ABSTRACT
Depression, distaste for politics and gloomy forebodings about the future are natural emotional responses to electoral defeat among those so rudely deprived of office, status and worthwhile occupation. Chamberlain was no exception. Indeed, for a man who could more genuinely claim than most of his colleagues that his ‘pleasure is in administration rather than in politics’, the transition to the Opposition benches was a painful and traumatic experience. Within days of the election, Chamberlain predicted that Labour would spend two years establishing their credibility in office, before introducing a popular budget as a prelude to a general election designed to usher in a full term of majority government and the socialist millennium. As a result, he was soon dismally contemplating the prospect of seven years in Opposition – by which time he would be 67, with his powers in decline and with a new generation of leaders emerging to obstruct any future claim he might have to office. ‘It is hard to bear & it will take time to recover spirits’, he confessed to his sisters, consoling himself with the thought that ‘there is no certainty in politics and that is why one does not go out in despair. The most unexpected things may happen and we may return to office sooner than seems possible now.’1 In political terms, the prospects were equally cheerless. As in 1924, Chamberlain remained convinced that ‘the only way to check the advance of Socialism … is to give the country a dose of Socialist Government’ and he derived malicious comfort from thoughts of the Cabinet’s intellectual deficiency and internal jealousies.2 Yet for the Conservatives to benefit from the situation, a united Opposition with strong combative leadership and a clear constructive vision were essential requirements and even in the immediate aftermath of defeat Chamberlain lamented privately that ‘Baldwin lacks the qualities of a leader in that he has no power of rapid decision and consequently no initiative.’3 Worse still, Baldwin’s retreat into depressed inertia coincided with a crisis in
party discipline and morale as long-suppressed tensions over tariffs boiled to the surface almost immediately the Conservatives left office. The first signs of trouble came from Lord Beaverbrook, the self-made Canadian proprietor of the mass-circulation Express Newspapers group. Widely perceived to be the eminence grise behind Bonar Law and a close associate of Lloyd George, during the 1920s Beaverbrook’s unenviable reputation as an unscrupulous adventurer and maverick ensured that under Baldwin’s very different style of leadership he was banished to the margins of Conservative politics as a detested pariah. Despite an unobtrusive role in the 1929 election, however, on 30 June Beaverbrook launched his press campaign for ‘Empire Free Trade’ with a savage indictment of those politicians who believed in Empire but withdrew from the fulfilment of ‘Imperial Fiscal Union’ for reasons of electoral expediency. Although supremely ambiguous and opportunistic as both a policy and a movement, at the heart of Beaverbrook’s Empire Crusade was an aggressive exaltation of food taxes and a direct assault upon the ‘outworn fallacy of the “Dear Loaf”’.4 To make matters worse, in the Commons on 9 July, Amery finally gave vent to his protectionist fury at Churchill’s free trade obstructionism when in office while Chamberlain’s own speech to the Empire Industries Association extolling an explicitly protectionist policy reinforced the alarm of Conservative free traders that this was all part of a concerted demarche to foist tariffs and food taxes upon the Conservative Party.5 Indeed, such was the party’s mood that by early October close associates warned Chamberlain that ‘things are moving so fast that unless something happens quickly, everything and everybody will collapse like a pack of cards’.6 Mounting party disenchantment with Baldwin’s leadership placed Chamberlain in an invidious and frustrating position for two reasons. First, increasing speculation about leadership distracted attention from his primary objective of committing the party to a radical change in its fiscal policy. For Chamberlain, the first priority was to jettison all past limiting pledges on tariffs in favour of a ‘free hand’ to deal with trade and imperial needs as circumstances suggested; a position which included the possibility of food taxes. Moreover, his urgency in pressing this policy was substantially increased by fears that J.H. Thomas, the new Dominion Secretary, would persuade Labour to steal the Conservative clothes on imperial preference.7 Secondly, Chamberlain recognised that his proven ability combined with his well-known commitment to tariffs increasingly made him appear the obvious successor to a position he did not particularly crave. As Baldwin was his friend as well as his leader, therefore, he hoped that Baldwin’s lethargy was just a ‘passing phase’. But as he confessed in October 1929 it ‘is all very depressing and particularly embarrassing for me because everyone I meet tells me of S.B.’s failings and many suggest that I should do better in his place. Heaven knows I don’t want the job. It is a thankless one at any time & never more so than now when the party is all to pieces.’ To make matters worse, the fear that Baldwin’s distaste for Opposition might prompt his retirement confronted Chamberlain with the possibility of having to contest the succession with Churchill who was ‘shoving very hard
with an eye to the leadership’; a choice which prompted the confession that ‘I don’t know which I should dislike most!’ Reluctant to assume the leadership himself, but adamantly opposed to Churchill’s succession, Chamberlain thus became even more firmly committed to the defence of Baldwin’s position. In late October, he warned Baldwin of the poor state of party morale and urged him to ‘do violence to his instincts, give a lead and attack the enemy’. He also attempted to persuade him that tariffs were ‘the only thing which could pull [our] people together and that an advance there was the thing to work for’.8 This logic implied the need to achieve an accommodation with Beaverbrook, despite the fact that Chamberlain believed Empire Free Trade was ‘obsolete, impracticable and mischievous’ and so ‘woolly’ that it would be ‘riddled with criticisms’ if adopted as a party commitment. He also feared that it was likely to jeopardise his own plans to ‘make tariffs … only part of a larger Imperial trade policy’. Until the end of October Chamberlain refused to negotiate with Beaverbrook, partly because of his evident vendetta against Baldwin and partly because he suspected ‘the Beaver [was] trying to queer our pitch by setting an impossible standard and then crabbing everyone who does not come up to it’.9 Yet encouraged by Harold Macmillan into believing that ‘with a “few kind words” he might be won over’, Chamberlain and Hoare met Beaverbrook on 4 November. Although discouraged by Beaverbrook’s equivocation, his ‘strong personal hostility to S.B.’ and intransigence over food taxes, however, on the following morning Beaverbrook informed Hoare that after Chamberlain’s forthcoming East African tour if they went to him ‘meaning business he would be prepared to do a deal … and … his personal feelings about S.B. wd not stand in the way as he cared much more about Empire Free Trade than he did about his vendetta’.10 On this basis, the accommodation was consummated at a meeting between Baldwin and Beaverbrook followed by a few sympathetic words in the leader’s Albert Hall speech on 21 November. Chamberlain was pleased by Baldwin’s speech as the first step towards the adoption of the ‘free hand’, but although he believed him ‘quite sound on the merits’ he complained that he ‘wavers backwards and forwards on the expediency according to the last person who talked to him’. As a result, Chamberlain (loyally aided by his close friend and ally, Sir Samuel Hoare) worked to maintain the protectionist pressure on Baldwin. ‘He is like a top’ Chamberlain told his sisters, ‘You must keep whipping him or he falls over!’11 Everything now depended on sustaining the new modus vivendi with the press lords while Chamberlain formulated a new and practicable tariff policy of his own. To assist him in this task, in November it was announced that Joseph Ball would become Director of a new Conservative Research Department. Although temporarily headed by Lord Eustace Percy, the Central Office press release made it clear that ‘it is Mr Chamberlain’s intention, on his return from South [sic] Africa, to associate himself actively with the work of the Department’.12 Almost immediately Chamberlain arranged for an enquiry to consider the most effective method of support for domestic and Dominion farmers, while CunliffeLister began work on an industrial tariff enquiry. Although he recognised the
scale of the problem in converting the party and country to a policy of Empire development and the ‘free hand’, on tariffs, Chamberlain declared himself ‘very well satisfied with our beginning’.13 He then set off for ‘the great adventure’ in East Africa on 11 December, confident that the worst was now behind them and that a period of constructive Opposition lay ahead.
