HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/people/neville-chamberlain Thu, 02 May 2024 09:58:39 GMT en hourly 1 Chamberlain and Cadbury of Birmingham: the first families in Britain’s second city https://www.historyextra.com/membership/birmingham-chamberlain-cadbury-families-industry/ Wed, 07 Jun 2023 07:38:21 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/birmingham-chamberlain-cadbury-families-industry/ The story of modern Birmingham is dominated by two clans, whose radical views and fierce commitment to public service forged its distinctive identity. Richard Vinen traces the rise, and fall, of the political powerhouse Chamberlains and the chocolate-making Cadburys Workshop of the World. Chocolate Capital. Venice of the North. Just plain “Brum”. Birmingham, now Britain’s second-largest city, has attracted a host of nicknames but one distinctive identity, forged in large part by the actions of two families – the Chamberlains and the Cadburys.
These dynasties dominated Birmingham’s industry, politics and society across the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet, guided by faith, philanthropy and public service, they wielded enormous influence at a national and global level, too.
During the later Middle Ages and Tudor era, Birmingham had grown from a modest market town into a prosperous urban centre known for wool, leather and metalworking. At the start of the 18th century, it was home to around 15,000 people. Over the following decades, Birmingham played a leading role in the industrial revolution, with a corresponding boom in its population, which topped 73,000 by the end of the century.
Among those thousands drawn in to this burgeoning Midlands powerhouse were the Chamberlains, who would go on to spawn a British prime minster, and the Cadburys, whose surname became known as a global brand.
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The impact of these families is revealed vividly in the words of one young woman writing in the 1880s. Twenty-four-year-old Beatrice Potter (later known as an influential sociologist under her married name of Webb) had fallen in love. She had been bowled over by the power of her paramour’s personality, but she was shrewd enough to see that he was more than an extraordinary individual. He represented a whole milieu, one that showed little interest in the trappings of the elite and was fired by a fierce commitment to social activism.
“He is supported by the powerful clan to which he belongs,” observed Potter. “They stand far above the town society in social position, wealth and culture; and yet they spend their lives, as great citizens, taking an active and leading part in the municipal, political and educational life of their town… There is one eternal refrain: Birmingham society is superior in earnestness, sincerity and natural intelligence to any society in the United Kingdom!”
The Chamberlains: shaping British politics
The object of Potter’s affections was Joseph Chamberlain – a former industrialist and Liberal politician who, from 1873–76, had been mayor of the city where he’d made his fortune and his reputation. Chamberlain arguably had a greater impact on the evolution of Birmingham than any other politician. He came to the city in the early 1850s at the age of 18, to make his fortune in industry; having done so (in the family’s screw-manufacturing business), he threw himself into public life.
He purchased the gas companies on behalf of the council, improved the city’s water supply, was a driving force behind the construction of Birmingham’s main shopping thoroughfare, Corporation Street, and was responsible for a large number of civic buildings. In short, while mayor, Chamberlain pioneered a new level of activism in municipal government that caused an American journalist to describe Birmingham as the “best governed city in the world”.
Joseph entered parliament, first as a Liberal and then – after his opposition to home rule for Ireland caused him to break with prime minister William Gladstone in 1886 – as an ally of the Conservative party. Though the most senior office that he held was that of colonial secretary, he transformed British politics – partly because he developed a model of rightwing populism that continues to shape politics today.
Joseph’s eldest son, Austen, served as foreign secretary in the 1920s. His younger son, Neville, became prime minister and is remembered best – or worst – for the Munich Agreement with Hitler of 1938.
The Cadburys: a model dynasty
The Cadburys had been in Birmingham since the late 18th century. They were less politically active than the Chamberlains, though two served as mayor. Their reputation sprang from their success as chocolate manufacturers. In the interwar period, the Cadburys reckoned that 90 per cent of the entire British population ate chocolate – a fact that made the family brand enormously profitable.
The Cadburys also became famous for philanthropy. The model village they had constructed in the south-west Birmingham suburb of Bournville was not only designed to accommodate the workers at their factory, but to offer them access to open spaces and community services. Replete with a lake, parks, a bowling green and a lido, it became a blueprint for model villages across Britain.
Neighbouring families
These two great Birmingham families had much in common. They were, for a time, neighbours. When Joseph Chamberlain built the house he named “Highbury” in Moseley in the south of the city, Richard Cadbury – the second son of John Cadbury, founder of the chocolate business – moved next door. (Neville Chamberlain, already displaying the snobbery that would often mark his attitude to his native city, referred to the Cadbury house as “the cocoa palace”.)
Both families were closely associated with the suburb of Edgbaston, because it is here that they lived for much of the 19th century. Edgbaston was owned by Lord Calthorpe but, strangely, aristocratic ownership sat along side bourgeois power: the area became the great centre for Birmingham industrialists, who found in it a place where they could enjoy semi-rural tranquillity while remaining, as one of the Cadbury family recalled, “within smelling distance” of the factory.
Birmingham had no real native aristocracy, and its dominant families – unlike industrialists in other parts of the country – felt no deference to noble families and, most importantly, showed no desire to emulate aristocratic lifestyles by purchasing country estates.
When the Cadbury family acquired large swathes of land around the Lickey Hills south-west of the city centre, rather than seeking to establish themselves as country gentlemen, they simply gave it to the city of Birmingham.
Importance of religion
The position of the Chamberlains and the Cadburys was also underpinned by religion. The former were Unitarians (Protestant dissenters who believe in the unity of God rather than the holy trinity); the latter Quakers (who hold that each human contains something of God). Both of these denominations were small but wielded an influence that reached beyond their numbers.
Their followers were often prosperous and imbued with an extraordinary intellectual and cultural self-confidence. Though the two faiths between them amounted to less than one in 20 of Birmingham’s population, they accounted for more than half of the town councillors on whom Joseph Chamberlain could depend for support.
Exclusion from the English religious establishment went hand-in-hand with distance from the establishment in a more general sense. Unitarianism had, at least in theory, been illegal before the early 19th century and, until later that century, nonconformists were effectively excluded from ancient universities and English public schools.
But the institutions that counted for the British ruling class meant little to the Birmingham notables. Joseph allied with Conservative aristocrats when it suited him but never regarded them as his superiors. And he laughed at the idea that he might accept an aristocratic title for himself.
The families' political radicalism
Both the Cadburys and the Chamberlains took positions that were – by the standards of their time, and sometimes even by the standards of ours – extraordinarily radical. Though he eventually allied with Conservatives who regarded the defence of church and crown as the key to their politics, Joseph had been an open republican in the 1860s, and seems to have become an atheist after the death of his second wife, Florence, in 1875. As for the Cadburys, their sympathy for pacifists survived the climate of hysterical militarism that swept Britain in 1914.
Political radicalism, though, eventually took the two families in different directions. Despite Joseph’s earlier liberalism, by the end of the First World War, the Chamberlains were, to all intents and purposes, Conservatives. They took Birmingham with them. Between 1931 and 1945, every single one of the city’s 12 MPs was from that party.
The Cadburys did not follow Joseph when he broke with the Gladstonian Liberals. Cadburys and Chamberlains then maintained a wary stand-off – disagreeing with each other but avoiding direct confrontation. In 1921, William Cadbury (then lord mayor of Birmingham) told the government that his Quaker principles prevented him from helping to organise ex-soldiers to protect strike breakers. The cabinet, chaired by Austen Chamberlain in the absence of the prime minister, merely passed this duty to the mayor’s deputy.
The politics of the Cadbury family were more discreet than those of the Chamberlains. Often, they operated a division of labour. Women of the family were active in public life while their husbands and brothers occupied themselves with the more mundane business of making money. Dame Elizabeth, the great matriarch of the family, was particularly important. In 1923, she even dared challenge the motor manufacturer and Conservative MP Herbert Austin in his own King’s Norton constituency.
As the Chamberlains moved to the right, some members of the Cadbury family drifted to the left and joined Labour. This was particularly important, because the Cadburys came to provide a refuge for leftwingers in the Chamberlainite citadel. The Cadbury factory tolerated trade unionists at a time when almost every other factory in Birmingham was looking for excuses to sack union activists.
When Dame Elizabeth’s stepson George Cadbury sat as a Labour councillor in the 1920s, six of his colleagues were employees of his family company. Bournville, which accounted for less than one in 30 of Birmingham’s population, contained a quarter of its Labour councillors.
The fall of the Chamberlains
The political system associated with the great Birmingham families came crashing down in 1940. The name of Chamberlain, which had counted for so much in the city’s politics, became a liability because of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s association with appeasing Hitler following the Munich Agreement. Labour, which had not won a single parliamentary seat in the city since 1929, gained most of them in 1945.
The trade unions could suddenly call the shots in the full employment of the war economy. The Chamberlain family almost evaporated. Its members moved to London and, with surprising frequency, to the political left. The two best-known descendants of Joseph – Harriet Harman and Lady Antonia Fraser – are both quintessentially metropolitan figures.
There are two general lessons that we might draw from the stories of the Chamberlain and Cadbury families. The first relates to the frequently advanced suggestion that Britain suffered from the absence of a “bourgeois revolution” – that its middle class was weak, deferential and desperate to assimilate into the landed aristocracy. The Chamberlains and the Cadburys would have laughed at such an interpretation.
Between the 1860s and the 1940s, Birmingham – more than anywhere else in Britain – illustrated the power of an autonomous middle class. It is no accident that some of the city’s grandest public buildings were modelled on those of Venice, because Birmingham really did sometimes seem like an Italian city state – a place in which a merchant class ran their own affairs with little regard for monarchy or nobility.
