Stanley Baldwin

"G. M. Young: It must have been clear to you, and MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain, that Churchill at all events was safer inside the Cabinet than outside. What kept him out? Baldwin: India. He had gone about threatening to smash the Tory party on India, and I did not mean to be smashed."

"My idea was that the Conservative Opposition should strongly confront the Labour Government on all great imperial and national issues, should identify itself with the majesty of Britain as under Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury, and should not hesitate to face controversy, even though that might not immediately evoke a response from the nation. So far as I could see, Mr. Baldwin felt that the times were too far gone for any robust assertion of British imperial greatness, and that the hope of the Conservative Party lay in accommodation with Liberal and Labour forces, and in adroit, well-timed manoeuvres to detach powerful moods of public opinion and large blocks of voters from them. He certainly was very successful. He was the greatest party manager the Conservatives had ever had. He fought, as their leader, five general elections, of which he won three. History alone can judge these general issues."

"Let me proclaim my faith...Here we have ceased to be an island, but we are still an Empire. And what is the secret? Freedom, ordered freedom, within the law, with force in the background and not in the foreground...It is an Empire organised for peace...It deifies neither the State nor its rulers. The old doctrine of the divine right of Kings has gone, but we have no intention of erecting in its place a new doctrine of the divine right of States. No State that ever was is worthy of a free man's worship."

"O how I long for the days when, if the Japs were cheeky, we showed them the guns of the China Squadron, and no more was heard."

"Mr. Baldwin was held in very great respect by the Trades Unions and any statement made by him has great weight... [T]hey regretted that the General Strike was so often mentioned and that they believed that Mr. Baldwin's real opinions of them and of the trade union movement was expressed in his “Peace in Our Time” speech."

"I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived."

"I come back to speed, and I want my last words to be on speed. I see a danger ahead that our people may become mechanised, not only in body, but mechanised in mind. I dread the mass mind. I dread the loss of that independent individualist character which has made this nation what it is. I dread the growth of that materialistic view of life which, to my mind, is a danger both to body and to soul. We must see to it that in some way we can preserve the character of our people to meet the changed conditions of the age, and see that our character triumphs over our environment."

"To-day Europe is neither at war nor at peace, but stands at armed attention...That, in itself, is a sufficiently melancholy, devastating reply to all the efforts of the lovers of peace. But what is much worse is this: peace in some quarters is proclaimed as a bad dream, and war sanctified as an ideal for rational men. As long as the British Empire lasts we will raise our voices against these false gods."

"I knew that I had been chosen as God's instrument for the work of the healing of the nation."

"The Conservatives can't talk of class war: they started it."

"Stanley has been in politics practically all the time we have been married - about 30 years. Some women say they don’t want their husbands in politics because of its effect upon their temperament. My husband has remained unchanged. He is sweet-tempered, he is just that kind of a man."

"[Baldwin's] genius in this respect more than made up for his limitations as orator or debater. Baldwin was a master of the art of creating feeling, but an even greater one at the important art of detecting it. He would attack, not the argument being put forward, but the feeling behind it of which the case was the expression. When defending himself, he would not deploy fact after fact in skilful order, but appeal to the nobler and more humane feelings of his enemy. He was a great disarmer, though now and again he hit back like a butcher."

"Baldwin, who succeeded him [David Lloyd George], was temperamentally much more convinced that war was hateful. In a way he was too pacific by nature. I remember his asking me whether I believed that the coercive powers in the Covenant were necessary. I think it was largely the influence of his dislike of military action that produced the Abyssinian fiasco. If Lloyd George believed too much in force, Baldwin believed in it too little."

"The Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years—precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain—for the locusts to eat."

"I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than to keep our people immune, so far as they can be so kept, from the virus of either Communism or Fascism. Our constitution has been evolved...There are some people who speak wildly and loosely about sudden and fundamental changes. Look out for them, and remember that our party, full of ideas of progress to-day as any other party that exists, has always stood, in Disraeli's words, "for the maintenance of the Constitution." ...any attempt at sudden constitutional changes of a fundamental nature would not be maintaining the Constitution...the whole virtue of our people...has been the way in which we have adapted ourselves, and adapted the instruments that we use to give effect to our wishes; and we have adapted ourselves without bloodshed and without hatred among ourselves. Far, far the most important thing that we have to do is to keep this country at least...secure from those strange crises that to-day are rushing round the world."

"Improvements in housing—in which the Government has played a large part—is another direction in which standards have tended since the War to appreciate. Comfortable housing is an essential condition to the welfare and happiness of the people."

