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Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC (3 August, 1867 – 14 December, 1947) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on three separate occasions (1923-24, 1924-29 and 1935-37).

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  • A lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.
    • Of the new MPs elected in 1918; quoted by John Maynard Keynes in Economic Consequences of the Peace, Ch. 5

  • I am just one of yourselves, who has been called to special work for the country at this time. I never sought the office. I never planned out or schemed my life. I have but one idea, which was an idea that I inherited, and it was the idea of service — service to the people of this country. My father lived in the belief all his life ... It is a tradition; it is in our bones; and we have to do it. That service seemed to lead one by way of business and the county council into Parliament, and it has led one through various strange paths to where one is; but the ideal remains the same, because all my life I believed from my heart the words of Browning, "All service ranks the same with God". It makes very little difference whether a man is driving a tramcar or sweeping streets or being Prime Minister, if he only brings to that service everything that is in him and performs it for the sake of mankind.
    • Speech in Worcester (7 November 1923); published in On England, and Other Addresses (1938), p. 19

  • To me, England is the country, and the country is England. And when I ask myself what I mean by England when I am abroad, England comes to me through my various senses — through the ear, through the eye and through certain imperishable scents ... The sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning, the sound of the scythe against the whetstone, and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill, the sight that has been seen in England since England was a land ... the one eternal sight of England.
    • Speech on England (May 1924); published in On England, and Other Addresses (1938), pp. 6-7.

  • I am a man of peace. I am longing and working and praying for peace, but I will not surrender the safety and security of the British constitution. You placed me in power eighteen months ago by the largest majority accorded to any party for many, many years. Have I done anything to forfeit that confidence? Cannot you trust me to ensure a square deal to secure even justice between man and man?
    • Speech on BBC radio on the General Strike (8 May 1926), as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 415

  • England totally disarmed and an easy prey to hostile forces! Can you think of anything more likely to excite cupidity and hostile intention? We should sink to the level of a fifth rate Power, our Colonies would be stripped from us, our commerce would decline, famine and unemployment would stalk the land. ... I share your longing for peace. God forbid that it should be again disturbed! The constant and undivided effort of the Government is for its preservation. But I have yet to learn that the cause of peace can be served by rendering our country impotent.
    • Letter to Arthur Ponsonby (16 December 1927); published in Semi-detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854-1945 (2000) by Martin Ceadel, p. 271

  • If I did not believe that our work was done in the faith and hope that at some day, it may be a million years hence, the Kingdom of God will spread over the whole world, I would have no hope, I could do no work, and I would give my office over this morning to anyone who would take it.
    • Speech to the British and Foreign Bible Society (2 May 1928); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 92 - 93

  • Tom Mosley is a cad and a wrong 'un and they will find it out.
    • On Oswald Mosley (21 June 1929). "They" were the Labour Party which had recently won a general election. Quoted in Whitehall Diary : Volume II (1969) by Thomas Jones, p. 195.

  • What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.
    • Baldwin is here quoting his cousin Rudyard Kipling (17 March 1931)

  • I think it well ... for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through. The only defence is offence, which means that you will have to kill women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.
    • Statement of (10 November 1932), as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 735

  • It is no ready made article; it has grown through the centuries as native to our country and people as the oak, ash, or thorn. It has given her people freedom and taught them the difference between freedom and licence. That is the Constitution that is threatened to-day, not quite openly yet, by the Socialist Party in their conference, tendenciously by sketching a course of action which if it takes place means the destruction of the Constitution. You may dispute that as much as you like, but in effect taking away the executive power of the House of Commons is the way every tyranny starts. It is proletarian Hitlerism and nothing else, and it can be nothing else. I want you to realize it in time.
    • Speech in Birmingham (6 October, 1933).
    • 'Mr. Baldwin On Disarmament', The Times (7 October, 1933), p. 14.

  • This country to-day [is] the last stronghold of freedom, standing like a rock in a tide that is threatened to submerge the world.
    • Broadcast speech (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 23

  • The greatest crime to our own people is to be afraid to tell the truth ... the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where it lies.
    • Speech in the House of Commons (30 July 1934), as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 775

  • It is not the case that Germany is rapidly approaching equality with us. Her real strength is not fifty per cent. of our strength in Europe to-day.
    • Responding to claims from Winston Churchill on the size of Germany's air force in a House of Commons debate (28 November 1934); published in Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 295, col. 882.