Family differences: individual ambition
Another interpretation, though, might contrast the two families. The Chamberlains rose and fell quickly – the period between Joseph’s first election as mayor and his son Neville’s deposition as prime minister lasted less than 70 years. Joseph was a volcano of a man: aggressive, mercurial and prone to take extraordinary risks. He often talked of both commerce and politics as if he were describing a military campaign in which his opponents were to be broken. His sons were always painfully conscious that they lived in their father’s shadow. Neville compared himself to Hamlet being haunted by his father’s ghost.
The Cadbury family produced no comparable great figure. Sir Adrian Cadbury, George’s grandson, was behind a 1992 report on corporate governance that suggested that no single person should exercise too much power in a company. The overall ethos was that individual ambition should be subordinate to the interests of the family and the business.
The Cadburys stayed in Birmingham for decades after the Second World War, modernising the company through flotation on the stock exchange and a succession of mergers. Yet their political influence waned. Politics and business were now becoming full-time occupations, and the Cadburys increasingly focused on the latter. Despite that, they retained a nostalgia for their family’s radical roots. Sir Adrian occasionally took time off from his duties with the Confederation of British Industry to write letters to the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who had taught him at university.
Eventually, Cadbury family control of the company ended when it was sold to an American buyer, though the Bournville works remain. Now that Dunlop tyres and the Longbridge car factory have both closed, it is almost the last vestige of Birmingham’s industrial past. You can still find Chamberlain Square in the city centre – but the chocolate factory is the real monument to the great Birmingham families.
This article was first published in the April 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> In defence of Neville Chamberlain https://www.historyextra.com/membership/defence-neville-chamberlain-podcast-walter-reid/ Tue, 22 Feb 2022 17:05:03 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/defence-neville-chamberlain-podcast-walter-reid/ Walter Reid argues that the much-derided prime minister, best known for appeasement, has been the victim of a historical stitch-up Walter Reid tells Spencer Mizen that, far from going down in history as the bloodless author of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain should be remembered as a radical politician who saw through Adolf Hitler’s lies.
- Read more | A martyr and a hero? How Munich – The Edge of War tries to soften Neville Chamberlain’s rotten reputation
Walter Reid is the author of Neville Chamberlain: The Passionate Radical (Birlinn, 2021)
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]]> Munich: the real history behind the new film https://www.historyextra.com/membership/munich-history-film-podcast-robert-harris/ Fri, 21 Jan 2022 13:00:13 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/munich-history-film-podcast-robert-harris/ Robert Harris speaks about Munich: The Edge of War, the new Netflix film adapted from his 2017 historical novel Author Robert Harris speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about Munich: The Edge of War, the new Netflix film adapted from his 2017 historical novel Munich. They discuss the real history behind the 1938 Munich conference, the challenges of reassessing Neville Chamberlain, and what it’s like seeing your book adapted for the screen.
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]]> A martyr and a hero? How Munich – The Edge of War tries to soften Neville Chamberlain’s rotten reputation https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/munich-the-edge-of-war-tries-to-soften-chamberlains-reputation/ Fri, 21 Jan 2022 10:06:14 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/munich-the-edge-of-war-tries-to-soften-chamberlains-reputation/ In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met Nazi leader Adolf Hitler at a summit in Munich to try and avert a war. Chamberlain emerged with his famous (and worthless) ‘piece of paper’. Historian Nigel Jones considers how new film Munich – The Edge War tells this tale through a kinder lens, with a revisionist interpretation of one of Britain’s least-loved leaders The Munich conference – a two-day summit in the Bavarian city in September 1938 at which Britain and France tamely rubber-stamped Adolf Hitler’s dismemberment of Czechoslovakia – has become shorthand for shame, humiliation, and the culmination of the appeasement policy vainly pursued by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government.
The disastrous consequences of the Munich Agreement – a demonstration of weakness by the Western Allies that emboldened Hitler to step up his aggression and brought the beginning of WW2 only a year later – were such that the name has been used ever since, in crises from Suez to the Falklands and the Iraq war, as a byword for a feeble failure to stand up to brutal dictators.
There is, however, another reading of Munich, and this is the one delivered by new film Munich –The Edge of War. Faithful to a fault to the 2017 Robert Harris novel on which it is based, the January 2022 movie sees Munich as the moment when Whitehall finally awoke to the evil of Nazism, and portrays the elderly Chamberlain as an almost saintly figure ready to martyr himself in the cause of peace.
Where to watch Munich – The Edge Of War
The film was given a limited cinema release from 7 January 2022 and can be streamed on Netflix from Friday 21 January 2022
Munich – The Edge of War trailer
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With the veteran British star Jeremy Irons giving a definitive and eerily lookalike performance as Chamberlain, Munich –The Edge of War presents a powerful and persuasive case that the hapless prime minister was more sinned against than sinning, who sacrificed his political credibility in a bid to save millions from the horrors of war. From a historical perspective, this reading may make for great human drama, but it is seriously misleading.
The film makes the revisionist case for Chamberlain all the more convincing because of its attention to detail. The black uniforms and vintage cars are immaculate, and the polished jackboots of the SS thugs gleam. The scarlet swastika flags flap from the real Führerbau itself – the actual Munich building (now a Music college) where the sell-out of the Czechs and Slovaks was signed. The characters smoke incessantly, just like they did back in 1938. No expense has been spared to lend the film an air of authenticity in this handsome Anglo-German production.
Were Hugh Legat and Paul von Hartmann real?
The fictional gloss on the real historical story is provided by the film’s two youthful central characters. Diplomat Hugh Legat (played by George MacKay) is tasked by SIS/MI6 to meet his old Oxford university friend Paul von Hartmann (Jannis Niewöhner) at Munich and smuggle back explosive documents exposing Hitler’s secret plans to dominate Europe by force.
Von Hartmann – who is loosely based on the real-life anti-Nazi diplomat Adam von Trott – is being shadowed by Sauer (August Diehl), a suspicious and sinister SS man. Much of the film’s action centres around the attempts by the two friends to shake off Sauer, and show the stolen documents to Chamberlain to persuade him that Hitler is a madman bent on war, and that dealing with the Führer is a futile waste of time.
Naturally, it is the privilege of both novelist and filmmaker to bend and shape history to fit the demands of their stories. Robert Harris and the film’s German director Christian Schwochow have skilfully woven real people and events into their fiction – but have also taken forgivable liberties with the true facts.
Was there a plot against Hitler in 1938?
As the film shows, there was a real conspiracy by anti-Nazi officers and officials in 1938 to oust Hitler in a putsch, if only the Allies had stood up to him at Munich. There was also a real secret protocol, the Hossbach Memorandum, in which Hitler set out his war plans. And Adam von Trott did indeed meet Chamberlain – though not at Munich but at Chequers, the country house of the prime minister in Buckinghamshire, and then only in June 1939 when it was too late, after Hitler had torn up the Munich deal, occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and set the world on the road to war. The real von Trott, too – though destined to be hanged by the Nazis – was a German nationalist who, like Hitler, thought that Czechoslovakia had no right to exist.
This film presents history in bright primary colours with no nuanced shades of grey, and as such anyone hoping here for detailed dissection of the what-ifs and might-have-beens of Munich will be disappointed. The agonised indecision of the anti-Nazi resistance on whether to assassinate Hitler or merely arrest him, which so often paralysed their plotting, is hinted at, but not really addressed.
Nor do the Czechs themselves – whose very existence was at stake – get even a walk-on part in the movie. In real history, their envoys in Munich were banned from the conference that was deciding their future and divvying up their country. Instead, the limelight falls squarely on Chamberlain, and this is where perhaps the greatest issue lies.
Was Neville Chamberlain really a hero?
Unlike the thoughtful and sensitive soul so brilliantly portrayed on screen by Irons, the real Chamberlain was a vain, vindictive and supremely arrogant man with a sublime – and deluded – belief that he could outwit Hitler. Chamberlain’s revisionist apologists argue that his capitulation to Hitler at Munich was a sad necessity as it brought Britain precious time: a bare year in which to build up the RAF’s fighter plane defences. This was a rearmament programme that, ironically, Chamberlain had himself approved when he had been Chancellor.
This line of argument ignores the inconvenient truth that Chamberlain returned from Munich waving his piece of paper, convinced that he had won a great diplomatic victory ensuring that there would never need to be a war. This delusion that he could trust Hitler, bolstered by the relieved acclaim of cheering crowds, was to be rudely shattered only six months later when Hitler broke his solemn word and, in the rueful words of the prime minister in the film’s script, left a crestfallen Chamberlain “looking like a fool”.
Entertaining and visually atmospheric though it is, and with Ulrich Matthes (who played Goebbels in 2004 WW2 film Downfall) promoted to play a mesmerising Führer, nonetheless Munich – The Edge of War falls short of doing for Chamberlain what 2017’s Darkest Hour did for Winston Churchill – making the “worm” (Hitler’s own insult) a hero to generations who have hardly heard of him. For all its fine acting, the film leaves the poor old prime minister’s tattered reputation much where it was. It’s difficult to make a drama out of a crisis that turned into such a miserable defeat.
