ABSTRACT
Above all, Chamberlain expected to use his position as Chancellor to impart substance to the incorporeal vision of a ‘scientific’ tariff and imperial preference invoked by his father some 30 years before. As he rightly forecast, 1932 would be a ‘very momentous year … the turning point, or perhaps … rather the critical point in my political career’.2 As a touching signal of this historic significance, he was ‘much gratified’ to be offered the Freedom of the City of Birmingham in January. As the Lord Mayor who had initiated the practice of erecting tablets bearing the names of Freeman in the Council House, he was particularly satisfied to note that the presence of three names from the same family was a unique achievement.3 During the first National Government, Chamberlain had been prepared to subordinate tariffs to the far more urgent task of balancing the budget and
saving sterling in the belief that it was becoming ‘more and more evident that [they could] not put the situation right without a tariff’.4 After prolonging the life of the National Government specifically to redress the adverse balance of trade, however, the question of tariff policy immediately emerged at the top of the political agenda. Having persuaded Runciman to accept the idea of an unspecified maximum rate of duty against abnormal imports being ‘dumped’ on the British market (rather than Runciman’s inclination to specify a 1020 per cent tariff), when they put the proposal to the Cabinet on 12 November Chamberlain was delighted when Snowden then responded to his questions about the maximum rate of duty by suggesting 100 per cent; a proposal the Cabinet duly accepted. Chamberlain’s amusement at the success of his strategy was evident: ‘Comic isn’t it’, he wrote to his sisters, ‘to think of the Free Traders giving power to two Ministers to put a 100% duty on any mortal manufactured article they like.’5 A fortnight later, the Cabinet agreed to an emergency duty on non-essential foodstuffs.6 Almost unobserved, the principle of taxes on food, albeit of a ‘luxury’ class, had passed into law. Little wonder that in late December Chamberlain seemed ‘fairly happy with the progress the Government is making’. As he told his sisters, ‘We have witnessed a political revolution in three months and although bloodless it is none the less effective.’7 As in the previous September, Chamberlain regarded MacDonald as ‘the key to the situation’ in his advance towards a ‘scientific’ tariff structure. Believing his views on tariffs were still largely uncrystallised, Chamberlain assumed the Prime Minister would accept any reasonable solution if it did not involve ‘embarrassing political complications’ with the free traders and avoided his appearance as ‘a mere figurehead, obliged to accept holus-bolus any policy which might be imposed upon him by his Tory colleagues’. Protectionist advance, therefore, depended upon Chamberlain’s ability to win the support of a ‘sufficiently influential non-Tory section of the Cabinet’ to ensure that MacDonald remained ‘fairly comfortable’. In particular, if Runciman’s assent could be secured for the proposals emanating from the Balance of Trade Committee, Chamberlain felt he ‘could have no greater certainty of winning … the support of the Prime Minister’.8 Despite Runciman’s unexpected flexibility over the emergency tariffs, however, his support was far from guaranteed. Indeed, in a number of private conversations during December Chamberlain found him intractable over tariffs on fundamentals like meat, wheat and steel. Nevertheless, despite Chamberlain’s overestimate of his progress in these preparatory talks, Runciman still played a pivotal role in designing and passing the Import Duties Bill. To this extent at least, Chamberlain was successful in creating an understanding which left MacDonald ‘very glad’ that they were ‘getting together and hammering out agreements on some of the big subjects’ before them.9 The Committee on the Balance of Trade, established in early December to advise upon remedies, was crucial to Chamberlain’s strategy of legitimating protectionist aspirations in such a way as to reassure MacDonald and the
electorate of a ‘National’ consensus in favour of tariffs. Having skilfully outmanoeuvred MacDonald over the committee’s composition and organisation, Chamberlain intended ‘to bring on the battle at an early stage’ so the ‘fight will come in Committee’ which he intended to dominate.10 His manipulation of the committee’s proceedings was characteristically adroit. After a discursive first session, debate was almost entirely confined to memoranda prepared by Chamberlain and Runciman, thereby compelling the free traders to argue their case within the parameters defined by protectionist initiative. Moreover, by the penultimate session, all the committee’s members except Samuel and Thomas (who ‘could be relied upon to support’) had been persuaded to accept Chamberlain’s proposals for a flat rate tariff with selective surtaxes to be imposed by an independent Import Duties Advisory Committee. At this meeting, however, Chamberlain’s strategy virtually collapsed when Snowden suddenly launched into an ‘old time Free Trade disquisition’ against a general tariff and then adamantly refused to listen to the pleas from Runciman and Chamberlain designed to change his mind. Worse still, Snowden’s resistance encouraged Samuel’s refusal to support the proposals and neither Chamberlain or Runciman could budge them.11 In a final attempt to obtain Snowden’s acquiescence Chamberlain wrote him a long and friendly letter before the Committee’s final session, mobilising all the policy and personal arguments for reconsideration. In an equally warm and effusive reply, Snowden adamantly refused to consider them.12 Although Snowden’s determination was predictable, Chamberlain had been obliged to seek an accommodation for two reasons. First, while he despised Herbert Samuel’s Liberal free trade following, he had always genuinely held Snowden in high esteem as ‘a man of courage’.13 As such, he did ‘not want to see the realist element in the Cabinet weakened’ by Snowden’s departure because this would deprive him of a powerful ally in the ‘large field in which [their] ideas [we]re very nearly identical’.14 Secondly, Snowden was important to Chamberlain because his support mattered to MacDonald. Neither MacDonald nor Chamberlain took Samuelite threats of resignation seriously, but there was no such lack of confidence about Snowden’s sincerity. By alarming MacDonald, therefore, Snowden’s intransigence compelled Chamberlain to attempt a reconciliation. In view of Snowden’s increasing belligerence since the election and his letter two days earlier, it is astonishing that Chamberlain should have interpreted Snowden’s ‘almost complete silence’ at the committee’s final meeting on 18 January as a sign that his pleas had achieved their purpose.15 In fact Snowden’s silence signified patient fatalism. Shortly before the meeting he had informed Samuel that he was ‘definitely opposed to the proposals … and that he would resign rather than concur’. Samuel’s assurance that he and his followers were in the same position, however disingenuous, perceptibly encouraged Snowden into believing that he would not be alone. In order to reconcile the committee’s divergent opinions, at their final meeting on 18 January Samuel and Snowden were permitted to submit separate memoranda of dissent.16
