Mr. Baldwin

Introduction

This is an attempt to analyse what has been the most important, if the least spectacular political leadership in the age in which we live. Beyond all the figures that the War has left in old age and high office, Mr. Baldwin stands out pre-eminently. He has supported in its collapse a great political party and its creed. He has represented the public opinion of a dejected and disconsolate nation in a critical phase of its history. He has played his part in the closing cycle of a political system of which the standing form has belied the tottering fabric. Without the ability to provide the leadership which the nation required, he has proved himself to be the best leader that the nation could produce. Praise of him is silent, condemnation of him is of post¬ war statesmen generally, of a vulgarised public and of a decadent system. In a period of bewilderment in civilisa¬ tion it was Mr. Baldwin who was thrust up as a figure to preside with urbanity over conferences and crises the significance of which their promoters can have never under¬ stood. From Washington to Ottawa he has drifted on the tide, blamed for a lack of vision, which he has shared generally with his times.

The fact that neither Mrs. Baldwin nor the family of the ex-Prime Minister are mentioned in these pages is an attempt at least to honour Mr. Baldwin with a criticism of his statesmanship devoid of sentiment. When it was shown that he exercised the greatest virtue in his family life it would only add, not to the greatness of his career, but to the nausea of modem politics. He is judged here by the eternal criteria by which those who aspire to high office

vii

INTRODUCTION viii

in the land must stand or fall A public that requires the levities of sentiment is self-confessed of its incapacity to vote or to form any political judgment. That the sove¬ reign people is largely moved by sentiment is only an explanation of the insult that democracy has paid to what¬ ever science there may be in politics. The attempt here is seriously to criticise a leader, his policy, and his times for those who question the future and learn their lessons from the past. Because a man who becomes Prime Minister has taken on himself (in reality) the duties of a sovereign ruler he must be judged by standards which are esoteric. The demagogue has become so commonplace in public life that only in comparison to him are leaders usually criti¬ cised. A demagogue, it has been forgotten, is only inter¬ esting provided he is unscrupulous enough, but in any case he is unworthy of English politics. Mr. Baldwin is criticised as a statesman and not as the darling of any section of the community or in any of the poses in which propa¬ ganda from time to time has placed him. He is often condemned in relation to positions to which he has aspired, but to make personal allowances would be to sacrifice the art of statesmanship to the tender conscience of the individual.

It must be remembered that Mr. Baldwin has governed in an age when the great statesman might have sought retirement rather than face its indignity. The ambition of some of Mr. Baldwin’s rivals may have been slaked by their pride, but this seems improbable at a time so barren in personalities and so rife in innocent futility, Mr. Baldwin has not been great, but alone in any momentary greatness he may have achieved. If in the criticism of Tiim or of the Conservative Party there is any charge of iconoclasm it is unjustified. No hostility is intended. The key¬ note of Conservatism is authority, and the attempt in these pages is to goad that authority to justify itself. It is to destroy with the vision in mind of a greater image an 4 not to insult from jealousy or fear. It is an attempt to

INTRODUCTION ix

analyse the often undeliberate and sometimes petulant commands of a party leader and to detect where they became shorn of the sanction to command obedience. The fact that Mr. Baldwin has been an able party politician and that there has been none abler in his times, is accepted as a postulate. Nevertheless, it would show indifference to pass no comment when a statesman has immolated himself and sacrificed the time-honoured political creed which he held in trust. The cause of Conservatism demands some inquiry and some investigation of Mr. Baldwin’s career.

Mr. Baldwin is seen to be mystified and confused. He is a man not without ambition, but who has outbid his capacity, and his intellect. At a time when progress should have brought enjoyment to office he found its rigours multiplied. He was faced with economics beyond political control, with science run riot, with people demoralised, and political wisdom at the same moment sacrificed to a hundred years of democracy. At a time when only the greatest statesman could possess the power to co-ordinate the ramifications of contemporary life, Mr. Baldwin came forward with no claims to more than average ability. Nervously watching his public and distracted by the tech¬ nique of an over-organised existence, he was called upon to simplify and make straight the way. In such circum¬ stances it is natural that although he has never lacked real prestige, he has never possessed more than nominal power.