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Nigel Jones is a historian and author. His books include the Hitler’s Heralds (Lume, 2021), and Countdown to Valkyrie: the July Plot to assassinate Hitler (Frontline, 2008). His next book, Kitty’s Salon: Sex, Spying and Surveillance in the Third Reich, written with Urs Brunner and Dr Julia Schrammel, will be published by Bonnier next year. He leads tours of Munich and Nazi Germany for the Cultural Experience travel company
]]> The Munich agreement: a battle with Hitler that almost brought down the government https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/munich-agreement-appeasement-crisis-chamberlain-hitler/ Thu, 06 Jan 2022 12:25:51 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/munich-agreement-appeasement-crisis-chamberlain-hitler/ Adolf Hitler wasn’t Neville Chamberlain’s only foe during the Munich crisis of 1938. With Winston Churchill raging, Lord Halifax covering his own back, and protestors on the streets, the quest for ‘peace for our time’ almost brought down the British government, writes Robert Crowcroft On 30 September 1938 the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain climbed out of an aeroplane at Heston aerodrome in London. Waiting for him on the tarmac were journalists and photographers. Chamberlain had just returned from a summit with Adolf Hitler in Munich, and his mood was one of triumph. The prime minister believed he had pulled off a diplomatic coup that would prevent a devastating European war. He brandished a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature, an image captured by the photographers and destined to become one of the iconic visual records of the century. Later, in Downing Street, Chamberlain boasted that the settlement he negotiated represented nothing less than “peace for our time”.
What was the Munich agreement?
September 2018 saw the 80th anniversary of the infamous Munich agreement. It was reached in response to Nazi Germany’s demand to annex those border regions of neighbouring Czechoslovakia home to 3 million ethnic Germans. Hitler threatened to simply march his forces across the frontier and seize the disputed territory, the Sudetenland. It seemed likely that Britain, France and the Soviet Union would all be dragged in should conflict erupt.
Throughout September, Chamberlain engaged in frantic diplomacy, travelling to Germany three times to broker a peaceful solution. At Munich on 29 September he agreed to the incorporation of the Sudetenland into the Reich while securing Hitler’s recognition of the independence of the rest of the Czech state. The prime minister hoped this would mark the dawn of a new era of European stability.
Yet Munich rapidly became symbolic of the dangers of appeasing aggressive governments. The agreement unravelled and Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, a crucial stage on the road to WW2. Nowadays Munich occupies a place in the popular imagination as the moment when a chance to marshal resistance to Hitler was lost, and an example of the folly of trusting the unscrupulous.
What is perhaps less familiar is the deep political crisis in Britain provoked by Hitler’s designs on the Sudetenland. Chamberlain’s diplomacy sparked a revolt in the ruling Conservative party – and even inside his own cabinet. Westminster was gripped by intrigue, and there seemed a real possibility that the prime minister could fall. Despite the likelihood of a European war, politicians still usually perceived matters through the lens of their own interests and prospects. And this political struggle had an important effect on British diplomacy, as well.
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Political disasters at home
At the heart of the crisis was the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. At first sight this seems strange. Halifax was just as responsible as Chamberlain for the direction of British foreign policy, and a longstanding advocate of accommodating German ambitions through concession. Yet, by September 1938, Halifax was a worried man. He sensed that public opinion was tiring of ineffective conciliation abroad. Allowing Britain to appear weak in the face of Hitler’s behaviour could prove politically disastrous at the general election due to take place within the next two years.
The government lost several parliamentary seats at byelections earlier in the year, while the opposition Labour party and growing numbers of newspapers were quick to draw attention to its difficulties abroad. This was compounded by critics on the Conservative backbenches in the House of Commons, most notably Winston Churchill. As if that was not bad enough, Chamberlain himself came across as pompous and sarcastic.
- Read more | Is Neville Chamberlain underestimated?
Halifax feared that the government had “lost touch with the floating vote”. He resolved it was politically essential to correct the popular perception of flaccidity in foreign policy. When it became apparent on 7 September that a German invasion of Czechoslovakia was imminent, Halifax seized the opportunity to distance himself from Chamberlain – and the policies of which he himself had been an architect.
He likened himself to “groping in the dark like a blind man trying to find his way across a bog”. Indicating a new willingness to resist Germany, the foreign secretary pressed Chamberlain to dispatch a message to Hitler threatening war over Czechoslovakia. The prime minister was angry and believed that Halifax was “going off his head”, but could not afford to be isolated by a rift with his closest ally.
Chamberlain was also conscious that “many others”, including Churchill, were lining up to exploit the crisis. Still, he was determined that he alone would make British policy. So he devised an idea that, he said, “took Halifax’s breath away”: he would fly to Germany to meet Hitler face-to-face. Chamberlain returned to London on 16 September with Hitler’s agreement to hold plebiscites in the Sudetenland in order to verify that the inhabitants wished to join the Reich.
Chamberlain admitted that he “didn’t care two hoots” where the Sudeten Germans lived; he simply aimed to avoid war. Several members of the cabinet were unhappy that Britain was involved in carving up a democratic state, and expressed a desire for a “different” policy. Yet when Chamberlain coldly demanded “and what policy is that?”, they had no answer.
Problems arose when Chamberlain returned to Germany on 22 September. Encouraged by the prime minister’s willingness to accede to his demands, Hitler changed his mind and insisted on the immediate absorption of the Sudetenland. Panicking, Chamberlain asked the führer to be reasonable: he had “taken his political life in his hands” in pursuit of a deal, and public opinion would turn against him. Hitler was unmoved by Chamberlain’s pleas.
Over in London, meanwhile, Halifax’s doubts continued to gnaw at him. A protest march on 22 September drew thousands of people onto the streets of Westminster. There were demands that “Chamberlain must go”. The newspapers were hostile, while both the Labour party and Conservative rebels were in full cry in warning against a “shameful surrender”. MP Harold Nicolson raged: “This is hell. It is the end of the British empire.” In private, Winston Churchill was excited, knowing that the only way he would ever be invited to return to office was if a new government was “forced upon us” should “the foreign situation darken”. Even loyal Conservatives were “appalled by the force of opinion”, as one MP noted.
All of this made a major impression on Halifax. When he heard that Chamberlain’s response to Hitler’s intransigence had been to offer him yet more Czech territory, he sent a telegram to the prime minister saying that he was “profoundly disturbed”. He advised Chamberlain that the “great mass” of opinion both in parliament and the country felt that “we have gone to the limit of concession”. He wanted Czechoslovakia to mobilise its army and for the prime minister to warn Hitler that Britain would fight.
Halifax’s own civil servants in the Foreign Office recognised that, for “internal political reasons”, British strategy had to be radically amended. Moreover, as his biographer Andrew Roberts observes, Halifax would have had to be “superhuman” not to at least entertain the notion that resisting Chamberlain might lead to him becoming prime minister himself.
Chamberlain raced home to London a couple of days later in order to confront his cabinet. The stage was set for a showdown between the prime minister and the foreign secretary. Halifax endured a sleepless night before deciding to come out against Chamberlain. At the crucial cabinet meeting the next day, he carefully explained that he was “not quite sure” that he and Chamberlain were “still working as one”. He also made clear his opposition to the prime minister’s policy. This was a political hand grenade tossed into Chamberlain’s lap, who lamented it as “a horrible blow”.
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Halifax argued that if the Czechs chose to resist Germany, Britain and France should fight with them. His stance was probably rooted more in politics – anxiety about how the government was perceived at home – than strategic disagreement with Chamberlain. He believed that there loomed a confrontation in eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union that Britain should steer clear of. Yet now he declared that “the ultimate aim” of policy should be the “destruction of Nazism”. Cynics thought this rather opportunistic. One of Chamberlain’s friends concluded that Halifax possessed “eel-like qualities” and a capacity for “sublime treachery”. Yet this was a climate in which several cabinet ministers were contemplating resignation, and backbench critics including Churchill and another future prime minister, Harold Macmillan, were preparing to press for a new government if “Chamberlain rats again”.
The prime minister felt “all over the place” and, seeing little alternative, agreed to send a stern warning to Hitler. The armed forces were mobilised, gas masks were distributed among the civilian population, and antiaircraft guns were deployed in central London. Chamberlain then dispatched his most trusted aide, the civil servant Sir Horace Wilson, to Germany to see Hitler on his behalf. Wilson warned the führer that the “situation in England” was “extremely serious”, and a new government might declare war. The outbreak of a major conflict seemed likely – and over a border that few in Britain actually considered a vital national interest. It was an extraordinary situation. To a considerable extent, it was a product of high-political conflict at Westminster.
On the afternoon of 28 September, Chamberlain went to the House of Commons to explain his policy. He knew his future was at stake. Churchill was planning to strike openly at him, and others would likely do the same. While the prime minister spoke for an hour, Churchill sat on the backbenches smouldering like a volcano. So many MPs passed him notes urging him to attack the government that he had to tie them all together with an elastic band.
The Munich Agreement is reached
Towards the end of Chamberlain’s speech, however, another note appeared. Hastily passed along the front bench to the prime minister, the folded piece of paper carried a new offer from Hitler. The führer was convening a conference, to be held at Munich the next day. One observer noted that, having read it, Chamberlain’s “whole face, his whole body, seemed to change… he appeared 10 years younger and triumphant”.
Considering the matter for a moment, the prime minister relayed this news to the chamber. Hitler had backed down. The relief was palpable. MPs on both sides of the house suddenly erupted into a roar of spontaneous cheering. Harold Nicolson thought it was “one of the most dramatic moments I have ever witnessed”. When the prime minister took his seat, “the whole house rose as a man to pay tribute”. Chamberlain told his sister that it was “a piece of drama that no work of fiction has ever surpassed”. Churchill, in contrast, “looked very much upset”.
