1867-1947
UK politician
Lord Baldwin; 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley

1. Introduction
2. Stories
3. Biographical summary
4. See also
5. Further reading
6. References

1. Introduction

‘S.B.’ was UK prime minister for a total of seven years over three terms in the 1920s and 1930s. He spent 20 years in his family’s metal business before entering politics, becoming president of the Board of Trade, chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the Conservative Party. During his second term as prime minister, he appointed Churchill as chancellor of the exchequer, unexpectedly, but omitted him from his third cabinet. The two clashed strongly over tariffs, unions, rearmament and Indian self-government. Baldwin retired in 1937 as a popular figure but his reputation was soon damaged by accusations of insufficient response to Nazi Germany’s military developments in the 1930s. He has been partly rehabilitated by subsequent reevaluations.

2. Stories

• Baldwin’s career and outlook were shaped considerably by his family and religious heritage.
• Baldwin is the only UK prime minister to have served under three monarchs and the only UK politician to have had a son or daughter concurrently on the opposite side of the House of Commons.
• Baldwin’s primary skill was conciliatory mediation, which differed markedly from Churchill’s often confrontational approach.
• The polemic Guilty Men in 1940 and Churchill’s memoir The Gathering Storm in 1948 did much to shape the view that Baldwin was highly culpable for failing to re-arm Britain in the 1930s.
• Baldwin and Churchill were both excellent communicators but with considerably different techniques.
• Churchill was uncharacteristically grudging towards Baldwin at the time of Baldwin’s 80^th birthday.
• Baldwin was eighth out of 20 in a 2004 survey about twentieth century prime ministers, ranked by academics; Churchill was second.

Baldwin’s career and outlook were shaped considerably by his family and religious heritage.

Stanley’s father Alfred owned and ran an ironworks and tin plating company with operations in Worcestershire and Wales, for which Stanley worked for 20 years, in charge of about a quarter of the business. Alfred was a member of parliament for Bewdley in Worcestershire, whose role Stanley took over after a by-election following his father’s death in 1908. Alfred was also chairman of the Great Western Railway and the Metropolitan Bank, both of which invited Stanley to join their boards on Alfred’s death. Stanley inherited nearly £200,000 (equivalent to £24 million today).

The ironworks company had around 4000 employees and was run in a benevolent manner. In his maiden speech in parliament, Stanley stated proudly that although his family had been engaged in business for 130 years, the disputes they had had with their employees could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. He said that he himself had been involved for 20 years and had never had the shadow of a dispute with any of his own men.¹

Stanley’s mother Louisa was one of four Macdonald sisters: Alice, mother of writer Rudyard Kipling; Georgiana, wife of artist Edward Burne-Jones; Agnes, wife of Royal Academy president Edward Poynter; and herself, mother of a prime minister. Although often bed-ridden and perhaps a hypochondriac, she encouraged her son’s literary interest, which formed the background for his way with words which was a key feature of his career.

Stanley’s father was an Anglican whose ancestors included Quaker missionaries to the USA. His mother came from a family of Methodists. Stanley was proud of this background, saying ‘I owe a great deal of my public and private life to my Nonconformist ancestry’² (‘nonconformist’ here meaning Protestant, non-Church of England). An aspect of this was that ‘I find sometimes that when I conceive a matter to be a matter of principle I would rather go to the stake than give way’.³ In a parliamentary speech in 1923, he summarised his outlook: ‘Four words, of one syllable each, are words which contain salvation for this country and for the whole world, and they are “Faith,” “Hope,” “Love” and “Work”.’⁴

Baldwin is the only UK prime minister to have served under three monarchs and the only UK politician to have had a son or daughter concurrently on the opposite side of the House of Commons.

George V was king during Baldwin’s first two terms and at the beginning of his third term. George died in 1936, during which Edward VIII ascended to the throne but abdicated, replaced by his younger brother George VI. Baldwin was held in high regard for his handling of the abdication crisis, insisting that Edward could not marry Wallis Simpson and remain king. Churchill, on the other hand, misread the mood of the public and of parliament and suffered disgrace when he tried to support his king and friend.