Mr. Baldwin is criticised for his failures in constructive statesmanship. The fact is not disguised, however, that the constructive act has often been beyond his ability, and more especially beyond that of any of his colleagues. His negative acts can be considered as great contributions to the welfare of his country. More than one crisis and more than one individual career has broken itself as a result of his tactful inaction. In the case of the General Strike and the Financial Crisis he was face to face with the doom of

X

INTRODUCTION the English people. By minor measures within his power he has done something to alleviate the burden on produc¬ tive industry. He has given of himself and of his fortune freely at a time of supreme crisis. Nevertheless, the criticism here is prompted not by the failure to appreciate the vir¬ tues, so much as by the conviction that the big constructive acts cannot be put off indefinitely. Here is but a warning of an approaching cataclysm and a recognition of the fact that as long as Mr. Baldwin leads the right, leadership is at a general disadvantage. Loyalty is appealed for, which makes loyalty by the self-respecting an impossibility. Discredited political values are enthroned heedless of their re-assessment and a changed outlook which bums for selfexpression. Mr. Baldwin has played a distinguished part, but all that he came to vindicate still waits to be avenged.

Contents

CHAPTER I'AGtt

Introduction ...... vn

I. The Industrial Revolution 1

Chapter II

When Mr. Baldwin left Harrow he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was there during the mastership of Dr. Montague Butler. In that large college he retained his individualism without aspiring to the corporate honours of University life. The natural indolence resulting from an only childhood was probably not moved by ambition during his University days. He did not take his University career seriously and professed to regret the fact in later life. On one occasion he said:—

" If there is one thing more than another of which I feel ashamed to-day, it is to think how I, with the chances I had in youth—and I venture to think with the capacity to take equal advantage of them—wasted so much time when I was at the University and failed to follow in the footsteps of those who had gone before me with far less advantages. But these things come home to us as we get older.”

Mr. Baldwin once raised his voice in debate, but only within the walls of his own college. He is reputed to have been caught smoking his pipe in cap and gown, and to have received the usual punishment at the hands of the proctors. He neither excelled in sport nor in learning but that does not prove that his time was wasted. The benefits of a University life usually come not from the things done but the things which are left undone. He at

*7 least had the opportunity to contemplate the world of affairs around him.

Mr. Baldwin's only vice appears to have been reading constitutional history. It seems strange that such an uninspiring subject should have appealed to a young mind. It perhaps revealed political ambitions. The pride in constitutional forms was very strong in those days. The theory of the sovereignty of Parliament was considered the very perfection of human political wisdom. Great scholars like Dicey wrote at this period unmindful that the subject of their work was planning a transformation all the while. Dicey actually lived to admit it in a later edition of his work. Even Parliamentary government can grow tired and old fashioned. A wide reading of history is a stimulus to the use of the imagination, and a good corrective to “ the party man.” Nevertheless, Mr. Baldwin at this period would have curbed his highest ambitions within the scope of Parliamentary form.

Distinguished sons of Oxford usually leave their names enrolled in the memories of succeeding generations; at Cambridge men who later attain fame tend to depart unknown. It was in 1888 that Mr. Baldwin came of age and entered the Industrial world. This was seemingly the natural course. He entered his father’s business as his father’s partner and continued in the firm for twenty years.

During those years the country generally experienced the commencement of acute industrial unrest. It was the result of that period described above as the fungoid growth of irresponsible wealth. The Taff Vale Case in 1903 had been followed by the Trades Dispute Act of 1906. That Act Mr. Baldwin was himself, as Prime Minister, to re-enact. The power of the Trade Unions was on the wax. The strike and lock-out were becoming the weapons of industrial dispute. Mr. Baldwin, however, took a personal interest in his workpeople, and helped to keep peace among them during this period. If irresponsible capital was the cause' of Socialism Mr. Baldwin would not have been able to appreciate it from his own experiences. Industry was to him a family affair. Capital and labour were not distinct and mutually hostile forces. Everybody worked in the original belief that they could attain through the industry a better life. Mr. Baldwin considered it his duty to honour his obligations to his work-people and expected them, in their turn, to take his interests to heart. The unwritten code of trust had not as then given way to the rules of Trade Unions and Employers' Associations. Liberalism was only threatening to create mistrust. The corporate business in which both masters and men had a place had not entirely passed. Soon that wonderful system for utilising the resources of nature with the minimum of human friction would be unknown. Mr. Baldwin started as a young man under the old conditions.

During the South African War, Mr. Baldwin’s father paid the subscriptions to their Friendly Societies of those men who had " served.” During the Great War, Mr. Baldwin did the same. On one occasion he paid the wages of his workpeople during a stoppage over which they had no control. The strike was actually in an allied industry. Speaking in the House of Commons in 1925 he recalled this incident. He said:—

“I remember very well the impact from the outside world that came on us, that showed how industry was changing in this country. Nothing had interrupted the even tenor of our ways for many years, until one day there came a great strike in the coal-fields; it was one of the earlier strikes and it became a national strike.