Dashing to Munich to meet Hitler for the third – and final – time, on 29 September, Chamberlain entered into a 14-hour negotiation completed in the middle of the night. Under the agreement, the German-speaking areas of the Sudetenland were to be incorporated into the Reich and an international commission would oversee plebiscites elsewhere along the border. Chamberlain and Hitler also signed the Anglo-German declaration affirming “the desire of our two peoples never to go to war again”. The prime minister returned home a national hero.
Chamberlain had escaped the trap his political rivals had set for him. True to form, many of them interpreted the Munich agreement in terms of what it meant for their own prospects. Some feared Chamberlain would call a snap general election in which he would romp to victory. A panicked Churchill explored building an alliance with Labour, the Liberals and rebel Conservatives, proposing that a commitment to the League of Nations and “collective security” might form the basis for a joint campaign. When Macmillan protested: “That is not our jargon,” Churchill roared back: “It is a jargon we may all have to learn!”
The aftermath of the Munich agreement
The prime minister’s spectacular triumph proved fleeting. Within weeks, the Munich settlement unravelled. The plebiscites were never held and Hitler simply absorbed the disputed territories. Some had predicted this all along. Indeed, Halifax hardly offered a ringing endorsement of Munich when he publicly described the agreement as merely the best “of a hideous choice of evils”. Churchill predicted: “This is only the beginning of the reckoning.”
In March 1939 Czechoslovakia was absorbed into the Reich. In the aftermath, Halifax forced a weakened Chamberlain to erect a series of military tripwires in the form of British guarantees of Poland, Greece and Romania. Halifax again calculated that a show of British strength was essential – both for peace abroad and political stability at home. These guarantees paved the way for the declaration of war in September 1939, and the fall of Chamberlain eight months later (by the end of 1940, he was dead).
The Munich agreement is entrenched in popular memory as a diplomatic disaster and a source of enduring lessons for the future. The political crisis in Britain provoked by Hitler’s ambitions towards the Sudetenland is much less familiar. Yet it was one of the most consequential of the century. It highlights that, even in moments of great danger, politicians will naturally look out for themselves. However it also reminds us to pay close attention to the interaction between foreign and domestic policy. More often than we might imagine, these two are intertwined.
Robert Crowcroft is a senior lecturer in contemporary history at Edinburgh University
This article was first published in the October 2018 edition of BBC History Magazine
]]> Peace for our time: what was written on Neville Chamberlain's piece of paper? https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/qa-what-was-written-on-neville-chamberlains-piece-of-paper/ Thu, 06 Jan 2022 11:39:58 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/qa-what-was-written-on-neville-chamberlains-piece-of-paper/ Many will have seen the iconic images of Chamberlain arriving at Heston aerodrome, on 30 September 1938, brandishing his “piece of paper” and proclaiming “peace for our time”. But what was actually written on the paper and does it still exist? Author and historian Roger Moorhouse explains... The deeper story of Neville Chamberlain's piece of paper is an intriguing one.
The piece of paper itself has aroused some speculation over the years. It was not – as some wits suggested at the time – the prime minister’s laundry list, pressed into service as a prop; neither was it a copy of the broader Munich Agreement, by which Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the western Allies to appease Nazi Germany.
- Read more | Did appeasement cause the Second World War?
It was, in fact, a private accord, signed earlier that day in Munich by Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler. Its three short paragraphs stressed the importance of Anglo-German relations, expressed the “desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again” and stated the common resolve to use negotiation in all future disagreements.
As such, the accord can be seen as central to Chamberlain’s noble but doomed attempt to exert a moderating influence on Hitler, by fostering a working relationship with him.
Unlike most other government documents – which are consigned to the National Archive in Kew – the piece of paper was sent direct to the Imperial War Museum, in January 1940, less than 18 months after being brandished in triumph by its author at Heston. Britain was already at war with Germany by that time, of course, so the accord was very much a dead letter.
Fittingly, the note, which accompanied it to the museum, stated that while the document “seemed of the highest significance then… its implications are now ironical”.
The piece of paper was kept on display at the Imperial War Museum until being replaced by a facsimile copy in the early 1990s. The original – still remarkably well-preserved – is now kept in a temperature-controlled strong room in the museum’s archive.
]]> Making friends with Hitler: Britain’s pre-war admiration for the Nazi dictator https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/britain-adolf-hitler-dictator-admiration-appeasement-relationship-britain-germany/ Thu, 28 Jan 2021 16:00:09 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/britain-adolf-hitler-dictator-admiration-appeasement-relationship-britain-germany/ By the end of the Second World War, Hitler's name was a byword for evil, yet in the 1930s he was just another European statesman, writes Ian Kershaw. Many in Britain admired his work in bringing economic revival to Germany and were keen for an understanding between the two countries... With the benefit of hindsight, it seems odd that anyone in Britain would have wanted to make friends with Adolf Hitler, the most recognisable face of evil in the 20th century. But in the 1930s, many people in this country looked to Hitler with admiration. He was applauded, like Mussolini, for restoring order and national pride, bringing economic revival, and, not least, for suppressing the Left and forming a bulwark against the menace of Bolshevism. Admiration was not confined to the fanatics who supported the British Union of Fascists. Hitler had also impressed others in high places, those among the social and political elite of the land.
Their hopes of befriending Hitler were not identical with the wider sector of influential opinion which sought an accommodation with Germany through growing recognition of Britain’s military weakness. But befriending and accommodating were related strands of appeasement – a policy of avoiding war through concessions to Hitler. It was a policy which later, once it had failed, carried the badge of national shame, and was associated with the government’s “guilty men” who had not given Britain adequate defences and tackled the Nazi threat in time. But for most of the 1930s, appeasement had enjoyed wide support – and not just among Conservatives. Making friends with Hitler, or buying him off, seemed to offer the best prospect of avoiding another war. And, with the horrors of the First World War of 1914–18 fresh in the mind, that was what most people wanted above all.
It was certainly what Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the 7th Marquis of Londonderry wanted. He was born in 1878 into wealth and privilege, a scion of one of Britain’s grandest aristocratic families, owners of the Durham coalfields and extensive estates in northern England and Ulster. He served on the Western Front during the First World War, witnessing the carnage of the Somme in July 1916 and losing his best friend in action. It was a searing experience.
He gained governmental experience in Britain and in Northern Ireland during the 1920s before being appointed Secretary of State for Air in November 1931, soon after the formation of the National Government. His term of office coincided with the arrival of Hitler on the world stage. The matter of air power was soon at the centre of military strategy and international diplomacy. Londonderry’s difficulties, and his eventual failure, as air minister helped to turn him, following his dismissal in 1935, into one of the most outspoken advocates of friendship with Hitler’s Germany.
Those who thought they could make friends with Hitler, or at least coexist peacefully through accommodating some of his territorial demands, were living under an illusion. In retrospect, this is easy to see. At the time, it was more difficult. Contemporary British newspaper reports indicate what a puzzle Hitler was to British observers, and how grossly he was misjudged. The Times was not alone in seeing him as a “moderate”, compared with some of the radical members of his movement. During the first years of Nazi rule, when German military defences were still weak, Hitler was largely successful in portraying himself as a nationalist with peaceful intentions, wanting only settlement of what were widely accepted in Britain as Germany’s justifiable grievances under the unfair Versailles Treaty of 1919.
Timeline: Hitler in the 1930s
30 January 1933 Hitler takes power in Germany 14 October 1933 Germany withdraws from the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, and leaves the League of Nations 16 March 1935 Hitler announces, in breach of the Versailles Treaty, the reintroduction of conscription and the building of an army of 550,000 men 25–6 March 1935 Visit to Berlin by Sir John Simon, the British foreign secretary, and Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal, at which Hitler declared that Germany had attained parity of air strength with Britain 11–14 April 1935 The leaders of Britain, France, and Italy meet at Stresa and agree to contain Germany by upholding the Locarno Pact of 1925, which guaranteed the western borders of the Reich, and to support Austria’s national integrity 18 June 1935 Naval Pact between Britain and Germany, allowing Germany to construct a navy of 35 per cent of the size of the British navy and a submarine fleet equal to the size of Britain’s, stirring French disapproval at the bilateral act undermining the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty 7 March 1936 Hitler announces the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, in contravention of Versailles and Locarno, prompting condemnation but no military intervention by the western Allies, France and Britain 12 March 1938 German troops enter Austria while the western powers look on with disapproval of the methods but acceptance of the result. The Anschluss, or annexation of Austria by Germany, concluded the following day 30 September 1938 The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany; Neville Chamberlain, claims on his return from Munich that he has secured peace 15 March 1939 German troops enter what was left of Czechoslovakia, exposing the hollowness of Hitler’s pretension to expansion restricted to the integration of ethnic Germans 23 August 1939 Talks entered into by Britain to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union to deter German aggression towards Poland are overtaken by the Hitler-Stalin Pact; war was now imminent
The British government remained from the outset in a quandary. “Are we still dealing with the Hitler of Mein Kampf, lulling his opponents to sleep with fair words in order to gain time to arm his people?”, asked Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary to the Cabinet, in October 1933, “or is it a new Hitler, who has discovered the burden of responsible office?”. He had no answer. “That is the riddle that has to be solved”, he concluded. Buying time, and hoping for the best, not planning for the worst, scenario, was what British policy amounted to in these early years of Hitler’s rule. Just how weak Britain was in the face of the menace from Germany became apparent in March 1935 when Hitler told Sir John Simon, on the visit of the Foreign Secretary to Berlin, that the Luftwaffe had attained parity with the British air force. The claim was untrue.
