Stanley Baldwin

From Wyfopedia

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC (3rd August 1867 - 14th December 1947) was Prime Minister on three separate occasions. He was born in Bewdley and was elected an Honorary Freeman of the Borough of Kidderminster in 1928.

1 Stanley Baldwin and Wyre Forest
2 Later life
3 Quotations by and about Baldwin
4 Miscellaneous
5 References

[edit] Stanley Baldwin and Wyre Forest

Stanley Baldwin's Birthplace

Born at Lower Park House, Lower Park, Bewdley to Alfred Baldwin and Louisa Baldwin. Through his mother he was a first cousin of the writer and poet Rudyard Kipling. He was educated at St Michael's School, Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he received a third class degree in history), and went into the family business at Wilden.

As a young man he served very briefly as a Second Lieutenant in the Artillery Volunteers at Malvern.(+)

He married Lucy Ridsdale on 12 September 1892. In the 1906 General Election he contested Kidderminster but lost amidst an anti-Conservative landslide.

On his father's death, in 1908, he inherit £200,000 and became a director of the Great Western Railway. He successfully contested the resulting by-election for Bewdley.

He proved to be very adept at the family business of iron manufacturing, and acquired a reputation as a modernising industrialist.

In June 1945 Baldwin's wife died. Baldwin himself by now suffered with arthritis and needed a stick to walk. When he made his final public in London in October 1947 at an unveiling of a statue of King George V. A crowd, recognizing the former Prime Minister, cheered him, but Baldwin by this time was quite hard of hearing and asked, "Are they booing me?". Having been made Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1930, he continued in this capacity until his death in his sleep at Astley Hall, near Stourport-on-Severn, on 14 December 1947. He was cremated and his ashes buried in Worcester Cathedral.

[edit] Later life

Baldwin's years in retirement were quiet. With Neville Chamberlain dead, Baldwin's perceived part in pre-war appeasement made him an unpopular figure during and after World War II. During the war, Winston Churchill consulted him only once, on the advisability of Britain's taking a tougher line toward the continued neutrality of Éamon de Valera's Irish Free State (Baldwin advised against it.)

Baldwin was essentially a moderate one-nation Conservative. When he finally retired in 1937, he received a great deal of praise. The onset of the Second World War changed the country's attitude to him; he was seen as being responsible for the calamitous military unpreparedness of the country for war. Baldwin was a moderate, and felt unable to start a programme of re-armament without national consensus. In truth this was the mainstream political view of the time both in Britain and France.

For Winston Churchill, however, that was no excuse. He firmly believed that Baldwin's conciliatory stance toward Hitler gave the German dictator the impression that Britain would not fight if attacked. Though known for his magnanimity toward political opponents such as Neville Chamberlain, Churchill had none to spare for Baldwin. "I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill," Churchill said when declining to send 80th birthday greetings to the retired prime minister in 1947, "but it would have been much better had he never lived."

His estate was probated at £280,971.

[edit] Quotations by and about Baldwin

see Wikiquote - Stanley Baldwin

[edit] Miscellaneous

His son, Oliver Baldwin, was a Labour MP.

[edit] References

(+) Middlemas and Barnes (1969). Baldwin: a biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 21.

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Political Offices
Preceded by: Sir Robert Horne	President of the Board of Trade 1921–1922	Succeeded by: Sir Philip Lloyd-Greame
Preceded by: Sir Robert Horne	Chancellor of the Exchequer 1922–1923	Succeeded by: Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by: Ramsay MacDonald	Leader of the Opposition 1924	Succeeded by: Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by: Ramsay MacDonald	Leader of the Opposition 1929–1931	Succeeded by: Arthur Henderson
Preceded by: The Lord Parmoor	Lord President of the Council 1931–1935	Succeeded by: Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by: The Viscount Snowden	Lord Privy Seal 1932–1934	Succeeded by: Anthony Eden
Preceded by: The Earl of Balfour	Chancellor of the University of Cambridge 1930–1947	Succeeded by: Jan Smuts
Preceded by: New Creation	Earl Baldwin of Bewdley 1937–1947	Succeeded by: Oliver Baldwin