"We tried to carry on as long as we could but, of course, it became more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after furnace was damped down and the chimneys ceased to smoke and about a thousand men, who had no interest in the dispute that was going on, were thrown out of work, through no fault of their own, at a time when there was no unemployment benefit.

" I confess that the event set me thinking very hard.

“ It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men, because I looked on them as my own family and it hit me very hard—I would not have mentioned this only it got into the Press two or three years ago—and I made them an allowance; not a large one but something for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt that they were being so unfairly treated.”

This is but one incident where Mr. Bald-win had shown himself actuated by a high sense of duty and a belief that the righteous would come into their kingdom. The idealism was perhaps dangerous that lived in the conviction that others would do unto you as you had done unto them. Nevertheless, it was right to confine his responsibilities to his own dependants. Mr. Wickham Steed, writing on Mr. Baldwin, has said that “he hardly foresaw how the process of industrial mechanisation and amalgamation would work themselves out, or felt that clear forethought was as urgently needed as rightmindedness.” That is untrue.

In this speech delivered in the House of Commons on March 6th, 1925, Mr. Baldwin showed that he had clearly foreseen the calamities ahead, and in a detailed psychological analysis of the situation confronting industry displayed the clearest forethought. Forethought, however, is of no avail without the means to enforce a remedy. Rightminded¬ ness in the circumstances is a far more valuable contribution to the situation than a Royal Commission which under Parliamentary government appears to be the only alterna¬ tive. Mr. Baldwin was in a position to see that these growing organisations of masters and men were bound to clash. Such titanic combinations of money slaves and industrial exploiters could not long exist within a nation without bringing the entire community to starvation. To-day that threat is so menacing that the strike and lock-out are probably dead as political weapons. If Mr. Baldwin is judged as an industrial leader his attitude has only been that of an experienced and practical man. He has known the causes, which has been more than most people have known, and no one has known the remedy. The fool has shouted, do something practical when he has conceived something intensely unpractical. Mr. Baldwin can be criticised as a statesman, since as a statesman he should have known the remedy, discovered the practical course, or else retired.

Working under his father as a young man, Mr. Baldwin had respected the traditions that governed his own business. The real handicap to industry is that traditions have not, as a rule, the opportunity to arise. Mr. Baldwin learned early that ethical considerations applied to trade as well as to the other walks of national life. He perhaps did not grasp that tradition was the safeguard of ethics and morals the result of custom. He had witnessed as a practical act his father’s contribution to his employees during the South African War and he, as was seen, had done the same for the men of the West Worcestershire Division during the late War. No individual could perform a more practical act towards public good feeling. When Mr. Baldwin was Prime Minister with a huge majority after 1924 he never made a contribution that was half as practical. Acts of individual understanding and endeavour saved the nation from the General Strike while he and Parliament were powerless. The individual attains to heaven by his own exertions. Parliament was not designed to assist him. Mr. Baldwin knows that he can be more powerful and effective as a local leader than he can as Prime Minister. When 3,000 Oddfellows representing 14 Lodges presented him with a silver rose bowl he gave the soundest advice that has fallen from the lips of any public man this century: "Cherish the spirit of the Friendly Society," he said, "for in it lies the possibility for restoring the nation to material and spiritual prosperity," His own words at Stourport in February, 1924, must be repeated as crystallising his experience in these early years of business:—

"It is not wasting words to try to realise what the great Friendly Society movement stands for. Like many other things it is of pure English growth and owes its origin to the common people, from whom many of the best things we possess come. It springs, as it were, from the soil, and has been a great instrument during a period of rapid change in instructing our people in some of the greatest of the principles which guide their lives, as well as in branches of work and learning in many subjects in which they could have no other teacher.

"Immersed as my life has become in political work, I am glad that in the Friendly Society movement we know no politics. Politics have such powers of penetrating most things that I am thankful that this movement has never been captured by any of the political machines. And I hope its leaders will see to it in the future that it remains a thing apart.

"A man entering a court or lodge gets his first insight into the common problems of Government; learns to control himself by working with others; and learns to work with others for the benefit of others, and to exercise discrimination and judgment. I have also seen how the savings of the many can be utilised to fertilise public services and the social activities of the country. The whole spirit of the movement'is service for others, a spirit which is more wanted in England, and in every other country of the world to day, than any other; but because of the great influence and position of our country there is no other in which the spirit needs to be more manifested, since the greater part of mankind looks to us as the one country which they hope and believe -will set the example to the world in the stability and probity of its finances and in its willingness to be of service to the rest of the distracted world. By teaching our own people the spirit of service which the Friendly Societies inculcate, we are playing our part in making our democracy fitter and nobler, and by doing that we are not only helping

ourselves but the whole world.”