"There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight."

"The twenty post-War years have shown that war does not settle the account. There is a balance brought forward. When emancipation is achieved a new slavery may begin. The moment of victory may be the beginning of defeat. The days which saw the framing of the League of Nations saw the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Should both be entered on the credit side? Twenty years ago we should all have said, "Yes"; to-day the reply would be doubtful, for both have belied the hopes of mankind and given place to disillusion. Freedom for common men, which was to have been the fruit of victory, is once more in jeopardy in our own land because it has been taken away from the common men of other lands."

"The torch I would hand to you, and ask you to pass from hand to hand along the pathways of the Empire, is a Christian truth rekindled anew in each ardent generation. Use men as ends and never merely as means; and live for the brotherhood of man, which implies the Fatherhood of God. The brotherhood of man to-day is often denied and derided and called foolishness, but it is, in fact, one of the foolish things of the world which God has chosen to confound the wise, and the world is confounded by it daily. We may evade it, we may deny it; but we shall find no rest for our souls, or will the world until we acknowledge it as the ultimate wisdom. That is the message I have tried to deliver as Prime Minister in a hundred speeches."

"The real need of the day is … moral and spiritual rearmament … God's Living Spirit can transcend conflicting political systems, can reconcile order and freedom, can rekindle true patriotism, can unite all citizens in the service of the nation, and all nations in the service of mankind."

"With millions of others I had prayed hard at the time of Dunkirk and never did prayer seem to be more speedily answered to the full. And we prayed for France and the next day she surrendered. I thought much, and when I went to bed I lay for a long time vividly awake. And I went over in my mind what had happened, concentrating on the thoughts that you had dwelt on, that prayer to be effective must be in accordance with God's will, and that by far the hardest thing to say from the heart and indeed the last lesson we learn (if we ever do) is to say and mean it, 'Thy will be done.' And I thought what mites we all are and how we can never see God's plan, a plan on such a scale that it must be incomprehensible. And suddenly for what must have been a couple of minutes I seemed to see with extraordinary and vivid clarity and to hear someone speaking to me. The words at the time were clear, but the recollection of them had passed when I seemed to come to, as it were, but the sense remained, and the sense was this. 'You cannot see the plan'; then 'Have you not thought there is a purpose in stripping you one by one of all the human props on which you depend, that you are being left alone in the world? You have now one upon whom to lean and I have chosen you as my instrument to work with my will. Why then are you afraid?' And to prove ourselves worthy of that tremendous task is our job."

"My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument."

"In regard to yourself, let me say that I have never found, and could never desire, a more straightforward and scrupulously honourable opponent, or one who more completely satisfied my ideal of an English gentleman."

"I always felt myself, when he was speaking, that although he disagreed with us, he understood better than any man on the other side, the reasons and emotions that inspired our actions. In this understanding I think his earlier experience helped. On the one hand, his family connections with a circle that included William Morris, on the other, his work as one of the heads of a great industrial enterprise, gave him a broad outlook... He had a keen sense of duty to the country that he loved so well. He had a high sense of social obligation... He had a vision of the Britain he wanted to see. He was, I think, nostalgic for the past; he looked back with regret to the past when relationships between employer and worker were more personal than is generally the case today. I recall him telling me once that when his men were on strike, he took care that the women and children should have food... [H]e appeared to be in many ways a typical Englishman alike in his virtues and his failings. I was for many years his political opponent, but I always regarded him not only with respect but with affection, and I enjoyed those friendly personal relations which we cherish in our political life."

"[I]t was Stanley Baldwin...who personified the spirit of the age to a greater degree than any other man. So well indeed did he focus the aspirations of his countrymen and reflect them back that the epoch seemed to take its character from him, as the Victorian age had from Queen Victoria... As a man and as prime minister, Baldwin was patient, slow-moving, whimsical, blessed with a fine sense of humour; ruminative; shrewd and wise within his limits. He never drove his colleagues; a kindly man, he was, as he himself admitted, a bad butcher... His kindliness and gentleness also made it impossible for him to ruthlessly attack his political opponents... Baldwin, believing as he did that considerateness was "the central English virtue", hated strife, shrank from conflict, constantly sought to heal division and bitterness, whether in his own cabinets, the country or the world. In this too he personified the deepest feelings of his countrymen. His speeches seldom manifested combative argument; instead they evoked moods; he was a Delius or a Debussy among political speakers. And the favourite mood was one of a sunset calm and nostalgia, in which the British nation, like an old couple in retirement enjoying the peaceful ending of the day, contemplated some sweep of English landscape and hearkened to the distant church bells. Nothing could have been more congenial to the contemporary British temperament than this tranquillity, in which desperate problems or dangers could be put out of mind, and energetic, possibly painful, action shirked or put off; nothing could have been more welcome to his hearers than this evocation of all things kindly, gentle and decent... Baldwin, Victorian that he was, saw politics – even international politics – as he saw the whole of human life, in terms of religion; of, in his own words, "doing secular acts from a spiritual motive". He believed that it "is precisely these values of right and wrong, of good and evil, of honesty and courage, which matter supremely for religion and national life...moral values, eternal in their quality, transient in their form and application, are the foundation of a country's greatness..." ... Such were the rulers and such was the nation to which befell after the Great War the task of preserving the power of England."

