Baldwin by Roy Jenkins Page A

improved as a result of eighteen months out of the Government, and his loyalty to Lloyd George and Austen Chamberlain weakened by the same cause. The great issue of the next week was whether Law could agree to attend the Carlton Club meeting which Chamberlain had summoned at short notice for the Thursday morning, 19 October. Everything was held to depend on this. And when, as late as the Wednesday morning, Law announced that, as the doctors had passed him as fit for only two years,he could not accept the rôle which attendance implied, the Baldwin forces were sunk in gloom.
    It is difficult not to believe that they attached too much importance to Law’s availability. His reputation amongst Conservative Members of Parliament was high. But his advice was not in doubt, only whether he would lead the independent appeal to the country. No doubt his electoral leadership was of value; but can it have been of decisive importance? He was a sad knight in slightly drooping armour. Those who regarded his attendance as vital were probably taken in too much by the spirit of Birkenhead’s subsequent jibe about cabin boys taking over captains’ jobs. When captains become as distrusted as Lloyd George and Birkenhead himself, crews would rather see almost anyone else in charge.
    In the event there was no test of what would have happened in Bonar Law’s absence. On the Wednesday evening he decided that he would attend. Thursday morning’s newspapers were dominated by this news, accompanied by that of the victory of an independent (i.e. anti-Coalition) Conservative candidate in a by-election at Newport. But Thursday morning’s meeting was dominated not by Law but by Baldwin. Austen Chamberlain began with a half-hour lecture on behalf of the majority of the Conservative members of the Cabinet. Baldwin spoke for eight minutes on behalf of the minority. It was a beautifully judged speech. He had to combat Chamberlain’s appeal for loyalty to his own leadership. He did it by counterposing the need for regard to the greater entity of the Conservative Party. He dealt extremely gently with Chamberlain, who was present and still respected, reserving the edge of his debating power entirely for Lloyd George, who was absent and distrusted:
[The Prime Minister] is a dynamic force, and it is from that very fact that our troubles, in our opinion, arise. A dynamic force is a very terrible thing; it may crush you but it is not necessarily right. It is owing to that dynamicforce, and that remarkable personality, that the Liberal Party, to which he formerly belonged, has been smashed to pieces; and it is my firm conviction that, in time, the same thing will happen to our party. I do not propose to elaborate, in an assembly like this, the dangers and the perils of that happening …. I think that if the present association is continued, and if this meeting agrees that it should be continued, you will see some more breaking up, and I believe the process must go on inevitably until the old Conservative Party is smashed to atoms and lost in ruins.
I would like to give you just one illustration to show what I mean by the disintegrating influence of a dynamic force. Take Mr Chamberlain and myself. Mr Chamberlain’s services to the State are infinitely greater than any I have been able to render, but we are both men who are giving all we can give to the service of the State; we are both men who are, or try to be, actuated by principle in our conduct; we are men who, I think, have exactly the same views on the political problems of the day; we are men who I believe -certainly on my side—have esteem and perhaps I may say affection for each other; but the result of this dynamic force is that we stand here today, he prepared to go into the wilderness if he should be compelled to forsake the Prime Minister, and I prepared to go into the wilderness if I should be compelled to stay with him. If that is the effect of that tremendous personality on two men occupying the