An analysis of these words reveals four vital observa¬ tions based on Mr. Baldwin’s personal experience. First, that the structure of society to be permanent must be of pure English growth; that real leadership and real action are the outcrop of a solid racial seam. Racial pride is the only effective curb on self-interest, for which every indus¬ trial scheme this century has broken down. The unpa¬ triotic diffusion of individual energy has undoubtedly placed England at a disadvantage compared with those contin¬ ental countries that have been forced by disasters to become gregarious. Mr. Baldwin realises that the group of men which helps each other helps the State, whereas'the indivi¬ dual who helps himself disintegrates the State. The tragedy is that the abuse of race interests has caused a material advance that has concealed political decadence.

Secondly, Mr. Baldwin observed that disaster must over¬ take any society which became attached to a political party. This must now be the experience of the T.U.C. and certainly has been of the House of Lords. The former has paid for the follies of Socialism, the latter has lost its prestige by taking the Conservative Party’s "Whip.” In the one case the guardians of the people's freedom have become a revolutionary factor in the State; in the other the leaders in disinterested public service have been sys¬ tematised into a mere section of the Constitution. If any axiom hangs on Mr. Baldwin’s observation it is that organised opinion destroys a natural Catholicism in political life, and that the sectarian bias is bound eventually to destroy the sect.

In the third place, Mr. Baldwin realised that the Friendly Society was a means of teaching the humblest citizen to shoulder the burdens of administrative responsibility. Delegated and localised power represents greater political energy in a community than centralised government.

Dependence on the paternal power of a central government represents a return to the patriarchal state, which marks the loss of political impetus in a nation. Mr. Lloyd George sounded the death knell of the Friendly Society and the Trade Union by his National Health Insurance Act in 1911. Having removed the administrative duties from the leaders of labour to the State, the only task left to the Labour* leader was political agitation. The finance and organisations of the Friendly Societies and the Trade Unions came under direct political control and powerful leaders could be bribed away from their own districts by the lure of a political salary. In localities less paternally cared for than Mr. Baldwin’s the ordinary citizen lost his only oppor¬ tunity of ventilating his grievances. The very character of the voluntary organisation was changed and the natural leaders, from being men of local standing and influence, became salaried clerks who were as often "carpet baggers” as the Parliamentary representatives themselves. By the degrading process of stamping cards the social structure of England was undermined and only the Insurance Com¬ panies have reaped the benefit. The Friendly Society may well grow up in a new form while the fabric of Whitehall breaks away. Scientific government can overleap itself in the same way as the peasant in some parts of the world is following a primitive plough in sight of scientific culti¬ vation. If any force attacked the capital of the Insurance Companies sunk in municipal loans and overseas invest¬ ments, mass starvation could well be the alternative to the pauperism of the thriftless and the indigent, who gave Mr. Lloyd George his power. Mr. Baldwin recognises the importance of local independence in politics.

In contrast to this depth of understanding Mr. Baldwin’s fourth observation is hard to reconcile. "By teaching our people/’ he said, "the spirit of service which the Friendly Societies inculcate, we are playing our part in making our democracy fitter and nobler. ...” The whole idea is nebulous. Here was one of those loose dicta about democracy which meant nothing. It was democracy which smothered the Friendly Society; the two were not compa¬ tible. Individual responsibility could not be reconciled to the "carpet bagger,” the panel doctor, or the education official. Either the spirit of the Friendly Society or democ¬ racy had to perish. Mr. Baldwin had learned from experi¬ ence that beyond the spirit of the local self help was chaos, but perhaps his respect for constitutional development led him to tolerate the new centralised administration. So far as democracy is concerned Mr. Baldwin has always thought the half greater than the whole. He would not be so glib in his praise if he realised that what he most disliked was only the logical fulfilment of that system of govern¬ ment.

Mr. Rudyard Kipling has said of his cousin that he was "not a politician but a good Conservative.” Mr. Baldwin is a Conservative of the old type, now almost extinct. He has never received his salary as a Member of Parliament. He has not looked to the Party to protect his own par¬ ticular vested interests. He has never used the modern system to its full capacity. When he speaks of democracy he speaks of a phase; the phase he knew in these early days, when democracy was not existing but creating. It took three quarters of a century from the passing of the Great Reform Bill for democratic government to materialise. The Duke of Wellington was not so much wrong in his warning of 1832 as premature. When Mr. Baldwin formed his ideas on the Constitution and on democracy he was in the intermittent period; he cannot have thought clearly enough to appreciate the causes working out to their logical effects. He would not have seen that representative govern¬ ment did not represent minorities, who were at times the most important sections of the public. He subscribed to the Conservatism of the strong "party man.” That is a commonplace, but not an intellectual attitude. Loyalty to a sect is virtuous, but more dangerous politically than disloyalty. The loyalty of the Socialist to his Union is equally praiseworthy, but also dangerous. Mr. Baldwin cannot seriously respect a system of which the logical result is sectarianism; with the final achievements of Parlia¬ mentary government all loyalty became mere subservience to anarchic opinions.

