Why do the people hate me so? - Jeremy Dobson

The era over which Stanley Baldwin presided became known as the ‘Baldwin Age’. Yet, despite a dozen or so biographies and several portraits in the memoirs of the great and the good, he remains little remembered today. Nonetheless the country owes much to him. After the Great War of 1914–1918 the world changed, robbed of its order, structure and beliefs, and dictators came soon enough to replace the toppled monarchs. The slump that then followed the 1929 Wall Street crash ended the fragile peace of the twenties. To a backdrop of violent social unrest, Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933.No country, not even Britain, was immune from despotic regimes as liberal capitalism and parliamentary democracy seemed to fail. That the new caesars did not flourish is owed, at least in part, to Baldwin’s personality and Christian beliefs. As national leader he propounded the role of religion with regard to everyday life, alongside the counter attractions of nationalism. Memories of the Great War were never far away; hardly a village remained that had not lost a son and the nation dreaded another war. Baldwin himself had an abhorrence of aerial bombardment and sought the abolition of the bomber. Nonetheless it was to him that the task fell of reconciling a deeply pacifist country to the new dangers in the world and of commencing a new rearmament programme. His personal role in this is here given extensive coverage.Baldwin remained at heart a countryman, and the emergence of ‘green’ issues has given to his pastorals a renewed relevance. On defence issues though, he was to be damned by Winston Churchill and others for dereliction of duty and hoodwinking the electorate. This new biography aims to refute such accusations.