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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 | :00:25. | :00:28. | |
times Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. | :00:29. | :00:36. | |
Ladies and gentlemen, one of these days, I'm going to give a lecture | :00:37. | :00:39. | |
Which will enable me to be suitably irreverent. | :00:40. | :00:46. | |
This evening, in this lecture, I will attempt to discuss | :00:47. | :00:51. | |
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, | :01:09. | :01:16. | |
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. | :01:26. | :01:28. | |
He achieved that domination by altering its direction. | :01:29. | :01:32. | |
He removed Lloyd George, the architect of victory | :01:33. | :01:36. | |
over the Kaiser, from the helm of national affairs with a short | :01:37. | :01:40. | |
speech, lethal in its political effect at a famous meeting | :01:41. | :01:43. | |
which took place on the 19th of October 1922 | :01:44. | :01:45. | |
at this club, then housed in palatial premises in Pall Mall | :01:46. | :01:53. | |
that were to be destroyed 18 years later | :01:54. | :01:57. | |
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. | :02:03. | :02:05. | |
The Carlton Club meeting, attended by most Tory MPs, | :02:06. | :02:09. | |
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 | :02:25. | :02:28. | |
Conservative leader Austen Chamberlain, son of a famous father, | :02:29. | :02:33. | |
to perpetuate the coilition government that had | :02:34. | :02:35. | |
They had it in mind to create a new centre party into which | :02:36. | :02:41. | |
His speech at the Carlton Club led his fellow MPs | :02:42. | :02:48. | |
"I preserved the Tory party," Baldwin said. | :02:49. | :02:55. | |
One of his colleagues, Lord Swinton, wrote later | :02:56. | :03:00. | |
that "By his speech at the Carlton Club, | :03:01. | :03:03. | |
SB stood out as the man of the future." | :03:04. | :03:06. | |
We all recognise that this was a new force released | :03:07. | :03:09. | |
Someone with a new style of eloquence, more effective | :03:10. | :03:13. | |
because of its simplicity and control. | :03:14. | :03:17. | |
Just seven months later, Baldwin moved into number ten. | :03:18. | :03:21. | |
He was to serve three terms as Prime Minister, | :03:22. | :03:24. | |
the last two being separated by a term as | :03:25. | :03:27. | |
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, | :03:43. | :03:46. | |
even in the eyes of members of the Labour Party. | :03:47. | :03:49. | |
They had a high regard for him, not least because | :03:50. | :03:52. | |
of the goodwill he showed them as they settled | :03:53. | :03:55. | |
into their new role as the second party in the state | :03:56. | :03:58. | |
following the decline of the Liberals, | :03:59. | :04:00. | |
Many Liberal voters became Tory supporters, attracted by | :04:01. | :04:06. | |
Baldwin's emollient style and policies. | :04:07. | :04:10. | |
It is impossible to imagine him shouting raucously | :04:11. | :04:14. | |
across the House with baying Tory hounds behind him | :04:15. | :04:17. | |
Consensus was the hallmark of his politics. | :04:18. | :04:26. | |
Social reform, the principal practical ingredient | :04:27. | :04:29. | |
of the conservatism with which he won the three largest | :04:30. | :04:32. | |
election victories in the party's history. | :04:33. | :04:36. | |
"Toryism expounded by him lost many of its repellent features," | :04:37. | :04:41. | |
one leading journalist said in explaining his wide appeal | :04:42. | :04:45. | |
Even in the two elections which Baldwin lost, | :04:46. | :04:50. | |
those of 1923 and 1929, the Tory party had the largest share | :04:51. | :04:55. | |
Under Baldwin, Britain finally became a fully democratic state. | :04:56. | :05:02. | |
He gave women the vote on the same terms as men in 1928. | :05:03. | :05:07. | |
The Baldwin years saw major advances in housing, education, | :05:08. | :05:11. | |
public health, insurance and pensions, foreshadowing a | :05:12. | :05:15. | |
distinctive Tory welfare state whose life was cut short when Churchill | :05:16. | :05:19. | |
placed responsibility for most of these areas of policy | :05:20. | :05:23. | |
in the hands of Labour ministers in his wartime coalition after 1940. | :05:24. | :05:29. | |
Atlee completed after 1945 what Churchill allowed | :05:30. | :05:34. | |
his party to start as wartime partners. | :05:35. | :05:37. | |
All that had happened before the war was lost to memory. | :05:38. | :05:42. | |
Who now recalls that with Baldwin in power, new houses were built | :05:43. | :05:46. | |
at the rate of 1000 a day, a million in all, | :05:47. | :05:49. | |
in just four years in the early 1930s? | :05:50. | :05:53. | |
