Education
He showed ability but no academic ambition and made no mark
He showed ability but no academic ambition and made no mark
In 1908, on the death of his father, who was a member of parliament for the constituency in which his works were situated, Baldwin was elected, unopposed, in his father's place. He always cherished a strong sentimental regard for his native Worcestershire, regarding London as "exile." His pipe and his pigs became in later years a familiar theme of the caricaturist.
Baldwin made few speeches during his first years in the Commons. However, wartime conditions brought him successive promotions; after 1917 he became parliamentary secretary to Andrew Bonar Law, then financial secretary to the Treasury, and then a cabinet minister as president of the Board of Trade. He was still, however, almost unknown to the public when events occurred which raised him to the premiership. He was from the first ill at ease as a member of Lloyd George's postwar coalition government and in October 1922 found himself the spokesman of the rank and file of the Conservative Party who wished to break away from the coalition and fight the approaching election as an independent party. The move succeeded; Lloyd George resigned, the Conservatives persuaded Bonar Law to emerge from retirement as their leader, and they secured a majority in the election. Bonar Law became premier with Baldwin as chancellor of the exchequer. In this office Baldwin made an agreement for repayment of war debts to the United States which was much criticized in England. In 1923 Bonar Law died and Baldwin succeeded him, since all the leading Conservative politicans had remained in alliance with Lloyd George.
Baldwin's first premiership lasted only a few months in 1923 because he felt that he must secure a mandate for a protective tariff by means of a general election. He was defeated and the result was the first Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald. Yet a third election in 1924 restored him to power, and his second premiership lasted from 1924 to 1929. The first general strike in England occurred in 1926; Baldwin defeated it and made provision against its recurrence with the Trade Disputes and Trade Union Act of 1927. The second Labour Government, which followed, collapsed in the economic crisis known as the Great Slump. An all-party government was formed in 1931 with MacDonald as nominal leader, but Baldwin was leader of the largest constituent party. He became prime minister for the third time in 1935 when MacDonald retired.
Baldwin's principal problems were in the area of foreign policy, and he was not well equipped to deal with them, being an isolationist in thought and temperament who knew little about continental European affairs. Absorbed with maintaining peace, as was indeed a large section of public opinion, he did not heed the repeated warnings of Winston Churchill and others about the facts and the dangers of German rearmament and the aggressive intentions of Hitler's Germany. Baldwin retired from politics in 1937, but not before he had managed the abdication of Edward VIII with a tact that won general admiration. He was made an earl with the title of Earl Baldwin of Bewdley.
His father was the owner of an old inherited family steel business; his mother was a sister of the mother of Rudyard Kipling and of the wife of the painter Edward Burne-Jones.
Baldwin married Lucy Ridsdale in 1892, and this match brought him over fifty years of domestic happiness.