"He, more than anybody else, broke up the [Lloyd George] Coalition. Why did he do so? He had seen that the government of the country was losing the moral character which had distinguished it during the Victorian period. He believed that if this moral decay continued it would be fatal to the greatness and glory of England. To strike at it, and root it out for ever, meant striking at some of the most brilliant intellects in the Coalition, and destroying some of the most promising of political careers in both parties. But he believed that it would be better for the country to have a less brilliant government, and for his party to go into the wilderness, even for a long period, than to continue a system which was poisoning the whole atmosphere of public life. The effect of his decision led immediately to two reforms of the very highest significance. He swept away the dominance of the Press, and he cleansed the Honours of their shame... He has restored the old standards. He has repaired the ancient barriers. Never again, so long as he is loyally supported by the best elements of his party, will the flood of Fleet Street return to Whitehall. Public life is again clean."

"He believed that social obligations went with wealth and he lived by that precept."

"Stanley Baldwin had at least this virtue: he tried to bring both sides together. He tried to understand the labour movement and to bring industrial peace to our country. If that was the verdict then I would be very happy to be associated with Mr. Baldwin but not I think in every other way."

"[S]ince I am a disreputable demagogic sort of person, holding that most reforms are too slow rather than too fast — from all this it will be easily and naturally deduced that my favourite politician is Mr. Baldwin. The deduction may not be swift and obvious; but it is sound. When I say my favourite politician, I mean in so far as any politician can be anybody’s favourite. [...] But if I were in practical politics (which God forbid), and if they involved me in that particular problem of party allegiance, I should support Mr. Baldwin for all I was worth, or rather for all he is worth — which is not a little. I should support him even though I disagree with him; on the ground that at least he is more liberal than the Liberals, more social than the Socialists, and immeasurably more patriotic than the Imperialists. I should support him through thick and thin; for I think the opposing theories are pretty thin and the impudence a bit thick. I should support him especially against his loyal and devoted followers. But I value him very specially for this: that I do think he is the one politician alive who has some inner understanding of the English people."

"I had no idea he could show such power. The whole Conservative Party turned round and obeyed without a single mutineer. I cease to be astonished at anything."

"In the remote parts of that countryside where I was born and where old English phrases linger, though they may now be dying, even now I hear among those old people this phrase about those who die "He has gone home." It was a universal phrase among the old agricultural labourers, whose life was one toil from their earliest days to their last, and I think that that phrase must have arisen from the sense that one day the toil would be over and the rest would come, and that rest, the cessation of toil, wherever that occurred would be home. So they say, "He has gone home." When our long days of work are over here there is nothing in our oldest customs which so stirs the imagination of the young Member as the cry which goes down the Lobbies, "Who goes home?" Sometimes when I hear it I think of the language of my own countryside and my feeling that for those who have borne the almost insupportable burden of public life there may well be a day when they will be glad to go home. So Austen Chamberlain has gone home. ...he had an infinite faith in the Parliamentary system of this country. Let us resolve once more that we can best keep his memory bright by confirming our own resolution that government of the people by the people shall never perish on this earth."

"...ideas may be very dangerous things. There is no country in Europe that has a constitution comparable to ours. I do not mean by using that word "comparable" that I am assuming that ours is the best. I merely affirm that they have been all different; that there is no constitution like ours, which has evolved through the centuries into the constitution as we know it to-day. Therefore it is a more easy matter for ideas to sweep people off their feet in those countries. Throughout the whole of Russia, and of Germany and Italy, you have peoples numbering hundreds of millions who are governed by ideas alien to the ideas which we hold in this country. They are the ideas of Communism and of differing forms of Fascism. Now, whatever those ideas may produce for those countries, what I want to warn you about is that neither of those ideas can ever do anything to help our country in solving her own constitutional problems. They are exotic to this country. They are alien. You could not graft them on to our system any more than you could graft a Siberian crab on an oak."