But in Britain the sense of shock was widespread. Only the previous autumn, Stanley Baldwin, soon to become prime minister for a third time, had announced that Britain was substantially ahead of Germany in air armaments. Now it seemed clear that Britain’s defences had been sorely neglected while Germany had been rearming at great speed. Winston Churchill’s dire warnings about German air strength began to strike home. Scapegoats for Britain’s failure to build sufficient air defences were needed. One was immediately at hand: the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Londonderry.
Friendship with Nazi Germany
In a way, Londonderry’s dismissal as air minister in June 1935 was harsh. He had faced severe budgetary limitations on expanding the air force. It was a fact, nonetheless, that little expansion had taken place. He was replaced by the more energetic Philip Cunliffe-Lister and as a sop was given the post of Lord Privy Seal. But in November, Londonderry was sacked from this position too. Together with his growing anger and impatience at the drift in foreign policy, and the failure (in his eyes) of the Foreign Office to “take a strong line with France and insist upon international measures being taken to allow to Germany that measure of justice which we acknowledged was hers”, the bitterness and humiliation he felt pushed him in a new direction, that of open advocacy of friendship with Nazi Germany. His underlying belief was that, through personal contact with Nazi leaders, he might bring about that which the formal diplomacy of the Foreign Office could not achieve: the breakthrough to the understanding between Britain and Germany that in his view was the only way to avoid another war.
At the end of January 1936, Londonderry (accompanied by his wife and daughter) visited Germany, where he had talks with Hitler, Goering, and other Nazi leaders. The German leadership still hoped – though the hopes were already beginning to wane – for the Anglo-German “understanding” that Hitler’s foreign-policy strategy had rested upon since the writing of Mein Kampf in the mid-1920s. Hospitality was lavished on the Londonderrys, as on other British visitors, to impress upon them the positive image of Nazi Germany which might then be transmitted both publicly and privately within Britain. The audience with Hitler was an integral part of this image. He was invariably adept in persuading his visitors of the reasonable nature of his intentions, aimed at rectifying the grievances of the Versailles Treaty and attaining equality with other nations.
Charm offensive: Hitler wooed British visitors
Hitler’s standard image is of the manic ranter and raver at huge mass meetings and rallies. But to the British visitors he wanted to impress in private audiences and use as a conduit for his views, the consummate actor presented quite a different image. There was no ranting and raving. His slightly stiff mannerisms suggested diffidence and a feigned humility. He projected sincerity. A lengthy monologue, with standard components, formed the central part of an audience. There were no histrionics. Hitler presented himself as a reasonable and amenable advocate of German interests, keen to work for accommodation with Britain, playing on the fears of Communism, anxious above all to prevent another disastrous war in which Britain and Germany might again confront each other. He was invariably polite and measured in his response to points raised. His visitors met the German dictator in a setting, whether the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, or his alpine retreat near Berchtesgaden, which conveyed the aura of great power. They were from the outset generally impressionable, already in awe of Hitler, and predisposed to accept his forceful, but seemingly not unreasonable arguments, skilfully couched and effectively geared to the interests of his interlocutor. It was all part of a charm offensive. The message was always the same: Germany’s earnest desire for an understanding with Great Britain, but need for expansion. “It was almost like a wooing by Hitler of the coy Britannia” was how Hitler’s interpreter, Paul Schmidt, put it. And it largely worked. Practically all who spoke privately with Hitler were won over. David Lloyd George, the former Liberal prime minister, announced on his return that Hitler was “a great man”. The pacifist Labour leader, George Lansbury, thought Hitler was prepared to do what was necessary to avoid war. Lord Londonderry, too, came back enthused by what he had seen in Nazi Germany, and convinced that Hitler desired accord with Britain and peace in Europe.
From the German point of view, Londonderry, a member of the aristocracy with connections to British political leadership, seemed ideally placed to carry the message of the desired rapprochement. Londonderry felt courted by his German hosts yet it became obvious to them that he carried little weight at Whitehall; with that recognition, their interest in him declined. But in 1936 the expectations on both sides remained high. Londonderry returned home duly singing the praises of the new Germany and, soon afterwards, defended Hitler’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland. At the end of May, Ribbentrop stayed with the Londonderrys in Northern Ireland. Londonderry went to Germany again in the autumn for a hunting expedition with his host, Hermann Goering, and once more in autumn 1937, but noticed a cooling of relations on the last visit. He became gloomy about the chances of avoiding war – his advocacy of friendship with Germany fell on deaf ears with the British government. Neither Stanley Baldwin nor his successor as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, showed interest in Londonderry’s reports of his visits to Germany. His best contact in the Cabinet, Lord Halifax (who had replaced him as Lord Privy Seal, and would become foreign secretary in February 1938) was polite and diplomatic in his frequent correspondence with Londonderry, but that was all.
Frustrated by the lack of response, Londonderry published in April 1938 a short book, Ourselves and Germany, in which he defended the German annexation of Austria that had just taken place. In the tense summer of 1938, he went on to support German ambitions on the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. By the time an updated, second edition of his book was published in October, the western allies had ceded the Sudetenland to Germany at the Munich Conference.
Peace and conciliation
The widespread rejoicing in Britain that accompanied Neville Chamberlain’s flight to Munich and triumphal return was a short-lived expression of relief that there would be no war and rapidly gave way to deep misgivings about the morality of the settlement. For Londonderry, and the minority which thought as he did, however, Munich did not represent political and moral humiliation for Britain, but the crowning glory of a policy which ought to have been followed earlier and held out hope of a future of close cooperation between Britain and Germany. Londonderry could, accordingly, refer to Munich as “the fulfilment of all my hopes”, prompting “great happiness” that “all I have advocated has been brought about in a moment of time”.
The following months brought swift disillusionment. In November, as the German synagogues burned during the Kristallnacht pogrom throughout Germany and in the newly acquired territories in Sudetenland and Austria, Londonderry, though latently anti-semitic, could not comprehend the savagery. The scales finally fell from his eyes: the German entry into Prague in March 1939 was a plainly imperialist act of aggression which could no longer be justified as nationalist integration. He admitted that he now had no arguments left, but was still offering to go to Germany in the last-minute hope of avoiding calamity. But the last thing that Lord Halifax and the Foreign Office wanted was an amateur diplomat and German sympathiser sending the wrong signals to Hitler.
Once war began, Londonderry retreated in the main to Northern Ireland. In September 1939 it was rumoured that he had been interned as a spy, prompting the MP and political columnist, Harold Nicolson, whose political stance differed sharply from Londonderry’s, to write in The Spectator: “Only a maniac could conceive that his former endeavours to get to know and understand the Nazi leaders were anything but honourable attempts to prevent a disaster which he was one of the first to foresee”. Londonderry voiced staunch support for the war effort, which he saw as a fight for freedom against thraldom under Nazi rule. He concluded that there could now be no cooperation with Nazi Germany, just “a fight to a finish”. He lived out the war in relative seclusion, and in the political cold.
- The gay MPs who opposed appeasement
What might have been
Londonderry had wanted to couple friendship with Germany with an intensive programme of rearmament. His view had been that if Germany refused to become a “helpful partner”, she would be “immobilised”. That could only have been achieved while Germany was still militarily weak. But the possibility of a preventive strike was ruled out by both the British and the French governments. Even economic sanctions would have been dependent upon international cooperation which, as Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 was to prove, was not forthcoming. Given American isolation, Anglo-French divisions, and the feebleness of the League of Nations, coordinated action against Germany was out of the question. An Allied commitment to military action could have stopped Hitler in his tracks when his troops entered the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland in March 1936. But hardly anyone in Britain at the time favoured military intervention. Nor, as Hitler knew, were the French prepared to move. Though Londonderry linked German friendship with British rearmament, Londonderry’s prime emphasis was laid on the former. He was prepared to place trust in German friendship down to and beyond Munich in autumn 1938. By then, with Britain inferior to Germany in armed strength, any hope of backing kind words by strong action had long since gone.
Even if willing alliance with Nazi Germany, such as Londonderry and others wanted, was correctly ruled out as a policy option, could the other form of appeasement, based on reluctant acknowledgement of weakness, have been avoided? Given the rejection of a policy of friendship, or a pre-emptive strike to bring about regime change, the British government was left with the alternatives of containing or deterring Hitler. Containment would have demanded a level of international cooperation and commitment that was not available. Deterrence could only have been achieved through a major programme of rearmament as soon as Hitler came to power. That was not feasible on economic grounds, for a country in deep economic depression and insistent upon balancing the books, or on political grounds, given the widespread opposition to rearmament. Only belatedly did this opposition weaken. By then Hitler was strong, and Britain lagged far behind.
Churchill was one of the very few who favoured massive rearmament at an early stage. Londonderry, too, had been right to look to rearmament. But whereas his second cousin, Winston Churchill, increasingly saw peace in Europe coming about only through the armed destruction of Nazi Germany, Londonderry saw peace only through friendship with Hitler. After six years of bitter conflict, the division left one cousin a war hero, the other with a lasting, but undeserved, reputation as a “Nazi Englishman”. Londonderry was misguided and naive. But, in looking for ways to save Europe’s peace, he was not alone in proving gullible to Hitler’s lies.