Who now remembers the creation of the first | :05:54. | :05:55. | |
Under Stanley Baldwin, the social services budget became the largest | :05:56. | :06:02. | |
item in public spending for the first time. | :06:03. | :06:08. | |
Britain's welfare provision became the most advanced in the world. | :06:09. | :06:12. | |
Baldwin's Britain was disfigured by much grinding poverty. | :06:13. | :06:18. | |
In 1925, he visited the Glasgow slums, describing them as terrible, | :06:19. | :06:24. | |
though to his surprise, he had an amazing popular welcome with | :06:25. | :06:29. | |
Such conditions were not transformed in Baldwin's time, but they were | :06:30. | :06:36. | |
tackled with greater vigour than is often realised. | :06:37. | :06:40. | |
Baldwin's conservatism was progressive in character | :06:41. | :06:43. | |
and national in tone, as befitting a man who loved Scotland, | :06:44. | :06:48. | |
the home of his maternal MacDonald forbears, | :06:49. | :06:52. | |
and who devoted much time in the 1920s to Ulster's affairs, | :06:53. | :06:56. | |
with which he also had distant family connections, | :06:57. | :06:59. | |
while showing tact and skill in dealing with the leaders | :07:00. | :07:02. | |
of the newly created Irish Free State. | :07:03. | :07:06. | |
Thanks to him, goodwill was created between the leaders | :07:07. | :07:10. | |
of the two parts of Ireland in the 1920s. | :07:11. | :07:13. | |
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. | :07:24. | :07:28. | |
The famous Tory phrase was to echo down the years. | :07:29. | :07:32. | |
Disraeli wrote movingly in the 1840s about Britain's deep social divide, | :07:33. | :07:37. | |
Baldwin worked hard to try and heal it. | :07:38. | :07:44. | |
Addressing his party, on the 4th of December 1924, | :07:45. | :07:48. | |
in the aftermath of its biggest election victory ever, he said, | :07:49. | :07:53. | |
"We stand for the union of those two nations of which | :07:54. | :07:57. | |
Disraeli spoke two generations ago. | :07:58. | :08:00. | |
Union among our own people to make one nation of our own people, | :08:01. | :08:05. | |
which if secured, nothing else matters in the world." | :08:06. | :08:09. | |
After his death in 1881, the Tories put Disraeli | :08:10. | :08:14. | |
on a pedestal above their other leaders. | :08:15. | :08:17. | |
By the end of his career, Baldwin had been placed beside him. | :08:18. | :08:21. | |
Lord Crawford, a former Cabinet minister and Chief Whip, | :08:22. | :08:25. | |
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." | :08:32. | :08:37. | |
He was an idealist who told his party what it ought to do | :08:38. | :08:40. | |
He insisted in the 1930s that India must have | :08:41. | :08:47. | |
full internal self-government, facing down strong opposition | :08:48. | :08:52. | |
A rift appeared between the two colleagues who had worked together | :08:53. | :08:58. | |
in Government after Churchill's return to the Tory fold in 1924 | :08:59. | :09:03. | |
After 1930, Churchill adopted the role of die-hard imperialist | :09:04. | :09:12. | |
while Baldwin adhere to the liberal views which | :09:13. | :09:15. | |
both of them had previously espoused. | :09:16. | :09:18. | |
The rift deepened with the years and ended in bitterness | :09:19. | :09:22. | |
Baldwin, for his part, never spoke harshly of the man | :09:23. | :09:27. | |
whose political career he had rescued. | :09:28. | :09:31. | |
They disagreed too on the most important change in economic | :09:32. | :09:35. | |
policy that occurred during the Baldwin years - | :09:36. | :09:38. | |
the reintroduction of tariffs on imported goods to try and | :09:39. | :09:41. | |
protect the country's prosperity at a time of world depression. | :09:42. | :09:47. | |
Wrangling on this issue within the Tory party went on for years. | :09:48. | :09:52. | |
It nearly brought Baldwin down in 1930-31 as Churchill and others | :09:53. | :09:57. | |
colluded with press barons who wanted Baldwin's scalp and formed | :09:58. | :10:02. | |
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. | :10:14. | :10:17. | |
It became the best known, perhaps, of | :10:18. | :10:19. | |
the many vivid phrases that Baldwin produced. | :10:20. | :10:23. | |
Baldwin's final dispute with Churchill was the most bitter. | :10:24. | :10:27. | |
The issue, of course, Britain's rearmament in the 1930s, | :10:28. | :10:33. | |
which was to have a devastating impact on Baldwin's reputation | :10:34. | :10:36. | |
During his years of power, Baldwin emerged victorious | :10:37. | :10:42. | |
from his many Commons clashes with Churchill. | :10:43. | :10:45. | |
Lord Swinton, who served in Government under both of them, | :10:46. | :10:49. | |
recalls that Baldwin always got the better of Churchill | :10:50. | :10:53. | |