Baldwin’s son Oliver, a Labour MP, was the fifth of his seven children with Lucy Ridsdale, whom he met while visiting one of his cousins near Bournemouth. Both were cricket fans, with Stanley becoming president of the Marylebone Cricket Club (‘MCC’; formerly the governing body of cricket) from 1921 to 1938, and Lucy having been a member of the White Heather Club, one of the UK’s first women’s cricket clubs. Oliver became MP for Dudley in Worcestershire and then Paisley in Scotland. Although holding opposing views on many topics, father and son were careful not to make any personal attacks on each other in parliament. Oliver became governor of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean, and although he died in London, he is buried on a hill in Antigua.

Stanley was made 1^st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley when he retired, and Oliver became 2^nd Earl on his father’s death. Oliver died childless, whereupon his younger brother Arthur became 3^rd Earl. Arthur wrote a biography of his father in 1955, taking his father’s critics to task and seeking to restore his positive reputation.

Baldwin’s primary skill was conciliatory mediation, which differed markedly from Churchill’s often confrontational approach.

Baldwin’s style was partly from temperament and partly from the culture of his family’s business. He conversed easily with all his employees, from many walks of life, and was known in parliament for spending considerable time socialising with members from other parties. He gave a fifth of his personal wealth anonymously to the state as a contribution to its weak finances after World War I. In 1924, he said, ‘We stand for the union of those two nations [the rich and the poor] of which Disraeli spoke two generations ago; union among our own people to make one nation of our own people at home which, if secured, nothing else matters in the world.’⁵ According to Lord Lexden, official historian of the Conservative party, ‘one nation’ Conservatism is attributable to Baldwin, not Disraeli, contrary to common belief.⁶

Baldwin delegated well as a business manager and as a prime minister. In his early political career (relatively late in life), he was unassuming, working behind the scenes. He did not seek promotion, but gained it anyway, sometimes through others’ misfortunes. He never envisaged becoming prime minister when he entered politics.

Churchill, on the other hand, was often belligerent, was notoriously poor at delegating and even as a schoolboy had a vision of himself being Britain’s leader and saviour. He was highly ambitious and was widely known for being disruptive, not least amongst his own colleagues. However, like Baldwin, he was also good at conversing with people from various backgrounds with opinions opposed to his own.

The two men shared a stubborn streak. Baldwin’s was particularly evident when he grew disillusioned with David Lloyd George’s leadership and personal behaviour; he was partly responsible for Lloyd George’s demise through a short but powerful speech at the Carlton Club in 1922. During the general strike of 1926, he calmly refused to negotiate until the strike collapsed, casting it as an attack on the constitution rather than as an industrial dispute. He took a strong dislike to the press barons, Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook in particular, attacking them for seeking ‘power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’,⁷ a quote from his cousin Rudyard Kipling.

The polemic Guilty Men in 1940 and Churchill’s memoir The Gathering Storm in 1948 did much to shape the view that Baldwin was highly culpable for failing to re-arm Britain in the 1930s.

The book Guilty Men attacked fifteen public figures that it also called ‘little men’⁸ for their alleged contributions to Hitler’s military dominance. Targets included Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Ramsay MacDonald and Lord Halifax. The author, ‘Cato’, turned out to be three journalists employed by Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, although he claimed to be unaware of their involvement at the time. The journalists were Michael Foot, later leader of the Labour party; Frank Owen, a former Liberal MP; and Peter Howard, a Conservative party member and former English rugby team captain. Beaverbrook had been an ‘appeaser’ in the 1930s but was not mentioned in the book. It was written in four days, while Britain was retreating in the Battle of Dunkirk.

Guilty Men selected some of Baldwin’s own statements to make its argument, including ‘the bomber will always get through’,⁹ taken as a sign of defeatism; ‘I give you my word that there will be no great armaments’,¹⁰ part of a speech to the Peace Society; and ‘my lips are not yet unsealed’,¹¹ lampooned as an indicator that he did not trust the British people to share important information with them.

