Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin (1920)

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley , KG , PC , (born August 3, 1867 in Bewdley , Worcestershire , † December 14, 1947 in Astley Hall near Stourport-on-Severn ) was one of the most influential conservative politicians in Great Britain in the interwar period . In the years from 1923 to 1937 he held the office of Prime Minister three times .

Life

Promotion and first term

In 1908 the industrialist Stanley Baldwin was elected to succeed his father Alfred Baldwin (1841-1908) as MP for the constituency of Bewdley in the British House of Commons . He made a name for himself with the Tories as a representative of a strictly conservative, industry-friendly course.

He gained his first government experience in 1917 as Deputy Chancellor of the Exchequer in the coalition government of the last Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George . In 1921 he was appointed Minister of Commerce. The following year, Baldwin was instrumental in the fall of Lloyd George at the Carlton Club meeting . His conservative successor Andrew Bonar Law made him his Chancellor of the Exchequer. When Bonar Law resigned from office in May 1923 because of cancer , Baldwin was elected the new Prime Minister as a Tory leader. In negotiations with the US government , he tried in vain to obtain a cancellation of British debts from the First World War .

Second term

After an interruption from January to November 1924 due to the tenure of the first Labor premier Ramsay MacDonald , Baldwin was Prime Minister until the general election in 1929 . During this time the general strike took place from May 4 to November 30, 1926 . Unlike at the beginning of his political career, he now advocated a moderate policy of balancing interests with the workers . Against the resistance of parts of his own party (such as Winston Churchills ) he tried to get the unemployment under control through protective tariffs and advocated cooperation between employers and unions in arbitration commissions .

In terms of foreign policy, at the beginning of his term in office in November 1924, there was a serious crisis with the Kingdom of Egypt , which Great Britain had granted independence in 1922 , for the status of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan .

Following the general election of May 30, 1929, initially an opposition leader , he joined MacDonald's second cabinet as Lord President of the Council after the early election of October 27, 1931 . Baldwin was seen as the gray eminence of this cabinet, whose policy, as the “secret prime minister”, he had an essential say in.

After Germany left the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933 , Baldwin gave up the desired international disarmament of the air forces and aimed at retrofitting the Royal Air Force in order to minimize the risk of an attack on England. He agreed with Neville Chamberlain to keep the peace at "almost any price" but to be able to safely repel a possible German attack. However, Baldwin did not see compensating deficits in defense as a contribution to an international arms race. He also made increased armaments efforts dependent on the support of the electorate, which initially seemed rather weak.

Third term

After the general election on November 14, 1935 , Baldwin became Prime Minister for the third time. In terms of foreign policy, he had no illusions about the character of Hitler's and Stalin's rule. He felt contempt for fascism and Bolshevism alike. The fact that he considered Soviet Bolshevism to be the greater threat to society in no way meant that he was ready for a British-German anti-Soviet alliance. England's security would be best served if both totalitarian states were at war with one another. On the other hand, Baldwin feared in the mid-1930s that a French victory over Germany might lead to a Bolshevization of Germany.

In the abdication crisis surrounding King Edward VIII , Baldwin strongly advocated his abdication. The main reason for this was not his reservations about Edward's planned wedding to the divorced American Wallis Simpson . Baldwin rejected the king's uncritical stance towards Hitler's Germany and his stubborn view of the king's role in the constitution.

At his leaving office Baldwin was as Earl Baldwin of Bewdley in the hereditary nobility raised. After his death, he was in the Golders Green Crematorium in London cremated , his urn in Worcester Cathedral buried.

Help for refugees

On December 8, 1938, Stanley Baldwin launched an appeal to the British public on the BBC, raising the very substantial sum of £ 500,000 for the Lord Baldwin Fund for Refugees. A large part of this money went to the Kindertransport . But they also served to finance the work of British refugee committees such as the Germany Emergency Committee (GEC).

About Baldwin

"Baldwin knew little about Europe and he disliked what little he knew."

- Winston Churchill

literature

• Keith Middlemas, Anthony John Lane Barnes: Baldwin. A biography. Macmillan, 1970. (English)
• Philip Williamson: Stanley Baldwin. Conservative Leadership and National Values. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-43227-8 . (English)
• Kenneth Young: Stanley Baldwin. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976. (English)

Sound recordings:

• Appeal for Jewish and non-Aryan Christian Refugees , HMV C-96/97, December 8, 1938

Web links

Commons : Stanley Baldwin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Stanley Baldwin  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Stanley Baldwin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Stanley Baldwin in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Stanley Baldwin in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Files Edition . Weimar Republic
• BBC English language website on Baldwin's policy during the abdication crisis

Individual evidence

1. ^ Philip Williamson: Stanley Baldwin. Conservative Leadership and National Values , Cambridge 1999, p. 306.
2. ^ Philip Williamson, p. 310.
3. ^ Philip Williamson, p. 317.
4. ^ Philip Williamson, p. 317.
5. ^ Philip Williamson, p. 317.
6. ↑ Article Kindertransport in the Encyclopaedia Britannica & Kindertransport . In support of the GEC see: Charmian Brinson and William Kaczynski: Fleeing from the Führer. A postal History of Refugees from the Nazis , The History Press, Stroud, 2011, ISBN 0-7524-6195-8 , p. 99.

predecessor	Office	successor
Andrew Bonar Law Ramsay MacDonald Ramsay MacDonald	British Prime Minister 1923-1924 1924-1929 1935-1937	Ramsay MacDonald Ramsay MacDonald Neville Chamberlain
New title created	Earl Baldwin of Bewdley 1937-1947	Oliver Baldwin