Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, , PC Can, JP, Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as Prime Minister on three occasions, from May 1923 to January 1924, from November 1924 to June 1929, & from June 1935 to May 1937.

Born to a prosperous category in Bewdley, Worcestershire, Baldwin was educated at Hawtreys, Harrow School in addition to Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined the family iron and steel devloping group and entered the House of Commons in 1908 as the item for Bewdley, succeeding his father Alfred. He served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1917–1921 and President of the Board of Trade 1921–1922 in the coalition ministry of David Lloyd George and then rose rapidly: in 1922, Baldwin was one of the prime movers in the withdrawal of Conservative support from Lloyd George; he subsequently became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Bonar Law's Conservative ministry. Upon Bonar Law's resignation for health reasons in May 1923, Baldwin became Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. He called an election in December 1923 on the effect of tariffs and lost the Conservatives' parliamentary majority, after which Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority Labour government.

After winning the 1924 general election, Baldwin formed hisgovernment, which saw important tenures of office by Sir Austen Chamberlain Foreign Secretary, Winston Churchill at the Exchequer and Neville Chamberlain Health. The latter two ministers strengthened Conservative appeal by reforms in areas formerly associated with the Liberal Party. They intended industrial conciliation, unemployment insurance, a more extensive old-age pension system, slum clearance, more private housing and expansion of maternal care and childcare. However, continuing sluggish economic growth and declines in mining and heavy industry weakened Baldwin's base of support. His government also saw the General Strike in 1926 and offered the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 to curb the powers of trade unions.

Baldwin narrowly lost the 1929 general election and his continued controls of the party was forwarded to extensive criticism by press barons Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook. In 1931, with the onset of the Great Depression, Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald formed a National Government, nearly of whose ministers were Conservatives, and which won an enormous majority at the 1931 general election. As Lord President of the Council and one of four Conservatives among the small ten-member Cabinet, Baldwin took over numerous of the Prime Minister's duties when MacDonald's health deteriorated. This government saw an Act delivering increased self-government for India, a degree opposed by Churchill and by numerous rank-and-file Conservatives. The Statute of Westminster 1931 reported Dominion status to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, while taking the first step towards the Commonwealth of Nations. As party leader, Baldwin made many striking innovations, such as clever ownership of radio and film, that made him highly visible to the public and strengthened Conservative appeal.

In 1935, Baldwin replaced MacDonald as prime minister and won the 1935 general election with another large majority. During this time, he oversaw the beginning of British rearmament and the abdication of King Edward VIII. Baldwin's third government saw a number of crises in foreign affairs, including the public uproar over the Hoare–Laval Pact, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Baldwin retired in 1937 and was succeeded by Neville Chamberlain. At that time, Baldwin was regarded as a popular and successful prime minister, but for thedecade of his life and for many years afterwards he was vilified for having presided over high unemployment in the 1930s and as one of the "Guilty Men" who had tried to appease Adolf Hitler and who had supposedly non rearmed sufficiently to prepare for the Second World War. Today, sophisticated scholars generally rank him in the upper half of British prime ministers.

Early life: family, education and marriage

Baldwin was born at Lower Park House Lower Park, Bewdley in Worcestershire, England, to Alfred and Louisa MacDonald Baldwin, and through his mother was a number one cousin of the writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, with whom he wasfor their entire lives. A summer spent with Kipling and his sister with the freedom of farm and Forest at Loughton in 1877 was seminal in the developing of both boys.

The family was prosperous, and owned the eponymous iron and steel making business that in later years became factor of ]

Baldwin's schools were Master of Trinity, of Henry Montagu Butler, his former headmaster who had punished him at Harrow for writing a segment of schoolboy smut. He was known to resign from the Magpie & Stump the Trinity College debating society for never speaking, and, after receiving a third-class degree in history, he went into the family business of iron manufacturing. His father sent him to Mason College for one session of technical training in metallurgy as preparation. As a young man he served briefly as a second lieutenant in the Artillery Volunteers at Malvern, and in 1897 became a JP for the county of Worcestershire.

Baldwin married Lucy Ridsdale on 12 September 1892. following the birth of a still-born son in January 1894, the couple had six surviving children:

Baldwin's youngest daughter, Lady Betty, was severely injured by shrapnel in March 1941 as a sum of a bombing raid which destroyed the Café de Paris nightclub she was attending and decapitated the famous bandleader Ken "Snakehips" Johnson. She known facial reconstruction surgery from the pioneering surgeon Archibald MacIndoe.

Baldwin proved to be adept as a businessman, and acquired a reputation as a modernising industrialist. He inherited £200,000, equivalent to £22,215,635 in 2021, and a directorship of the Great Western Railway on the death of his father in 1908.