  • There is no country ... where there are not somewhere lovers of freedom who look to this country to carry the torch and keep it burning bright until such time as they may again be able to light their extinguished torches at our flame. We owe it not only to our own people but to the world to preserve our soul for that.
    • Speech at University of Durham to the Ashridge Fellowship, as quoted in The Times (3 December 1934); also in Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge, 1933-40 by Philip Williamson, in The English Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 462 (June 2000)

  • I should like to make an observation to right honourable and honourable Gentlemen opposite. It is that I do not think they will help to produce the atmosphere in Europe which is so desirable by issuing papers that have been issued by the National Council of Labour, headed 'Hit Hitler'.
    • Speech in the House of Commons (11 March 1935); published in Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 299 cols. 50-1.

  • "Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out."
    So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out.
    • Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 4

  • Whatever failures may have come to parliamentary government in countries which have not those traditions, and where it is not a natural growth, that is no proof that parliamentary government has failed.
    • Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 5

  • The die-hard opinions of George III couched in the language of Edmund Burke.
    • On Winston Churchill's speech against the Government of India Bill (1935) - (Audio file at BBC)

  • Do not fear or misunderstand when the Government say they are looking to our defences. I give you my word that there will be no great armaments.
    • Letter to the Peace Society (31 October 1935), during the general election.

  • True to our traditions, we have avoided all extremes. We have steered clear of fascism, communism, dictatorship, and we have shown the world that democratic government, constitutional methods and ordered liberty are not inconsistent with progress and prosperity.
    • Newsreel appearance after the general election (November 1935)
    • Variant: We, true to our traditions, avoided all extremes, have steered clear of fascism, communism, dictatorship, and have shown the world that democratic government, constitutional methods and ordered liberty are not inconsistent with progress and prosperity.
    • As quoted in Cinema, Literature & Society : Elite and Mass Culture in Interwar Britain (1987) by Peter Miles and Malcolm Smith, p. 22

  • We none of us know what is going on in that strange man's mind. We all know the German desire as he has come out with in his book [Mein Kampf] to move East, and if he moves East, I shall not break my heart, but that is another thing. I do not believe he wants to move West, because West would be a very difficult programme for him ... If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolsheviks and Nazis doing it.
    • Baldwin to the deputation at the end of July, 1936, as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 947, p. 955.

  • Supposing I had gone to the country [in 1933], and said that Germany was re-arming, and that we must re-arm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain...we got from the country [in 1935], with a large majority, a mandate for doing a thing no one, twelve months earlier, would have believed possible.
    • Baldwin answering Winston Churchill in the House of Commons (12 November 1936), as quoted in Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939 (1970) by Robert Rhodes James, p. 268

  • In none of these countries [Russia, Italy and Germany] was it possible to make to the people such an appeal as went home to the heart of our people, an appeal based on Christianity or ethics ... The whole outlook in the dictator countries was so completely different from ours that for a long time people here could not understand how it was possible for these nations not to respond to the same kind of appeal as that to which our people responded. But they were beginning to realise it now...The only argument which appealed to the dictators was that of force.
    • Baldwin to the Cabinet in 1937 during his last days as Premier, as quoted in The Collapse of British Power (1972) by Correlli Barnett, p. 449

  • The real need of the day is ... moral and spiritual rearmament ... God's Living Spirit can transcend conflicting political systems, can reconcile order and freedom, can rekindle true patriotism, can unite all citizens in the service of the nation, and all nations in the service of mankind.
    • Baldwin's response to the Munich crisis, as quoted in The Times (10 September 1938)

  • I knew that I had been chosen as God's instrument for the work of the healing of the nation.
    • Letter from 1938, as quoted in My Father : The True Story (1955) by A. W. Baldwin, pp. 327 - 328

Quotes about Baldwin

  • [Baldwin's] genius in this respect more than made up for his limitations as orator or debater. Baldwin was a master of the art of creating feeling, but an even greater one at the important art of detecting it. He would attack, not the argument being put forward, but the feeling behind it of which the case was the expression. When defending himself, he would not deploy fact after act in skilful order, but appeal to the nobler and more humane feelings of his enemy. He was a great disarmer, though now and again he hit back like a butcher.
    • Aneurin Bevan, as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 667

  • Baldwin, Stanley ... confesses putting party before country, 169-70; ...
    • Winston Churchill, index entry in "The Second World War : Volume I : The Gathering Storm" (1948)

  • I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived.
    • Winston Churchill on declining to send an eightieth birthday letter to Baldwin, as quoted in The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill (2001) edited by Dominique Enright, p. 58

  • Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
    • Winston Churchill

  • He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
    • Winston Churchill

  • What [Free Churchmen] have felt is — that in you we have had a man at the head of our national affairs whom we could entirely trust. I am just old enough to remember the kind of faith Free Churchmen had in Mr. Gladstone. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say thay have placed a very similar faith in you.
    • Rev. J. D. Jones to Baldwin (19 May 1937)

  • There was no one half so good at the business of getting the middle class and the working class to vote the same way.
    • Marquis of Linlithgow to Lady Salisbury (16 June 1936)

 
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