So it proved to be on this occasion. The real restriction of his freedom arose not so much from the restraints of his colleagues as from the fact that his Plymouth speech inevitably created an election atmosphere which he found difficult to control. In the early days of November the members of the Cabinet fell to arguing not whether there should be an election at all upon the issue, but exactly when it should take place. They fell into three groups: at once, January, and April. These groups did not coincide with any previous line-up on the merits of the protectionist issue. The confusion, fortified by a fear on the part of some members that they were going to be asked to make way for Austen Chamberlain and Birkenhead, gave Baldwin almost complete freedom.
On 12 November he decided in favour of an election on 6 December. That afternoon he saw the King, who tried to dissuade him, but, as King George V recorded it: ‘He assured me that it was absolutely necessary for him to appeal to the Country as he had gone so far that it was not possible for him to change his mind.’
9
So much for the need of a Prime Minister to obtain the Sovereign’s ‘permission’ for a dissolution of Parliament. The King rather shrewdly asked whether Baldwin had the support of his colleagues in the House of Lords. Baldwin turned the question by saying that ‘several of them were, perhaps, too Conservative and did not want a change.’ None of them pushed their opposition to the point of resignation, although there was a good deal of muttering and discussion. Negotiations to bring Austen Chamberlain and Birkenhead into the Government broke down.
The King also asked whether the election would not reunite the Liberal Party. ‘Yes,’ said Baldwin, ‘and no bad thing either.’ That was not the unity of which he was frightened. Lloyd George had already boxed the compass by declaring himself an ‘unrepentant and convinced free trader’; Baldwin’s policy, he said, was ‘unutterable folly’. He and Asquith even appeared together on the same platform.
Throughout the campaign Baldwin believed he was going to win. So did his party agents. On 4 December, the Conservative Central Office predicted a majority of 87. He set off cheerfully for a final phase in Worcestershire, saying complacently, ‘I don’t want any bands here when I come back.’
10
There was no danger of embarrassing musical honours. The Government found itself not in a majority of 87 but in a minority of 92. The Conservatives remained the largest party, with 257 seats, but Labour and Liberal combined were 349. The Liberal gains were bigger, but Labour, with 191 seats, remained the second largest party. Baldwin returned to Downing Street as a defeated Prime Minister. The policy which he had put before the country had been decisively rejected. There could be no question of his continuing in office. Almost any other arrangement was possible. There could be a switch to another Conservative Prime Minister, who, uninvolved in the protection
débâcle,
might hope for at any rate some Liberal support. There could be a ‘non-party’ Government under a venerable statesman of broad appeal: Grey’s name was mentioned. There could be an Asquith Government with Conservative support and possibly participation; but this would make a charade of the issue on which the election had been fought. There could be an Asquith Government with Labour support and participation; but this ran directly counter to the whole Labour belief in independence, and would in any event mean the greater opposition party accepting the leadership of the lesser one. Or there could be a straight MacDonald Government, with Liberal support but without Liberal participation.
Of all these possibilities the first was the one which would
have been most damaging to Baldwin. It would have meant humiliation, and the end, without much chance of resurrection, of one of the shortest-lived and most disastrous party leaderships in British political history. Baldwin might have precipitated this had he resigned immediately. At first he thought he should. There was a good deal of plotting in the Cabinet, and amongst the dissident ex-Coalitionists. Balfour hovered on the edge of the plot. Then he pronounced himself in favour of Baldwin remaining in office to meet Parliament. This had the advantage of giving a Christmas respite of six weeks. It was perfectly proper constitutionally. There was a confused position and Baldwin was entitled to continue until the oppositions could show that they could and would defeat him in the House of Commons. It also had the advantage of avoiding any suddenness in the Baldwins’ departure from Chequers and 10 Downing Street. After a day or two of hesitation, Baldwin decided on this course.