when Churchill was attacking him in the House of Commons. | :10:54. | :10:56. | |
Churchill admitted this to me many years later. | :10:57. | :10:59. | |
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." | :11:02. | :11:06. | |
Winston grunted, but he did not dissent. | :11:07. | :11:10. | |
In the mid-19th century, some Tory candidates described | :11:11. | :11:13. | |
themselves as liberal conservatives in their election literature. | :11:14. | :11:17. | |
The term had died away long before Baldwin's day, | :11:18. | :11:22. | |
but a liberal conservative is what he was, | :11:23. | :11:25. | |
firmly to the left of centre in the party's spectrum. | :11:26. | :11:30. | |
He drew on the liberal tradition in British politics | :11:31. | :11:32. | |
The first Tory in the Baldwin family was his father, Alfred, | :11:33. | :11:41. | |
a Conservative MP in later life but a Liberal activist | :11:42. | :11:44. | |
A cousin of his father's, Enoch Baldwin, | :11:45. | :11:50. | |
He married into a liberal family, the Ridsdales. | :11:51. | :11:56. | |
He had a brother-in-law who was a Liberal MP. | :11:57. | :12:00. | |
His mother's family, the McDonalds, had links with the early socialists. | :12:01. | :12:05. | |
He may not perhaps have been unduly surprised when his eldest son, | :12:06. | :12:09. | |
Oliver, a homosexual who lived openly with a partner | :12:10. | :12:13. | |
during the interwar years, joined the Labour Party. | :12:14. | :12:17. | |
Their relations were sometimes strained. | :12:18. | :12:20. | |
His father never expressed a word of criticism, only affection, | :12:21. | :12:24. | |
even when Oliver joined him in the Commons as Labour MP | :12:25. | :12:28. | |
for Dudley in 1929, a seat he held for two years, | :12:29. | :12:33. | |
losing it at the next election in 1931. | :12:34. | :12:38. | |
Stanley Baldwin is the only party leader to have faced a son | :12:39. | :12:41. | |
Oliver returned to the Commons for another two-year stint | :12:42. | :12:47. | |
after his father's retirement as a Labour MP for Paisley in 1945, | :12:48. | :12:51. | |
before becoming governor of the Leeward Islands, | :12:52. | :12:56. | |
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. | :13:06. | :13:13. | |
He followed their example by addressing large public meetings. | :13:14. | :13:18. | |
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 | :13:28. | :13:33. | |
and others before him had never been. | :13:34. | :13:36. | |
Through the newly established BBC, he spoke to millions in their homes, | :13:37. | :13:40. | |
talking straightforwardly and avoiding point-scoring. | :13:41. | :13:45. | |
As a broadcaster, he was in a class of his own. | :13:46. | :13:48. | |
No other politician of the time matched his skill. | :13:49. | :13:51. | |
"He might have been sitting in the chair beside me" | :13:52. | :13:54. | |
was a typical comment made to one of his ministers. | :13:55. | :13:57. | |
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 | :14:09. | :14:11. | |
in organisational terms, dispatched film vans across | :14:12. | :14:15. | |
the country spreading images of the Prime Minister about his duties. | :14:16. | :14:20. | |
Wherever he went, newsreel cameras and newspaper photographers | :14:21. | :14:24. | |
"Bovril does this sort of thing, but ought Baldwin do it?" | :14:25. | :14:33. | |
The answer was emphatically in the affirmative. | :14:34. | :14:37. | |
This year provides us with a golden opportunity to reflect on this | :14:38. | :14:41. | |
unusual, much loved man of deep humanity and understanding who | :14:42. | :14:45. | |
became one of our most successful peace time Prime Ministers. | :14:46. | :14:50. | |
2017 is replete with Baldwinian anniversaries. | :14:51. | :14:54. | |
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, | :15:03. | :15:12. | |
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 | :15:18. | :15:20. | |
of Bewdley KG amidst almost universal praise at a moment | :15:21. | :15:24. | |
of his own choosing, a rare thing in politics, | :15:25. | :15:28. | |
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 | :15:45. | :15:48. | |
the erection this year of a statue of him in Bewdley, Worcestershire, | :15:49. | :15:52. | |
his beloved birthplace which gave its name to the constituency | :15:53. | :15:56. | |
which he represented for nearly 30 years | :15:57. | :15:59. | |
and where he is still remembered with affection. | :16:00. | :16:02. | |
Funds to meet the costs of the statue are accumulating | :16:03. | :16:06. | |
following the launch of an appeal in the House of Lords | :16:07. | :16:09. | |
at the end of January and in Worcestershire last month. | :16:10. | :16:12. | |
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. | :16:54. | :16:57. | |
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. |