and his weakness. Curzon lacked resolution, despite his rigid appearance.
He was one of nature's rats. He ran away over the Parliament bill; he
succumbed to women's suffrage. He promised to stand by Asquith and then
abandoned him. He did the same with Lloyd George. Beaverbrook has called
him 'a political jumping jack'. Law regarded the impending choice between
Curzon and Baldwin with more than his usual gloom. He tried to escape from
it by inviting Austen Chamberlain to join the government with the prospect
of being his successor in the autumn. Chamberlain appreciated that his
standing in the Conservative party had been for ever shaken by the vote at
the Carlton club, and refused.
The end came abruptly. In May Law was found to have incurable cancer of
the throat. He resigned at once. Consoled by the misleading precedent of
what happened when Gladstone resigned in 1894, he made no recommendation as
to his successor. He expected this to be Curzon, and was glad that it would
be none of his doing. However, the king was led to believe, whether
correctly or not, that Law favoured Baldwin, and he duly followed what he
supposed to be the advice of his retiring prime minister as the monarch has
done on all other occasions since 1894.3 Law lingered on until 30 October.
He was buried in Westminster Abbey—the first prime minister to follow
Gladstone there and with Neville Chamberlain, so far, as his only
successor. The reason for this distinction is obscure. Was it because he
had reunited the Conservative party? or because he had overthrown Lloyd
George?
BALDWIN
Baldwin did not follow Law's example of waiting to accept office until he
had been elected leader of the Conservative party. He became prime minister
on 21 May, was elected leader on 28 May. Curzon proposed the election with
phrases adequately fulsome. Privately he is reputed to have called Baldwin
'a man of the utmost insignificance'. This was Baldwin's strength. He
seemed, though he was not, an ordinary man. He presented himself as a
simple country gentleman, interested only in pigs. He was in fact a wealthy
ironmaster, with distinguished literary connexions.2 His simple exterior
concealed a skilful political operator. Lloyd George, after bitter
experience, called him 'the most formidable antagonist whom I ever
encountered'—no mean tribute. Baldwin played politics by ear. He read few
official documents, the newspapers not at all. He sat on the treasury bench
day after day, sniffing the order-paper, cracking his fingers, and studying
the house of commons in its every mood. He had in his mind a picture, no
doubt imaginary, of the patriarchal relations between masters and men at
his father's steel works, and aspired to establish these
relations with Labor on a national scale. This spirit met a response from
the other side. MacDonald said of him as early as 1923: 'In all essentials,
his outlook is very close to ours.' It is hard to decide whether Baldwin or
MacDonald did more to fit Labor into constitutional life.
Baldwin did not set the Conservative pattern alone. He acquired, almost
by accident, an associate from whom he was never parted: Neville
Chamberlain.3 The two were yoke-fellows rather than partners, bound
together by dislike of Lloyd George and by little else. Chamberlain was
harsher than Baldwin, more impatient with criticism and with events. He
antagonized where Baldwin conciliated. He was also more practical and eager
to get things done. He had a zest for administrative reform. Nearly all the
domestic achievements of Conservative governments between the wars stand to
his credit, and most of the troubles also. Active Conservatives often
strove to get rid of Baldwin and to put Chamberlain in his place. They did
not succeed. Chamberlain sinned against Napoleon's rule: he was a man of No
Luck. The cards always ran against him. He was humiliated by Lloyd George
at the beginning of his political career, and cheated by Hitler at the end.
Baldwin kept him in the second place, almost without trying.
Chamberlain's Housing Act (introduced in April, enacted in July) was the
one solid work of this dull government. It was provoked by the complete
stop in house building when Addison's programme ended. Chamberlain
believed, like most people, that Addison's unlimited subsidies were the
main cause of high building costs. He was also anxious, as a good
Conservative, to show that private enterprise could do better than local
authorities. His limited subsidy (Ј6 a year for twenty years) went to
private and public builders alike, with a preference for the former; and
they built houses only for sale. Mean houses ('non-parlour type' was the
technical phrase) were built for those who could afford nothing better.