The plot then fell away. There was a good deal of continued muttering, but no real alternative Conservative leader available. In the meantime, opinion began to move towards the last of the possibilities—and the one which suited Baldwin the best—a minority Labour Government. Asquith pronounced that this was the right course, and that was decisive, particularly as Baldwin agreed with him. The great experiment would take place with MacDonald able to count upon less than a third of the members of the House of Commons. He could hardly be more circumscribed. The traditional parties could hardly feel safer.
As these matters became settled, Baldwin’s mood became almost euphoric. He went off happily for Christmas in Worcestershire:
We had snow from London to the Cotswolds and then it turned soft [he wrote to the Davidsons]. Yesterday was a jewel for beauty. Transparently clear, all the country in a deep russet dress, long, vividly bright, horizontal
sunshine casting long shadows in the morning; a dull midday and then a divine evening. I wrote sixty-two letters of thanks…. This is a time for hanging out signals to our friends.
11
As his impending defeat in the House of Commons approached, he became still more cheerful. On the evening when he was to undergo the experience, unique for a Prime Minister of this century, of winding up a debate with the certain knowledge of defeat at the end of his speech, Tom Jones saw him in his room behind the Speaker’s chair. ‘I have not felt so well for a long time,’ he told the ever-comforting Jones, ‘and shall be tempted to be very vulgar in my speech.’
12
His ‘vulgarity’ did not extend much further than a quotation from Dryden, but he spoke with gusto and good humour. The Government went down by 71 votes and after a short Cabinet on the next morning (22 January 1924) he drove to Buckingham Palace and resigned. MacDonald took office the same afternoon.
Baldwin had two immediate tasks to perform in opposition. He had to make it clear that he had learnt his lesson on tariff reform, and to do this in a way as compatible as possible with the dignity of an ex-Prime Minister. Derby, with the support of Salvidge,
7
his Liverpool henchman, was making this difficult by trying to conduct a growling inquest into the whole election strategy. Baldwin lanced this boil fairly quickly and quietly by an announcement to a party meeting on 11 February: ‘I do not feel justified in advising the party again to submit the proposal for a general tariff to the country except on the clear evidence that on this matter public opinion is disposed to reconsider its judgment of two months ago.’ It was a little circumlocutory, but it is never wise for a politican to use ringing words to announce a retreat.
His second task was to bring Austen Chamberlain back into
full communion. This was easier in opposition than in government. No policy orthodoxy had to be imposed and no places had to be found for clients of the former leader who wished to be junior ministers. There was only the perennial problem of Birkenhead. ‘If Birkenhead stood alone,’ Baldwin self-righteously pronounced, ‘I would not touch him with a barge-pole.’
13
But Birkenhead did not stand alone. Austen Chamberlain, despite his limitations, was an ally of a staunchness rarely seen in politics. Baldwin had a reconciliation dinner with Austen at Neville Chamberlain’s house on 4 February. He made an offer to Austen, and authorized him to convey one to Birkenhead. Both were accepted. Sir Robert Home also joined the Shadow Cabinet. ‘So reunion has come at last, thanks, I think I may say, to me,’ Neville Chamberlain wrote to his sister.
14
Thanks to whoever it was, Baldwin by the spring of 1924 was making surprisingly good progress toward the political objectives which he had set himself the previous autumn. His morale was moderately high, but no more. He had private troubles, associated both with his eldest son and with a shortage of money. Baldwins Ltd had paid no dividend for several years running. His income was less than a half of what it had been before 1914, and he was losing capital too. The value of the firm’s shares, which had been 50/- when he made his generous ‘F.S.T.’ gesture, fell steadily from 1920 onwards until they reached 3/6 in 1927 and then went down to 1/8 in 1931. Of course he had some other assets, but the collapse of the central part of his fortune did not make for buoyancy.
Nor did he enjoy the business of parliamentary opposition. His
forte
as Prime Minister was taking the heat out of debates and convincing the House of the reasonableness of the Government’s approach. It was a technique which by its very nature was unsuited for use from the front opposition bench. He recognized his limitations, but he made little attempt to develop another technique. He was a gentle opponent to a weak Government.