Ian Kershaw is professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield and is one of the world’s leading authorities on Hitler
This article was first published in the November 2004 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> Vote of no confidence: a brief history https://www.historyextra.com/membership/vote-no-confidence-history-facts-explain-first-prime-minister/ Tue, 24 Sep 2019 11:00:40 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/vote-no-confidence-history-facts-explain-first-prime-minister/ What does a vote of no confidence mean, when was it first used and when did it last lead to a general election? We spoke to Professor Richard Toye to find out more… Professor Richard Toye, head of history at the University of Exeter, explains how a vote of no confidence works and which prime ministers in history have fallen victim...
What is a vote of no confidence?
There are two types of votes of no confidence: one, in the party leader the other is a parliamentary no-confidence vote, which signifies that the government itself has lost the support of the Commons.
Under the internal rules of the Conservative Party, a vote of no confidence in the party leader is triggered in the event that at least 15 per cent of Conservative MPs write to Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, formally calling on the party leader to stand down. The 1922 committee is a committee of all backbench Conservative MPs that meets weekly when the Commons is sitting.
- Read more | From Walpole to Johnson: lessons from the 300-year history of the British prime minister
What is a parliamentary no confidence vote?
A motion of no confidence, or censure motion, is a motion moved in the House of Commons with the wording: “That this House has no confidence in HM Government”. It signifies that the government has lost the support of the Commons (the legislature), without which it is impossible to operate effectively. Retaining the confidence of the Commons is a core principle of the UK constitution.
If a motion stating “That this House has no confidence in HM Government” is lost by the government, or if a major legislative proposal is defeated, the government must either resign or ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament, thus triggering a general election. She would almost certainly grant such a request.
Prof Richard Toye explains: “The basic principle is this: the government of a country has to have the confidence of the House of Commons. If the government has lost its majority or does not have a reliable majority, that is the cue for either the government to fall and be replaced, or for a general election to be called.
When was the first vote of no confidence in Britain?
Votes of no confidence – or their historical equivalent – were a fairly regular occurrence in the 19th century, but from 1900 to the present day they have not come about very often, says Toye.
Sir Robert Walpole agreed to resign in 1742 after losing a vote in the Commons that was effectively considered a motion of no confidence. Toye explains: “There is a distinction to be made between a formal vote of no confidence, and a situation in which the government is looking to pass a key proposal or piece of legislation, or faces censure from the Opposition, and to lose would suggest they have lost the confidence of the House of Commons.”
In 1782, a motion censuring the government of Lord North for its conduct during the war with America was the first time a government was brought down by a vote of no confidence, says the Institute for Government. “Since then, there have been 20 government defeats on a vote of confidence all leading to either dissolution or resignation (and if the latter, a second government being formed in their stead).”
Other notable incidents in modern history include the (effective) vote of no confidence in the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin in 1924 following the loss of his majority in the general election of December 1923. The election left the Conservative government outnumbered in the Commons by Labour and the Liberals, and when parliament met it was defeated on the King’s Speech (that is, the government’s programme of policies). Baldwin resigned and Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority government, becoming the first Labour prime minister. He in turn lost a confidence vote that autumn and a further election followed.
Similarly, the Norway Debate of 1940 – a debate held on 7 and 8 May between MPs on Britain's failed campaign against German invasion forces in Norway – turned into a vote of confidence on prime minister Neville Chamberlain. On that occasion the motion on the Order Paper was simply the proposal ‘that this House do now adjourn’, on which Labour called a division (or vote).”
Chamberlain won, but with a substantially reduced majority and, with his credibility badly damaged, resigned two days later. He was replaced as prime minister by Winston Churchill. Churchill promptly invited the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties – Clement Attlee and Archie Sinclair – to form a coalition government, with Chamberlain serving in Churchill's cabinet as lord president of the council.
When did a vote of no confidence last lead to a general election?
The last time a vote of no confidence led to a general election was in 1979. The Labour government led by James Callaghan faced a vote of no confidence on 28 March 1979 following a defeat over a referendum for devolution to Scotland and lost by just one vote. Following the vote, which was brought by opposition leader Margaret Thatcher, Callaghan was forced to call a general election which was won by Thatcher’s party.
“Opposition parties have, through history, often put down votes of no confidence, but generally they tend not to succeed because members of the governing party see that the government’s life is in danger, as it were, and so they ‘rally round’,” Toye explains.
- Read more | 9 general election curiosities through history
Votes of no confidence were put down on two occasions in 1942 (“when the war was going badly for Britain”, says Toye). “These were dangerous moments for Churchill, but he consistently managed to survive the votes. There was also a case that was unrelated to the conduct of the war. In 1944 the government opposed an amendment to its Education Bill, an alteration which would have introduced equal pay for female teachers. The government lost narrowly; Churchill was furious. He went back to the House of Commons and basically said he wanted the matter to be treated as a vote of confidence, and succeeded in getting the amendment reversed. He effectively 'brow-beat' the House of Commons into giving him his way.”
Another curious incident in history involves Margaret Thatcher, who notably faced down Labour’s vote of no confidence in her government in 1990 – even though she had resigned as prime minister earlier that day. On 22 November, Thatcher announced her decision to stand down as prime minister after her cabinet refused to back her in a second round of leadership elections. But later that day Labour’s motion of no confidence was defeated. Nevertheless, John Major succeeded as Tory leader five days after Thatcher's resignation.
Were votes of no confidence used before the 19th century?
Yes, a number of politicians were subject to votes of no confidence prior to the 19th century – these include the aforementioned Robert Walpole in 1742 (he resigned afterwards); William Pitt the Younger in 1784 (he avoided resignation by asking for a dissolution of parliament and the ensuing election bolstered his government with a safe majority in the Commons); and the Duke of Wellington in 1830 (he resigned the day after the vote).
Toye says: “It’s important to remember that in previous centuries MPs were less blindly loyal to their party – in the 19th century, for example, there weren’t really ‘career politicians’ in the sense that we have them today. MPs, who weren’t paid, weren’t under the same pressure to remain loyal in order to keep their jobs, and party discipline was therefore less rigid. In this sense, 19th-century governments were less stable than modern governments.”
How do votes of no confidence work today?
“Post-1900, governments have generally been unlikely to lose a vote of no confidence unless they are in a minority government,” says Toye. “The three successful votes of no confidence in recent history – two in 1924, and 1979 – were against minority governments. Similarly, the reason Theresa May was in danger in December 2018 is because of her reliance on Northern Ireland’s DUP (Democratic Unionist Party). Had May not called a general election in 2017, from which she emerged with a minority government, she would not have been so vulnerable.”
Professor Richard Toye is head of history at the University of Exeter and the author of three books on Winston Churchill. His most recent book (co-authored with Professor Martin Thomas) is Arguing About Empire: Imperial Rhetoric in Britain and France, 1882–1956 (OUP 2017)
This article was first published in December 2018 after a vote of no confidence was triggered in prime minister Theresa May (rather than in the government itself), and was last updated in June 2022
]]> Roger Moorhouse: How Hitler’s diplomatic miscalculation led to WW2 https://www.historyextra.com/membership/hitler-mistakes-diplomacy-start-ww2-poland-invasion/ Thu, 05 Sep 2019 10:37:21 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/hitler-mistakes-diplomacy-start-ww2-poland-invasion/ The invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939 is often considered to be the result of a western error, Chamberlain and the Allies’ failed appeasement policy. But, says historian Roger Moorhouse, at the root of the conflict was the diplomatic risk-taking of Adolf Hitler… The invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war in 1939 is often considered to have been a failure of appeasement; the Allied policy – personified by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain – of seeking to compromise on German territorial demands so as avoid conflict.
Seen from a narrowly western perspective, this interpretation makes sense. Chamberlain set himself the task of containing Germany, and of avoiding war, and by definition he failed in that endeavour.
Chamberlain’s effort was flawed, certainly; it was the wrong approach for the wrong opponent. For one thing, he was appealing to Hitler’s reason, treating the German dictator as a rational actor, when in reality he was anything but. However, it was not only western failings that caused the slide to war in 1939.
- The brutal blitzkrieg: the 1939 invasion of Poland
- Countdown to WW2: the 72 hours that took the world to war
Germany under Adolf Hitler not only refused to be satisfied by western concessions, it viewed those concessions themselves as a sign of terminal weakness. Hitler held his enemies in contempt. The British and French, he said, were “worms”; the Poles, meanwhile, were doubly damned – by their Slavic ‘inferiority’ and by their principled resistance to German bullying. Bent on territorial expansion, and on smashing the Versailles treaty, Hitler was determined never to be satisfied.
Chamberlain’s last effort to contain Hitler – reversing the policy of appeasement – was to issue a guarantee to Poland in the spring of 1939, in the hope that the threat of confrontation would succeed where concession had failed. Hitler, however, was merely enraged, and began looking for ways of undermining and isolating Poland, with a view to detaching that unhappy country from its international alliances.
- Listen | Historian Roger Moorhouse tells the story of the 1939 battle for Poland that saw the country dismembered by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
It was in this process that the idea of collaboration with Stalin’s Soviet Union came to the fore. Though Nazi Germany and the USSR had been verbally sparring for years, damning one another as the very Devil incarnate, both sides recognised a realpolitik opportunity when they saw it.
For Germany, having Stalin ‘onside’ as a partner would effectively prevent the British and French from achieving any practical result in their efforts to aid Poland. Having boxed himself in, diplomatically, Hitler saw Stalin as his way out.
For Stalin, meanwhile, an arrangement with Hitler was an attractive proposition: not only did the outbreak of conflict in Europe promise to speed the engine of history, but also Hitler was willing to offer him [Stalin] the return of all the lands lost in the Russian collapse that had followed the end of the First World War.
