Baldwin by Roy Jenkins Page B

position that we do, and related to each other in the way that Mr Chamberlain and I are, that process must go on throughout the party. It was for that reason that I took the stand I did, and put forward the views that I did. I do not know what the majority here or in the country may think about it. I said at the time what I thought was right, and I stick all through to what I believe to be right.
    The effect was dramatic. Baldwin received an enthusiastic reception. It was the first of many speeches in which by the measured and skilful deployment of moderate words he visibly affected the opinions of a crucial audience. The debate proceeded. A motion to withdraw support from the Coalition was moved by a senior Essex backbencher. 10 Bonar Law added a few effective but unremembered sentences at the end. The motion was then carried by 185 to 88. 11
    That afternoon Lloyd George resigned. Bonar Law waited to be confirmed as leader at a full Hotel Cecil party meeting on the Monday before accepting the King’s commission. His strength was as a representative figure, not as an ‘independent statesman’ like those whose advice had been swept aside at the Carlton Club, and he wished this to be underlined by a meticulous attention to proper procedure. This did not prevent his offering Baldwin the Exchequer before he had kissed hands. Baldwin undoubtedly wanted the job. He had done so four years before, and nothing had happened in the meantime either to abate his ambition or to make him less qualified—in the latter case very much the reverse. Furthermore, the offer could hardly have been a surprise to him. He had done more than anyone else to make the new Government.
    Yet he declined. He suggested that Reginald McKenna,Asquith’s last Chancellor, who was currently out of Parliament and chairman of the Midland Bank, should be approached instead. Law accepted the suggestion. McKenna took three days to consider the offer before refusing, nominally on health grounds. Law called on Baldwin with the news. Baldwin then accepted the post and was very pleased with himself. He went upstairs to his wife and said: ‘Treat me with respect; I am the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’
    His
nolo episcopari
phase cannot be easily explained. At the end of the day he got exactly what he wanted—high office, achieved not merely without push but with a positive and recorded show of reluctance. Yet a cynical explanation does not stand up. He could not possibly have been confident that McKenna would refuse: the former Chancellor’s three days of hesitation is proof against this. It is difficult to reject the view that he was genuinely anxious, first not to appear to profit from his own actions in bringing about the downfall of the Coalition, and second to strengthen the new Government, which he thought, probably mistakenly, that McKenna would do.
    The new Government needed strength, for without Austen Chamberlain, Balfour, Birkenhead or Horne it looked weak on paper, and it had to face an immediate general election. The result was a substantial triumph. The Conservatives won an overall majority of ninety, with the opposition split into three factions, but the Labour Party much stronger than either the Asquithian or the Lloyd George Liberals. Baldwin’s most notable contribution to the campaign was to exploit Lloyd George’s remark that Bonar Law was ‘honest to the verge of simplicity’. ‘By God,’ he commented, ‘that is what we have been looking for.’
    The election won, Baldwin prepared to move, both into 11 Downing Street, which was his by right, and into Chequers, which Bonar Law did not want. Eaton Square was sold. It was a correct decision. He was to spend most of the next fourteen years in official residences.
    Baldwin’s Chancellorship was notable principally for his American debt settlement. This was one of the most tangled of post-1918 issues. It involved the questions of reparations from Germany, Britain’s claims on her European