Both his attitude and his easy pattern of life is well-illustrated by Tom Jones’s account of a morning in April that year. Jones was in his room in the Cabinet Offices, carrying on the routine business of a Labour Government, of which paradoxically he was throughout his life a consistent voting supporter, but enjoying none of the intimacy with MacDonald which he had achieved with each of the three preceding Prime Ministers.
I was in the middle of papers [he wrote] when Mr Stanley Baldwin was announced at the door. I was startled for a moment, as one does not have ex-Prime Ministers calling on one every day, but this was very like S.B., who began, ‘You will never come to see me, so I thought I would come to see you.’ We gossiped for half an hour in the office and then walked up to the United Universities Club and had lunch. After asking how I was getting on he told me something of the worries of a Party leader in days when there are no deep political convictions to divide men of good will. He had some troublesome followers who were clamouring for a positive policy without being able to suggest one. The one he had offered had been rejected. There was nothing for it but to await events. … He joked about having to go on making speeches without my help….
15
Outside the House Baldwin forced the pace a little more. In May and June he made an important and successful series of speeches throughout the country, laying down a social reform policy for a future Conservative Government. The effect of these was temporarily marred by an interview of quite startling indiscretion which he gave to the
People
newspaper, then very right-wing and hardly distinguished. It was a surprising vehicle for Baldwin to choose. Probably the Conservative Central Office had arranged it. He saw an unknown reporter alone and did not check the copy. As a result the paper came out with the most terrifying remarks allegedly made by Baldwin about some
of the political figures of the day, notably Beaverbrook, but also Lloyd George and others. Denials had to be issued, if only to reduce the risk of libel. The further trouble was that the ‘unknown’ journalist had caught Baldwin’s method of expression, and indeed his private views, almost perfectly. Few were much convinced by the denials, and the proprietor, editor and staff of the
People
were quite naturally furious at this behaviour on the part of ‘Honest Stanley’. It left a little dent in his reputation, but like most such incidents, was a quickly subsiding storm in a teacup.
All things considered, he departed for Aix in that summer of 1924 in calmer mind than in either of the two previous years. The Labour Government’s hold on office was manifestly tenuous. A third quick election was clearly a possibility. His chances of winning it with a reunited party and a substantial majority were good. So long as he did so, his leadership was not under challenge.
Parliament reassembled after only a seven-week recess on 30 September. The future of the Government was at risk over the ratification of treaties with the Soviet Union. In the event it was heavily defeated on 8 October on the issue of the Campbell Case
8
. The campaign was disfigured by Conservative exploitation of the forged Zinoviev letter
9
and of the Bolshevik issue
generally. Baldwin soiled his hands a little, but not excessively. His general note was one of chiding MacDonald for the weakness of his control over his own extremists and suggesting that what the country needed was men of practical experience, breadth of view and lack of dogmatic commitment.
His most effective performance—except that there were not at that stage a great many people who were able to listen—was his broadcast. No one really knew how the new technique should be handled. MacDonald decided, naturally but disastrously, that the obvious objective was to import into the living rooms of the wireless-owning population the soaring platform oratory which so moved his immediate audiences. The BBC broadcast him live from a mass meeting in Glasgow. He sounded ranting and inconsequential. Baldwin by contrast spoke intimately from the office of the Director-General. The result was a triumph. He had found a method of neutralising MacDonald’s most effective political quality—his inspirational personal presence.
The result of the election was also a triumph. The Conservatives increased their vote by the sensational proportion of 37 per cent. They won 419 seats, against 151 for Labour and 40 (a loss of 116) for the Liberals. Almost the only place where the Conservatives did badly was the normally impregnable Birmingham. This hardly diminished Baldwin’s sense of personal victory. He had been unopposed at Bewdley, but his two principal colleagues, the Chamberlain brothers, found their majorities uncomfortably reduced, Neville’s to the very edge of defeat.