To sweeten the deal, an expansive trade agreement was concluded between the two, pledging to exchange Soviet raw materials for German technology and knowhow. With that, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed on 23 August 1939.
Hitler expected his western opponents to cave, but they did not. An Anglo-Polish Military Agreement reiterated the guarantee of the previous spring and reaffirmed Allied determination.
- Why did the Second World War happen?
- Did the Versailles peace treaty trigger another world war?
Convinced that the British and French would not seriously go to war for Poland, Hitler gave a last throw of the dice, authorising SS ‘false flag’ operations – such as at Gleiwitz – which would cast Poland as the aggressor, and Germany as the innocent party. With that, he launched his invasion, confident that the western powers would back down and abandon their Polish ally. He was astonished when – on the morning of 3 September 1939 – they did not. With that miscalculation, World War Two in Europe began.
In the September 2019 issue of BBC History Magazine, historian Roger Moorhouse tells the story of the 1939 invasion of Poland, a campaign that set a murderous template for the six-year conflict that was to follow.
Roger Moorhouse’s new book, First to Fight: The Polish War 1939 (Bodley Head), is on sale now. He will be discussing the invasion of Poland at both of our History Weekends this autumn: historyextra.com/events
]]> Who was the best 20th-century prime minister? https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/who-was-the-best-20th-century-prime-minister/ Tue, 23 Jul 2019 11:30:44 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/who-was-the-best-20th-century-prime-minister/ If Britain's 20th-century prime ministers were lined up in an election, who would get your vote? Francis Beckett, editor of a collection of political biographies, judges Britain's leaders according to their own agendas Who was the best British prime minister of the 20th century? After editing a series of lives of each of them, I ought to know. But it depends what you mean by “best”.
The most charismatic? Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, go to the top of the class. The best administrators? Step forward the precise Mr Clement Attlee, the demanding Mrs Thatcher, and the stiff and formal Mr Chamberlain. The best political managers? Pipe-smokers Stanley Baldwin and Harold Wilson take some beating for holding together unstable parties and coalitions. The most likeable? Nice people, Harold Macmillan observed, don’t get to the top in politics, but if I could have dinner with just one of the 20 prime ministers, he would be my first choice, with Churchill second and Asquith third.
So let’s define the criterion used here. I intend to approach the task as a sort of management consultant, judging prime ministers on their effectiveness as change managers. Did they start with a clear idea of how they wanted to change Britain, as for example Attlee and Thatcher did, and how far did they succeed in doing so?
A secondary criterion will be their effectiveness at simply managing, rather than also creating, change. Much of what happened on Harold Macmillan’s watch, like the end of empire, was going to happen anyway, but Macmillan recognised the inevitability of change and managed it well and effectively.
Some prime ministers did important things in government, but never quite hacked it in the top job. I have judged them solely on their effectiveness in Number Ten. Balfour’s achievements as foreign secretary, including the famous Balfour declaration, and Eden’s distinguished performance in the same job in 1938 and again in the early 1950s, avail them nothing here.
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, later Lord Salisbury (1830–1903)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1885, 1886–92, 1894–1902
Vision: Society should remain hierarchical, and the British class system is essentially benevolent. Anglo-German friendship is the key to peace in Europe. A large German army and a large British navy are the most effective way of maintaining peace.
Fulfilment of vision: He resisted pressure for the state to rectify inequality, and passed onto his successor a hierarchical society and a class system little changed. He saw the “scramble for Africa”, which occurred on his watch with ultimately dreadful results, as a European phenomenon, and Britain’s part in it merely as part of the price of remaining a force in Europe. The peace in Europe, and Britain’s strong voice there, were maintained, more or less, and his diplomatic skills played a part – he was, for most of the time, his own foreign secretary.
Vote winner: Staving off for another decade the “insane passion” for equality.
Vote loser: Victory in the Boer War was expensive in lives, money, prestige and morale.
Overall rating: 3
Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1902–06
Vision: Balfour hoped to unite the Conservative Party around a position acceptable to both free traders and protectionists. He was one of the first Conservatives to champion universal state education, believing a more educated workforce was necessary to compete with Germany.
Fulfilment of vision: He failed entirely to unite his party and defuse the free trade argument, with the result that he led a divided party to one of its worst ever defeats in 1906 – the first of three election defeats it suffered under his leadership. But the landmark 1902 Education Act created the first national education system in Britain.
Vote winner: Cemented the Anglo-Japanese alliance and presided over the Entente Cordiale.
Vote loser: The only serving prime minister to lose his own parliamentary seat.
Overall rating: 2
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908)
Party: Liberal
Dates in Office: 1906–08
Vision: He envisaged the sort of welfare provisions, such as pensions, which later became identified with the welfare state. He believed in trade union rights, freedom from censorship and women’s suffrage.
Fulfilment of vision: He single-handedly laid the basis for trade union power when a Labour MP tried, by a private member’s bill, to give trade unions back the immunities from damages which had been taken away by the Taff Vale Judgement. Campbell-Bannerman, without consulting colleagues, promised on the floor of the House to amend the Finance Bill to achieve this. He told his Chancellor, HH Asquith, to introduce the first basic state-run old age pension, and it was his initiatives which led to the welfare measures in the 1909 People’s Budget, though he was dead by the time it was presented.
Vote winner: Brought in measures which led to the welfare state.
Vote loser: Did nothing about votes for women because of cabinet opposition.
Overall rating: 4
Herbert Henry Asquith (1852–1928)
Party: Liberal
Dates in Office: 1908–16
Vision: He wanted to do something to ameliorate the condition of the poor. He was convinced of the case for home rule in Ireland, and believed that keeping the balance of power between France and Germany was the best road to peace in Europe.
Fulfilment of vision: His ambition to change the lives of the poor was realised, probably more fully that he ever predicted or intended, by the People’s Budget of 1909. This also led to the Parliament Act, which broke the power of the House of Lords to frustrate any government which landed interests found uncomfortable. Had it not been for the outbreak of the First World War, he could probably have delivered Home Rule for Ireland.
Vote winner: Tamed the power of the hereditary peers.
Vote loser: Failed to get a grip on the prosecution of the First World War.
Overall rating: 3
David Lloyd George (1863–1945)
Party: Liberal
Dates in Office: 1916–21
Vision: As a wartime prime minister, his vision was for a simplified, centralised government and economy, with a small war cabinet. As a peacetime premier he wanted better education and housing and a wider franchise, and to create a lasting peace at Versailles.
Fulfilment of vision: He insisted on a small war cabinet of five, centralised national planning, and new military leadership with new ideas. Despite the war he put through three crucial social measures. The 1918 Education Act made a compulsory leaving age of 14, introduced the first School Certificate (forerunner of GCSE) and more money went into education. The 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act started Local Authority housing. The 1918 Representation of the People’s Act gave the vote to all men over 21 and all women over 30.
Vote winner: Unifying wartime allied command under French Marshal Foch.
Vote loser: Became a prisoner of the Conservatives, since the Liberal Party split deprived him of the support of his own party.
Overall rating: 3
Andrew Bonar Law (1858–1923)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1922–23
Vision: After the war, Bonar Law said Britain needed “conservatism in the broad sense of the word”. He meant peace, freedom from foreign commitments, a return to normal politics, the end of the wartime coalition, and a settlement in Ireland which kept the north in British hands.
Fulfilment of vision: In the short time he had before throat cancer forced him to resign, he signed the Irish treaty which partitioned Ireland between the Republic and the six counties; laid the basis for a change of economic policy towards protection; impressed upon his countrymen that Britain no longer had the resources to police the world; and tried unsuccessfully to persuade the French not to enforce their reparations demands by invading Germany.
Vote winner: Taking the Conservative Party out of the wartime coalition government.
Vote loser: His Chancellor, Baldwin, forced him to accept the USA’s terms for loan repayment.
Overall rating: 1
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1923–4, 1925–9, 1935–7
Vision: Sure that the Labour Party was going to replace the Liberals, he saw his managerial duty as that of ensuring that it did so with the least possible damage to capitalism, removing the last vestiges of class war in the labour movement.
Fulfilment of vision: This Conservative prime minister embraced the Labour party as a legitimate party of power and used even the General Strike to bring Labour leaders inside the established machinery of government. Without him, the idea of a Labour government voting for cuts in unemployment pay, as they did in 1931, would have been absurd. He tamed organised labour.
Vote winner: Bringing Labour leader Ramsay Macdonald into a national government in 1931.
Vote loser: He failed to take Adolf Hitler, Mussolini and the need to re-arm seriously.
Overall rating: 3
James Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937)
Party: Labour
Dates in Office: 1924, 1929–35
Vision: He wanted to create an independent Labour Party which could credibly become the government. He wanted the Labour Party to become respectable, its actions in government to be conservative and respectable, and for the ruling class to lose their fear of it.
Fulfilment of vision: The measure of his failure is that, unable to lead the Labour Party to where he wanted it to be, he left it and led a government that was Conservative in all but name. Even today, six decades after his death, the Labour Party has not forgiven him. Yet the measure of his success is that Labour did, grumbling, follow him while he was its leader, and it did prove its conventional respectability.
Vote winner: Convening the 1924 conference that achieved a settlement of the German reparations question.
Vote loser: Expelled from the Labour Party in 1931 for treachery.
Overall rating: 1
Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1937–40
Vision: Peace in Europe could be achieved by patient negotiation with the dictators, and especially Hitler. His domestic vision was more Fabian than Conservative. He stood for better state-funded public transport, housing and education.