Churchill’s Gathering Storm also made use of selective quotes, including claiming that Baldwin confessed to putting party before country in the 1935 election through fear of pacifist elements. Churchill accused him of misleading the people and betraying the nation, charges which stuck, given the wartime hero’s status and the power of his pen.

Baldwin and Churchill were both excellent communicators but with considerably different techniques.

Baldwin was second only to Churchill in terms of prime ministerial output of speeches. Churchill has the more memorable phrases, delivered in hours of trouble, but Baldwin made more effort to tour the country and give messages directly to huge numbers of people. He made considerable use of the radio for simple talks rather than morale-boosting speeches, becoming known as ‘Uncle Stan’ for his simple, chatty style.

Although Baldwin’s manner was natural, it seems to have been deliberately used to contrast with Lloyd George’s firebrand approach. He came to be seen as an amiable country gent: ‘the squire of Bewdley’ (his home town in Worcestershire), leaning over a fence with his pipe to admire his pigs; a quintessential, patriotic Briton with plain tastes and interests.

Despite this homely image, Baldwin’s way with words kept him on a par or better with Churchill in their parries. Churchill would harass him with phrases such as: ‘The Lord President was wiser than he is now; he used frequently to take my advice’;¹² or ‘Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened’:¹³ and ‘He is no better than an epileptic corpse’.¹⁴ It is sometimes said that when Churchill was asked what to do with Baldwin, he replied, ‘Embalm, cremate and bury – take no chances!’ However, this was in fact a mother-in-law joke included in one of Churchill’s newspaper articles.¹⁵

Usually Baldwin would not give like-for-like, but would deflect or respond with courtesy, sometimes with self-deprecating humour, which often created a better impression than Churchill’s barbed comments. He usually avoided verbal flourishes but won the praise of his cousin Kipling: ‘Stan is the real writer in the family.’¹⁶

Lord Swinton observed many of their exchanges and recalled that ‘Baldwin always got the better of Churchill when Churchill was attacking him in the House of Commons. […] I said: “Winston, you fought him for years and years, when he was P.M. and party leader, and you never won a round.” Winston grunted, but he did not dissent.’¹⁷

Churchill was uncharacteristically grudging towards Baldwin at the time of Baldwin’s 80^th birthday.

Churchill’s biographer, Martin Gilbert, wrote that one of the most rewarding features of his research was discovering Churchill’s generous attitude towards political opponents.¹⁸ Yet, when asked to send a letter on Baldwin’s 80^th birthday in 1947 (four months before Baldwin’s death), Churchill refused, commenting, ‘I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better had he never lived.’¹⁹

It was a surprising response. Even towards Chamberlain, who died four months after being ridiculed in Guilty Men, Churchill was magnanimous, saying that although Chamberlain had been deceived and cheated by Hitler, ‘we can be sure that [he] acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights’.²⁰

When Baldwin finally resigned, Churchill commented, ‘Well, the light is at last out of that old turnip’.²¹ In a speech after Baldwin’s resignation, Churchill described him as ‘the most formidable politician I ever encountered in public life’,²² a double-edged phrase. On another occasion, Churchill described him as ‘a countrified businessman who seemed to have reached the Cabinet by accident’.²³

Churchill appears to have viewed Baldwin as being more culpable than Chamberlain with regards to Britain’s lack of re-arming in the 1930s, leading in Churchill’s view to what he called ‘the most unnecessary war in history’.²⁴ There was also Baldwin’s support of greater self-rule for India, anathema to Churchill. No doubt there were also hurt feelings when Churchill was left out of Baldwin’s government during his third term. Chamberlain also initially overlooked Churchill but appointed him first lord of the Admiralty in 1939, bringing him back from the wilderness. Nevertheless, three years after Baldwin’s death, Churchill visited Astley Hall in Worcestershire in 1950, Baldwin’s home for 45 years, giving a complimentary speech as well as a donation for a nearby memorial.

