Baldwin by Roy Jenkins Page A

his hands a little, but not excessively. His general note was one of chiding MacDonald for the weakness of his control over his own extremists and suggesting that what the country needed was men of practical experience, breadth of view and lack of dogmatic commitment.
    His most effective performance—except that there were not at that stage a great many people who were able to listen—was his broadcast. No one really knew how the new technique should be handled. MacDonald decided, naturally but disastrously, that the obvious objective was to import into the living rooms of the wireless-owning population the soaring platform oratory which so moved his immediate audiences. The BBC broadcast him live from a mass meeting in Glasgow. He sounded ranting and inconsequential. Baldwin by contrast spoke intimately from the office of the Director-General. The result was a triumph. He had found a method of neutralising MacDonald’s most effective political quality—his inspirational personal presence.
    The result of the election was also a triumph. The Conservatives increased their vote by the sensational proportion of 37 per cent. They won 419 seats, against 151 for Labour and 40 (a loss of 116) for the Liberals. Almost the only place where the Conservatives did badly was the normally impregnable Birmingham. This hardly diminished Baldwin’s sense of personal victory. He had been unopposed at Bewdley, but his two principal colleagues, the Chamberlain brothers, found their majorities uncomfortably reduced, Neville’s to the very edge of defeat.
    The virtual destruction of the Liberal Party almost completed the political pattern which he had hoped for since the previous autumn.’… I did not think it would come so quickly,’ he told Tom Jones on 4 November. ‘The next step must be the elimination of the Communists by Labour. Then we shall have twoparties, the party of the Right, and the party of the Left.’ 16 He had just been to the Palace to kiss hands as Prime Minister for the second time.
    He turned to Cabinet-making. His position was quite different from that of 1923. He had won his own victory. He had the prospect of four years or so of uninterrupted power. He could build his own Government with few debts or commitments. And he had at his disposal almost an embarrassment rather than a shortage of political experience. He approached his task, as Austen Chamberlain noted, with a new firmness and confidence. But on the whole he discharged it badly.
    He started well by making it clear to a shocked and protesting Curzon that he could not again be Foreign Secretary. In his place he put Austen Chamberlain, although a little more by accident than design, for Baldwin had offered him the choice between that and the India Office. When Chamberlain chose the senior office, Birkenhead got India.
    The domestic appointments were more eccentric. Neville Chamberlain was naturally offered a return to the Treasury. With a lack of concern for place which was worthy of his father, he said he would rather be Minister of Health. 10 Baldwin then inclined to Sir Samuel Hoare for the Chancellorship. Neville Chamberlain suggested Churchill. It was an extraordinary suggestion to come from a man who was normally so sensitive to Conservative Party opinion. Churchill had only recently rejoined the party. Eight months before he had fought as an independent against an official Conservative at a bye-election in the Abbey division of Westminster. Moreover he knew nothing about finance, and had no discernible claim to so senior an appointment. What was equally extraordinary was that Baldwin jumped at the idea. Ten minutes later—another leap in the dark—he offered the appointment to Churchill. Churchill, who at first thought it was the Chancellorship of theDuchy of Lancaster which was the proposition and for which he would happily have settled, accepted the greater post with tears in his eyes and an expression of grateful loyalty. ‘You have done more for