Fulfilment of vision: He utterly failed in his principal objective of averting war. The moment which appeared at the time to be his biggest triumph – the Munich agreement with Hitler of 1938 – is seen in retrospect as a disaster. He said at the time that it was “the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace”. But some historians argue that his strategy bought necessary time in which Britain could re-arm. He never had the chance as prime minister to do much about his domestic agenda.
Vote winner: The Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938.
Vote loser: The Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938.
Overall rating: 0
Winston Spencer Churchill (1874–1965)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1940–5, 1951–5
Vision: In his wartime government, to unite the country and mobilise all its resources to win the war, and to obtain all possible American help. In his 1951–5 government, to cement the special relationship with the USA and to bring about nuclear disarmament.
Fulfilment of vision: He won the war. It is by no means certain that, without him, the outcome would have been the same. His achievement as a peacetime prime minister is in a little more doubt, though his reputation in the USA and the admiration in which he was held by such people as President Eisenhower went a long way towards building the sort of lasting relationship he hoped for. But he did not achieve as much as he had hoped on disarmament.
Vote winner: He won the war.
Vote loser: He lost the immediate post-war election, partly by poor campaign tactics.
Overall rating: 4
Clement Richard Attlee (1883–1967)
Party: Labour
Dates in Office: 1945–51
Vision: A welfare state in which the five giants identified by the wartime Beveridge Report had been slain: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. A mixed economy in which natural monopolies, and industries on which we might rely in wartime, such as railways, were nationalised.
Fulfilment of vision: In July 1948 his government created what he called “the most comprehensive system of social security ever introduced into any country”. The National Health Service, national insurance, and national assistance were aimed at two of the giants, want and disease. A huge house building programme and the Education Act aimed at ignorance and squalor, and despite desperate economic conditions, he oversaw a period of virtually full employment, thus countering idleness.
Vote winner: Creation of the welfare state and the National Health Service.
Vote loser: Capitulation to Foreign Secretary Bevin’s wish to create Britain’s own nuclear arsenal.
Overall rating: 5
Robert Anthony Eden (1897–1977)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1955–7
Vision: Aggressive dictators must always be confronted, for they will take any concession as weakness. Britain is a kind of aristocrat among nations, and her leadership can deliver peace and stability to the world.
Fulfilment of vision: Seldom has a leader so comprehensively failed to deliver on his vision. Eden led Britain into war with Egypt over the Suez Canal and was quickly forced into a humiliating withdrawal by economic sanctions applied from Washington. Instead of affirming British influence in the world, as he had intended, Eden sent out a signal that British influence had diminished to almost nothing. Suez marked the moment when the country was forced to accept her insignificance. Instead of humiliating Egypt’s leader Colonel Nasser, Eden was himself humiliated, and Nasser was able to dictate terms.
Vote winner: It is hard to think of a vote winner during Eden’s brief premiership.
Vote loser: War over the Suez Canal.
Overall rating: 0
Harold Macmillan (1894–1986)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1957–63
Vision: The welfare state is here to stay and should be maintained. The trade unions will respond to patrician benevolence, and government can deliver prosperity. It is time to wind up the British Empire. Britain can be an honest broker between the USA, Europe and the Soviet Union.
Fulfilment of vision: Macmillan rescued his party and country from the depths of humiliation after Suez. He repaired the fractured relationship with the USA, by being the first British premier to go to Washington as a visible supplicant, and was key to the negotiation of a nuclear test ban treaty. He dismantled the British Empire. He made the first British application to join the Common Market – though de Gaulle vetoed it, it laid the groundwork for Heath’s successful application a decade later. While he was prime minister, as he said, most people had never had it so good.
Vote winner: Dismantlement of Empire with a minimum of bloodshed.
Vote loser: Being turned down for membership of the Common Market.
Overall rating: 4
Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1903–95)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1963–4
Vision: The industrial masses can be won for conservatism, just as rural workers had already been won for it. Only by “simple straightforward talk to the industrial masses can we hope to defeat the Socialists”.
Fulfilment of vision: Alec Douglas-Home was the first landed aristocrat to be prime minister since Salisbury, who resigned in 1902. Providing leadership to the industrial masses was, to him, a duty which only the upper classes could fulfil. He tried his “simple, straightforward talk to the industrial masses” and it very nearly worked – he lost the 1964 election to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party by a surprisingly narrow margin.
Vote winner: Very nearly winning the 1964 election.
Vote loser: Not quite winning the 1964 election.
Overall rating: 1
James Harold Wilson (1916–95)
Party: Labour
Dates in Office: 1964–70, 1974–6
Vision: To make Labour the “natural party of government”. For Labour to run the most administratively advanced, technically competent, economically literate and socially just government Britain had seen, and create a more successful and better educated nation.
Fulfilment of vision: He brought his party, bruised and battered, but intact, into the modern era. His governments were active in improving education, creating the Open University, building schools, and moving towards a comprehensive system. It kept Britain out of the Vietnam war. But in both his governments, Wilson was blown off course by events beyond his control. The Labour Party’s divisions proved too deep for Wilson to do much more than skillfully hide them while he was in charge; they opened wide after he resigned.
Vote winner: The creation of the Open University.
Vote loser: He tried, but failed, to change trade union law by consent.
Overall rating: 3
Edward Heath (1916–2005)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1970–74
Vision: To take Britain into the Common Market (now the European Union). Heath is the only prime minister since 1945 who saw Europe, rather than the USA, as Britain’s most important partner.
Fulfilment of vision: He did the one big thing he wanted to do most – to take Britain into Europe - and it has never been undone. But since Heath, no British prime minister has been an equally committed European, and instead of being in the forefront of moves towards closer European integration, as Heath had hoped, Britain is more often bringing up the rear. His defeat as leader, and replacement by Margaret Thatcher, saw the end of the gentler and more European sort of Conservative Party which Heath and Macmillan stood for, and its replacement by a more sharp-toothed and Americanised model.
Vote winner: Taking Britain into the Common Market.
Vote loser: Losing the leadership, and the soul of the Conservative Party, to Thatcher.
Overall rating: 4
James Callaghan (1912–2005)
Party: Labour
Dates in Office: 1976–9
Vision: The trade unions and the Labour Party together form the labour movement, and they should remain united. A Labour government will make a substantial improvement in the lives, and the level of the education, of ordinary people.
Fulfilment of vision: There was not a lot of time for fulfilling visions in the Callaghan premiership. The day he took office, Labour’s wafer-thin majority vanished entirely. Gold and dollar reserves were disappearing fast, and the divisions in the Labour Party were opening up alarmingly. His premiership ended with the Winter of Discontent, a winter of public sector strikes which paved the way for Margaret Thatcher to tear down most of the things Callaghan had gone into politics to create.
Vote winner: Governed for three years with no overall parliamentary majority.
Vote loser: If he had called an election in 1978, he might well have won.
Overall rating: 2
Margaret Hilda Thatcher (1925–2013)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1979–90
Vision: There is almost nothing the state can do which private business cannot do better, and the frontiers of the state must be pushed back. Britain’s key ally lies across the Atlantic, not in Europe. Strong trade unions hold up progress.
- Are we still living in Thatcher’s Britain?
- What is the nature of Margaret Thatcher's legacy?
Fulfilment of vision: Margaret Thatcher took one sort of society, and turned it into another sort of society. She broke the Attlee settlement which had lasted more than 30 years, largely by force of will. Today few people under 40 remember a time when trade unions were a real force in the land; when the public sector controlled large swathes of the economy; when local councils controlled education and other local services; when benefits were considered rights of citizenship. The defeat and destruction of the once-powerful National Union of Mineworkers was a key moment in the history of the last half decade.
Vote winner: The trade unions were powerful in 1979, and impotent by 1990.
Vote loser: The poll tax, which caused her downfall.
Overall rating: 5
John Major (1943–)
Party: Conservative
Dates in Office: 1990–97
Vision: A consensual style of government – a return to real cabinet government after the top-down Thatcher style – and a country that is “at ease with itself”. A classless society, opportunity for all, and a grammar school in every town.
Fulfilment of vision: Nothing quite worked for Major after the dreadful economic crisis of Black Wednesday, when Britain was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. The economy was in trouble and the Conservative Party in turmoil. The attempt to create a more consensual style of leadership made things worse, since his party no longer had a leader it feared. Constant parliamentary rebellions from Conservative MPs, often though not always over attitudes to Europe, undermined his authority and prevented him from moving far in any particular direction.
Vote winner: Won the 1992 election against all the odds, when Thatcher would probably have lost.
Vote loser: Spending £10 billion, 40 per cent of Britain’s reserves, failing to buy sterling out of trouble.
Overall rating: 1
Tony Blair (1953–)
Party: Labour
Dates in Office: 1997–2007
Vision: You can modernise the Labour Party by aligning Labour’s values with capitalist methods. There is little the public sector can do which the private sector cannot do better. Britain’s key ally is the USA, and the two countries, if united, can do great good in the world.
Fulfilment of vision: Blair made a lot of progress in his chosen direction right up to the time of the Iraq War. The private sector has now been brought even into the running of schools and hospitals, and since the Conservatives agree with it, this will probably be a relatively permanent change. The unpopularity of the Iraq War, and the fact that the reasons given afterwards for going to war were not those given at the time, undermined Blair’s ability to implement his vision, probably permanently.
Vote winner: The biggest ever Labour majority, and re-election twice.
Vote loser: The war in Iraq – an unpopular and unsuccessful war.
Overall rating: 3
This article was first published in the September 2006 issue of BBC History Magazine
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