"The time was, when I was a boy, when people hardly dreamed that the day would come when there would be large numbers of Members in this House who could not afford to perform their duties here unless they had an allowance; but I think, looking at the whole Continent of Europe, that, the more the basis of our liberty and our Constitution is broadened, the better for our country. Would anyone who remembers the old days here go back to them and give up what we have gained? This Chamber, the most famous Chamber in democratic government in the world, is now open to all, and, once you admit that everybody has a right to be elected to this House if he can, you cannot logically create or leave a financial bar."

"I claim that, unlike the totalitarian States, we have managed to secure both progress and orderly development in industry while still preserving to a large measure individual freedom and our individual enterprise, qualities upon which ultimately all our trade and industry depend."

"When we look round and consider the state of the world to-day, we see on every side bewilderment and doubt...I am no pessimist; I believe that in the end the countries of the world will find peace and prosperity—but that road will be a long and a hard one. For such a journey...above all, there is need of leadership. No one country—no group of countries—is so qualified to provide that leadership as the British Empire...I say this with no idea that we are necessarily better than other people, but because of our experience. For we, the peoples of the Empire, in our relations with one another, have set an example of mutual co-operation in the solution of our problems, such as, I believe, no group of nations has ever before achieved. We have demonstrated to the world in actual practice that difficulties can be resolved by discussion as they cannot be resolved by force."

"What is the alternative to collective bargaining? There is none except anarchy, and there are rare elements in the country that would like to see anarchy in the trade unions—in my view the most dangerous thing for the country that could happen. Another alternative is force, but we may rule out force in this country, and I would lay it down that, so long as the industrial system remains as it is, collective bargaining is the right thing. I have no doubt about that. And yet we all know in our heart of hearts that it may be a clumsy method of settling disputes, and that the last word has not been spoken. Some day, when we are all fit for a democracy, we shall not need these aids, but certainly for my part, and as long as I can see ahead, unless there is that change in human nature which we are always hoping for, collective bargaining will be a necessity."

"The whole world has its eye to day on London. The whole world is represented in London, and they are all coming here to be with us in what, to the vast majority of our people, will be a period of rejoicing for many days, culminating in that age-long service in the Abbey a week to-day. In the Abbey on this day week our young King and his Queen, who were called suddenly and unexpectedly to the most tremendous position on earth, will kneel and dedicate themselves to the service of their people, a service which can only be ended by death. I appeal to that handful of men with whom rests peace or war to give the best present to the country that could be given at that moment, to do the one thing which would rejoice the hearts of all the people who love this country, that is, to rend and dissipate this dark cloud which has gathered over us, and show the people of the world that this democracy can still at least practise the arts of peace in a world of strife."

"Dogmatism is the prerogative of youth."

"The King is the symbol of the union, not only of an Empire, but of a society which is held together by a common view of the fundamental nature of man. It is neither the worship of a tribe nor a class. It is a faith, a value placed upon the individual, derived from the Christian religion. The Christian State proclaims human personality to be supreme; the servile State denies this. Every compromise with the infinite value of the human soul leads straight back to savagery and the jungle. Expel this truth of our religion, and what follows? The insolence of dominion, and the cruelty of despotism. Denounce religion as the opium of the people, and you swiftly proceed to denounce political liberty and civil liberty as opium. Freedom of speech goes, tolerance follows, and justice is no more."

"The fruits of the free spirit of man do not grow in the garden of tyranny...As long as we have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, men will turn their faces towards us and draw their breath more freely. The association of the peoples of the Empire is rooted, and their fellowship is rooted, in this doctrine of the essential dignity of the individual human soul. That is the English secret."

"One of the reasons why our people are alive and flourishing, and have avoided many of the troubles that have fallen to less happy nations, is because we have never been guided by logic in anything we have done. If you will only do as I have done—study the history of the growth of the Constitution from the time of the Civil War until the Hanoverians came to the Throne—you will see what a country can do without the aid of logic, but with the aid of common sense."

"In none of these countries [Russia, Italy and Germany] was it possible to make to the people such an appeal as went home to the heart of our people, an appeal based on Christianity or ethics … The whole outlook in the dictator countries was so completely different from ours that for a long time people here could not understand how it was possible for these nations not to respond to the same kind of appeal as that to which our people responded. But they were beginning to realise it now...The only argument which appealed to the dictators was that of force."