Predominantly, the Chamberlain act benefited the lower middle class, not
the industrial workers. This financial discrimination caused much
bitterness. Chamberlain was marked as the enemy of the poor, and his
housing act lost the Conservatives more votes than it gained.
BALDWIN AND PROTECTION
Still, there seemed no reason why the government should not jog on. Its
majority was solid; economic conditions were not markedly deteriorating.
Without warning, Baldwin raised the ghost which Law had exorcized in 1922.
On 25 October he announced that he could fight unemployment only if he had
a free hand to introduce Protection. His motives for this sudden decision
remain obscure. Protection had been for many years at once the inspiration
and the bane of the Conservative party. There would hardly have been a
lively mind or a creative personality on the Conservative benches without
it. On the other hand, it had repeatedly brought party disunion and
electoral defeat. Hence Balfour had sworn off it in 1910, and Law in 1922.
There seemed little reason to revive this terrible controversy now. An
imperial conference was indeed in session, principally to ensure that no
British government would ever take such an initiative as Chanak again. The
conference expressed the usual pious wish for Imperial Preference. This
meant in practice British tariffs on foreign food, while foodstuffs from
the Dominions came in free. There would be Dominion preferences for British
manufactures only in the sense that Dominion tariffs, which were already
prohibitively high, would go up further against the foreigner. This was not
an attractive proposition to put before the British electorate, and Baldwin
did not attempt it. He pledged himself against 'stomach taxes'. There would
be 'no tax on wheat or meat'. Imperial Preference was thus ruled out.
Later, when Protection had brought defeat for the Conservatives, Baldwin
excused himself on grounds of political tactics. Lloyd George, he alleged,
was returning from a triumphal tour of North America with a grandiose
programme of empire development. Baldwin 'had to get in quick'. His
championing of Protection 'dished the Goat' [Lloyd George].1 Austen
Chamberlain and other Conservatives who had adhered to Lloyd George swung
back on to Baldwin's side. This story seems to have been devised after the
event. Chamberlain and the rest were already swinging back; there was no
serious sign that Lloyd George was inclining towards Protection. Perhaps
Baldwin, a man still little known, wished to establish his reputation with
the Conservative rank and file. Perhaps he wished to show that he, not
Beaverbrook, was Law's heir. The simplest explanation is probably the true
one. Baldwin, like most manufacturers of steel, thought only of the home
market. He did not grasp the problem of exports and hoped merely that there
would be more sale for British steel if foreign supplies were reduced. For
once, he took the initiative and learnt from his failure not to take it
again.
Protection involved a general election in order to shake off Law's pledge
of a year before. The cry of Protection certainly brought the former
associates of Lloyd George back to Baldwin. This was more than offset by
the resentment of Free Trade Conservatives, particularly in Lancashire.
Defence of Free Trade at last reunited the Liberal party, much to Lloyd
George's discomfiture—though this was hardly Baldwin's doing. With Free
Trade the dominant issue, Lloyd George was shackled to the orthodox
Asquithian remnant. Asquith was once more undisputed leader; Lloyd George,
the man who won the war, merely his unwilling lieutenant. It was small
consolation that the Asquithians had their expenses paid by the Lloyd
George Fund.
The election of December 1923 was as negative as its predecessor. This
time negation went against Protection, and doing nothing favoured the once-
radical cause of Free Trade. Though the overall vote remained much the
same— the Conservatives received about 100,000 less,3 the Liberals 200,000,
and Labor 100,000 more—the results were startlingly different. The
Conservatives lost over ninety seats, the Liberals gained forty, and Labor
fifty.4 The dominant groups of 1918 were further depleted, relatively in
one case, absolutely in the other. The trade unionists, once all-powerful,
were now a bare majority in the Labor party (98 out of 191). The National
(Lloyd George) Liberals, already halved in 1922, were now halved again,
despite the Liberal gains. There were only twenty-six of them. Their former
seats nearly all went to Labor, evidence that they had formed the Liberal
Left wing. The outcome was a tangle: no single party with a majority, yet
the Liberals barred from coalition by their dislike of Protection on the
