.:25:42.

As Tory leader, he insisted that the rich must contribute more

:25:43.:25:45.

in taxation in order to help secure the union

:25:46.:25:49.

of all classes about which he constantly spoke.

:25:50.:25:53.

Strong religious convictions led him to the same conclusion.

:25:54.:25:58.

He saw himself as God's instrument for the work

:25:59.:26:01.

of the healing of the nation, often invoking the deity

:26:02.:26:05.

in his speeches, the only Tory leader ever to do so.

:26:06.:26:10.

Baldwin worked for peace and industry with a dedication that

:26:11.:26:13.

none of his predecessors had shown, signalled memorably in a celebrated

:26:14.:26:19.

speech in the Commons in 1925 which ended

:26:20.:26:23.

with his famous call, "Give peace in our time, oh, Lord."

:26:24.:26:28.

In the following year, he did everything possible to avoid

:26:29.:26:34.

the general strike, the severest test of his consensual style

:26:35.:26:39.

and when it collapsed after nine days, he quickly rebuilt relations

:26:40.:26:43.

with the moderates who then led the trades unions.

:26:44.:26:47.

One seasoned political observer wrote,

:26:48.:26:51.

"I don't think he ever stood so high politically as at the defeat

:26:52.:26:54.

There was one other such peak in Baldwin's career.

:26:55.:27:01.

It came ten years later in 1936 when he handled the abdication

:27:02.:27:07.

crisis with a skill greater than anyone else

:27:08.:27:10.

could have shown and prevented it inflicting damage on the unity

:27:11.:27:14.

of the country which had always been his chief object to enhance.

:27:15.:27:22.

Harold Nicolson, well-known writer and MP,

:27:23.:27:25.

recorded that those in the Commons on the 10th of December 1936,

:27:26.:27:30.

when Baldwin explained Edward VIII's decision to abdicate,

:27:31.:27:34.

"were conscious of having listened to the best speech

:27:35.:27:38.

that we would ever hear in our lives."

:27:39.:27:41.

Now, there was nothing solemn or po-faced about this

:27:42.:27:45.

News of a Tory by-election defeat in Rotherham was brought to him

:27:46.:27:56.

in the Commons, on the Commons front bench in 1934.

:27:57.:28:01.

He had once changed trains there and used the lavatory

:28:02.:28:07.

For several minutes, he muttered away, repeating words that had been

:28:08.:28:14.

"If square seats don't bother them, they've got rum bums in Rotherham."

:28:15.:28:25.

Stanley Baldwin and would have been dismayed by some features

:28:26.:28:29.

The Christian faith which meant so much to him

:28:30.:28:34.

The persistence of divisions amongst us.

:28:35.:28:41.

The weakening of the links between the parts of the United Kingdom.

:28:42.:28:46.

But he would, I think, have taken comfort from the extent

:28:47.:28:49.

of the humanity and tolerance in Britain today and be delighted

:28:50.:28:55.

by the extraordinary prosperity we enjoy which neither him

:28:56.:29:00.

nor any of his contemporaries ever imagine.

:29:01.:29:05.

Anthony Eden, who regarded Baldwin as his political mentor,

:29:06.:29:10.

wrote in 1962, "no British statesman in this century

:29:11.:29:15.

has done so much to kill class hatred."

:29:16.:29:18.

That, above all, is how Stanley Baldwin would wish

:29:19.:29:22.

to be remembered in this year of anniversaries.

:29:23.:29:26.

August 2013, the Government loses a vote to bomb the President Assad

:29:27.:30:24.

foresees in Syria. It is clear to me that the British Parliament,

:30:25.:30:28.

reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to

:30:29.:30:29.

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