In 1906 Mr. Baldwin contested Kidderminster. The Tariff Reform election in a provincial town has now become an almost romantic moment in English history. In those days the old party system still controlled the opinions of the people. Liberalism was only achieving and democracy was growing. The returned Member became a man of some standing who could play his part at Westminster with effect. There were local problems he could deal with in those days and not the vast national problems over which even the Cabinet has little control. The election of a candidate would rouse the highest passions of the opposi¬ tion. It was a matter of importance to most people which way the scales should turn, since to a nation of traders whose supremacy was unassailed an election could mean a difference of from ten pounds to a thousand. At that time opposition was considered healthy. The idea of allow¬ ing one board of directors to oppose another had not crossed men’s minds. England made her fortune without shame. Women were only onlookers, and awaited their men-folk, who even fell to breaking windows in the streets.

Of the townspeople many had come newly from the country and carried a freshness in their demeanour; the long rows of red villas had not begun to ooze with grime. A close elevation of chimneys up the hilly streets often fell against a background of rich English parkland. The polls were announced in market squares from the Georgian por¬ ticoes of old-fashioned hotels. If any building was preten¬ tious it was usually the Town Hall, whose pseudo-Gothic lines displayed the name of some pious benefactor. Such was the setting of the General Election which from being a happy diversion in the nation’s life has now become a public nuisance.

The worst feature of these elections was the descent of the candidates to the level of their electors. A high standard of manners ought to be considered an achievement and not prostituted to the vagaries of a voter. "We are a little gathering,” Mr. Baldwin said on one occasion, "of Wor¬ cestershire people, here wholly for the benefit of Worcester¬ shire and we do not care “ a little tuppence ” about people outside. We are going to talk about ourselves.” From a man who did not utter banalities in his own home such language was an example of the asphyxiating effects of democracy on standards of taste. It is as destructive and nauseating as penny journalism. Mr. Baldwin, however, looks on this aspect of democracy as a game. As he admitted in a reminiscence of this Kidderminster election that " from the time the whistle blew to the time the poll was declared there was riotous, rollicking fun.” There was the old man in the corduroys who sat in the middle of his kitchen in his shirt-sleeves and refused to utter a word. There were the crowds of people who rushed drunk to the poll at 8 o’clock and no one knew which way they had voted. The proper sense of proportion seems always to have been on the part of the electors; the subject, or rather object, of election required a strong sense of humour to tolerate a process so fantastic. Party politics have broken many powerful personalities, who would have become leaders with other opportunities than the hustings. Mr. Baldwin is not now enamoured of party politics. He knows them more intimately than he did in those days. He looks back on the old election nevertheless with his usual reverence for the antique.

Protection was the cause of Mr. Baldwin's first defeat. He failed at Kidderminster in the large company of rejected tariff reformers. Of the outsiders who had spoken for him one had been Lord Carson. No oratory however could withstand the cry of “cheap food” and Chinese slavery, and England took the wrong turning at perhaps the most momentous cross-road in her history. Mr. Bald-win’s next attempt was a more dignified affair. His father died in London in 1908. He was almost immediately adopted as candidate for the vacant seat, and within two years of his first defeat he was representing West Worcestershire which his father had held since 1892.

At one of the meetings during the campaign the chairman expressed the opinion "that with so many carpet baggers going about then, he thought West Worcestershire was lucky.”

Mr. Baldwin was an ideal representative for his father’s constituency and had merely to follow in his father’s ways. Action counted for more than words and his record was honourable. For nine years he had been on the Worcester¬ shire County Council. The audience at one meeting pledged him their support since "they had known Mr. Baldwin as a successful public man; they had tried him and he had proved his worth.” He had taken the wise precaution of confining his energies to a limited sphere and making his position where it was the most valuable. It is often harder to be appreciated on a parish council than to rule an Empire from Whitehall. In the former case the powers of showmanship are of no avail. Mr. Baldwin had made his first speech in opposition to a local sewage scheme which was long overdue. He had first performed simple duties and left high politics to their own devices. He had made no fame for himself publicly, but had learned a wealth of political experience of a provincial nature. People are apt to forget in modem politics that centralisation has never shifted the source of power. London is still the mere reflection of the unobtrusive provinces.