Astley Hall had also been in the news earlier after Lord Beaverbrook, as minister of supply, had ordered local authorities in 1942 to confiscate metal railings and gates as materials for the war. Despite Churchill’s intervention (‘Lay off Baldwin’s gates!’)²⁵ and an architect’s recommendation, all of Baldwin’s dozen sets of gates were taken except an ornamental pair which he had been given upon his retirement. After his death, they were moved to nearby Hartlebury grammar school.

Baldwin was eighth out of 20 in a 2004 survey about twentieth century prime ministers, ranked by academics; Churchill was second.

In contrast to the USA, the UK has not conducted many surveys to rank its country leaders, and some of the few undertaken have related only to the post-World War II era. In 2004, MORI and the University of Leeds asked academics specialising in twentieth century British history and politics to indicate how successful they considered each of the century’s 20 prime ministers to have been. Using a scale of 0 (highly unsuccessful) to 10 (highly successful), the respondents gave Baldwin an average score of 6.2 (eighth highest) and Churchill 7.9 (second). First was Clement Attlee (8.3) and last was Anthony Eden* (2.5).²⁶

A difficulty with assessing Churchill is that his two terms were in very different contexts: wartime crisis, then post-war redevelopment. His second term is not regarded as being nearly as successful as his first. A 2010 University of Leeds poll of academics about the post-war period placed him sixth out of 12, with Attlee again first and Eden last.²⁷

This may support the pre-war perception by people such as George VI and Baldwin himself that Churchill should only be prime minister during military conflict. Baldwin commented in 1935, perhaps as an excuse to keep him out of government: ‘If there is going to be a war – and no one can say that there is not – we must keep [Churchill] fresh to be our war Prime Minister.’²⁸

In 2010, three Times columnists (Matthew Parris, Peter Riddell and Ben Macintyre) ranked all British prime ministers since the office was first filled by Robert Walpole in 1721. Churchill was first and Baldwin was fourteenth out of 52 office holders.

In 2002, the BBC conducted a poll of the British public for a television series called 100 Greatest Britons. Churchill came top and Baldwin did not feature. Engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel came second and Diana, Princess of Wales was third.

The BBC also produced two series in 2016 and 2018 entitled Prime Ministers’ Props which included ‘Winston Churchill’s Cigar’ and ‘Stanley Baldwin’s Gates’. Baldwin’s earlier prop, his pipe, was replaced in the contemporary media by his gates. Other episodes covered Anthony Eden’s homburg hat, Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella and Margaret Thatcher’s handbag.²⁹

3. Biographical summary

Occupation	Businessman, politician
Country	UK
Career	Worked in father’s business from 1888. Conservative MP for Bewdley, Worcestershire (1908-1937). Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1917-21). President of the Board of Trade (1921-22). Chancellor of the Exchequer (1922-23). Prime Minister (1923-24, 1924-29, 1935-37). Leader of the Opposition (1929-31). Lord President of the Council (1931-35).
Born	Lower Park House, Bewdley, Worcestershire, England
Father	Alfred Baldwin (1841-1908), MP and industrialist
Mother	Louisa MacDonald (1845–1925), church minister’s daughter; her sister Alice was Rudyard Kipling’s mother
Siblings	–
Education	Harrow School; Trinity College, Cambridge (history, 3rd class degree)
Spouse	Lucy ‘Cissie’ Ridsdale (c.1869-1945), m. 1892 until her death; heart attack
Children	1. Still-born son (1894) 2. Diana (1895-1982) 3. Leonora ‘Lorna’ (1896-1989) 4. Margaret ‘Margot’ (1897-1976) 5. Oliver (1899-1958), army major, author, socialist MP; 2nd Earl 6. Baldwin of Bewdley 7. Esther ‘Betty’ (1902-1981) 8. Windham (1904-1976), 3rd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley
Died	1947, aged 80 in Astley Hall, Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire
Buried	Worcester Cathedral, Worcestershire
Nicknames	Stan (family); S.B.; The Squire of Bewdley; Honest Stan; Uncle Stanley (from homely radio broadcasts); Ironmonger (coined by Brendan Bracken; the Tiger (wife Lucy)
Height	Medium
TIME magazine	Front cover: 1927