"Civilisation may perish as the result of war: it would certainly perish as the result of Nazi-ism triumphant beyond the borders of the country of its birth...And now we know that should the challenge come, we shall be there. In Luther's words “we can no other.” We were there when the Spanish galleons made for Plymouth: we were on those bloody fields in the Netherlands when Louis XIV aimed at the domination of Europe: we were on duty when Napoleon bestrode the world like a demi-god, and we answered the roll call, as you did, in August, 1914. We can no other. So help us, God."

"Did I tell you that I had quite a nice letter from Winston [Churchill]? I thought I ought to send him a line but I wasn't sure whether I should get an acknowledgement! I think he is the right man at the moment and I always did feel that war would be his opportunity. He thrives in that environment."

"The critics have no historical sense. I have no Cabinet papers by me and do not want to trust my memory. But recall the Fulham election, the Peace Ballot, Singapore, sanctions, Malta. The English will only learn by example. When I first heard of Hitler, when Ribbentrop came to see me, I thought they were all crazy. I think I brought Ramsay and Simon to meet Ribbentrop. Remember that Ramsay's health was breaking up in the last two years. He had lost his nerve in the House in the last year. I had to take all the important speeches. The moment he went I prepared for a General Election and got a bigger majority for re-armament. No power on earth could have got re-armament without a General Election except by a big split. Simon was inefficient. I had to lead the House and keep the machine together with those Labour fellows."

"I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that he is still not quite out of things. But it was also pure patriotic joy that my country at such a time should have found such a leader. The furnace of war has smelted out all base metals from him."

"The truth is that Mr. Baldwin is doing a very remarkable work. He is restoring the whole quality and tone of British politics. In abeyance during the war, political life suffered a serious lowering of standard in the insidious and pervasive influence of Mr. Lloyd George. Superb as he was in a crisis, Mr. Lloyd George's purely political methods were tainted. Mr. Baldwin has brought into public life a pleasant savour, freshness and health. It is the fragrance of the fields, the flavour of apple and filbert and hazel hut, all the unpretentious, simple, wholesome, homely but essential qualities, suggestions, traditions of England, that Mr. Baldwin has substituted for the over-charged, heavy-laden decadent atmosphere of post-war days. He has shown the nation...that, in the modern world, there is a place and an essential place for the stedfast, disinterested, self-reliant and modest qualities of the English gentleman... In his shrewd and deep simplicity of character, his patience, his passion for the community and for its welfare, his refusal to treat his fellow-countrymen as enemies, perhaps, too, in an occasional gaucheness, a tendency to expose himself gratuitously to the almost contemptuous criticism of persons of a more complete "trade finish," and, most certainly, in an essential loneliness of spirit, however well hidden under a quizzical and cheerful companionableness, it is Abraham Lincoln whom Mr. Baldwin recalls. And, further, like Lincoln, Mr. Baldwin, it is clear, has that rarest and finest of all the qualities of a leader—the power of liberating and calling in aid the deeper moral motives that lie in the hearts of men."

"He was not so effective on the platform as in the House of Commons, but there he obtained for several years such ascendancy that, if a member interrupted him, it seemed almost like brawling in church."

"I believe I am voicing the feelings of all hon. Members irrespective of party when I say that we all greatly regret his departure from our midst... [I]t is the hope of all of us that he may long be spared to enjoy health and happiness and the rest and the leisure which he has amply earned. This is not the occasion on which to attempt any appraisal of his work as a statesman and public man; it is, indeed, unfinished. Future historians will, no doubt, disagree, as we in this House disagree, about the merits or demerits of his policy and his actions, but I am certain they will be at one in acclaiming him as a great parliamentarian who possessed in a singular degree the faculty of judging the temper of this House and responding to its mood. They will, I think, also recall him as one who inspired affection as a man even in those who were opposed to him as a politician."

"I may here set down a comparative appreciation of these two Prime Ministers, Baldwin and Chamberlain, whom I had known so long and under whom I had served or was to serve. Stanley Baldwin was the wiser, more comprehending personality, but without detailed executive capacity. He was largely detached from foreign and military affairs. He knew little of Europe, and disliked what he knew. He had a deep knowledge of British party politics, and represented in a broad way some of the strengths and many of the infirmities of our Island race. He had fought five General Elections as leader of the Conservative Party and had won three of them. He had a genius for waiting upon events and an imperturbability under averse criticism. He was singularly adroit in letting events work for him, and capable of seizing the ripe moment when it came. He seemed to me to revive the impressions history gives of Sir Robert Walpole, without of course the eighteenth century corruption. and he was master of British politics for nearly as long."