4. See also

Press barons

• Beaverbrook, Lord (Max Aitken)
• Rothermere, Lord (Harold Harmsworth)

Abdication crisis

• Edward VIII

Appeasement

• Hitler, Adolf

Churchill controversies

• Abdication crisis
• Anti-appeasement
• Distortion of history

5. Further reading

Baldwin

• Baldwin, A.W., My Father: The True Story (Allen & Unwin, 1955)
• Jenkins, Roy, Baldwin (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011)
• Perkins, Anne, Baldwin (Haus Publishing, 2006)

Baldwin and Churchill

• Langworth, Richard M., ‘How Churchill Saw Others: Stanley Baldwin’, The International Churchill Society, 1998
• Williamson, Philip, ‘Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill’, International Churchill Society, 2020.

Rearmament/appeasement

• Bouverie, Tim, Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (Random House, 2019)
• Owen, Frank, Michael Foot, and Peter Howard, Guilty Men (V. Gollancz, 1940)
• Parker, R.A.C., Churchill & Appeasement (Pan Macmillan, 2012)

6. References

¹ Great Britain Parliament, The Parliamentary Debates (Reuter’s Telegram Company, 1908), p. 1433.

² Stanley Baldwin, On England: And Other Addresses (Frederick A. Stokes, 1926), p. 269.

³ Stanley Baldwin, On England: And Other Addresses, p. 269.

⁴ Stanley Baldwin, On England: And Other Addresses, p. 60.

⁵ Stanley Baldwin, On England: And Other Addresses, p. 73.

⁶ Lord Lexden, ‘One Nation – Yet Another Correction’, 2018

⁷ Stuart Ball, ‘Baldwin, Stanley, First Earl Baldwin of Bewdley’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2019.

⁸ Frank Owen, Michael Foot, and Peter Howard, Guilty Men (V. Gollancz, 1940), p. 21.

⁹ Owen, Foot, and Howard, p. 27.

¹⁰ Owen, Foot, and Howard, p. 36.

¹¹ Stanley Baldwin, ‘Debate on the King’s Speech’, Hansard, 1935. Baldwin’s statement is often misquoted as ‘my lips are sealed’, including by ‘Cato’: Owen, Foot, and Howard, p. 42. The comment was made during a 1935 statement on the Abyssinian crisis.

¹² Winston S. Churchill, ‘Defence Policy’, Hansard, 1935.

¹³ Winston S. Churchill, Churchill by Himself: In His Own Words, ed. by Richard M. Langworth (Rosetta Books, 2013), p. 486.

¹⁴ Winston S. Churchill, Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit, ed. by Kay Halle (World Publishing Company, 1966), p. 131.

¹⁵ Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step: Political Writings: 1936-1939 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), p. 226.

¹⁶ Lord Lexden, ‘Stanley Baldwin in a Year of Anniversaries’, 2017.

¹⁷ Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Sixty Years of Power: Some Memories of the Men Who Wielded It (J.H. Heineman, 1966), p. 73.

¹⁸ Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey (John Wiley & Sons, 1994), pp. 221–22.

¹⁹ Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey, pp. 105–6.

²⁰ Hansard, ‘Mr. Neville Chamberlain’, 1940.

²¹ Churchill, Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit, p. 134.

²² Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 1072.

²³ Churchill, Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit, p. 181.

²⁴ Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Volume 6: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (Heinemann, 1966), p. 877.

²⁵ Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1021.

²⁶ Ipsos MORI, ‘Rating British Prime Ministers’, 2004.

²⁷ University of Leeds, ‘Academics Rate Brown One of the Worst Post 1945 PMs’, 2010.

²⁸ Middlemas and Barnes, p. 872.

²⁹ BBC Radio 4, ‘Prime Ministers’ Props’, 2018.