Chapter 2: Interlude Between Trains by Frank Owen and Peter Howard Lyrics
THE CAST:
Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin
This war broke out in 1939. But the genesis of our military misfortunes must be dated at 1929. One sunny May morning in that year two trains stood for a few minutes close to one another in Crewe railway junction. The first train bore Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to the North. The second one bore Socialist Leader Ramsay MacDonald from the North.
Both these politicians were electioneering, for a few weeks earlier Mr. Baldwin had decided to “go to the country”. Hе was now on his way to speak in the great northеrn city where Mr. MacDonald had performed the previous evening. Such are the amenities of British politics that the rival protagonists hastened to greet one another and exchange opinions.
Mr. Baldwin’s five years’ Administration had been marked by five notable events, (i) The return to the Gold Standard, which placed the British export trade under overwhelming disabilities, thereby contributing powerfully to the attack on wages in the coal industry; (ii) The General Strike, which arose directly out of these events; (iii) An unusually eloquent debate in the House of Commons on the Prayer Book; (iv) The steady decline of British agriculture, and (v) The reduction of British air power to fifth in world rank. The Air Minister was Sir Samuel Hoare.
The unemployed stood well above a million. At the General Election Mr. Baldwin appealed to the constituencies on the slogan of “Safety First”.
Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, had formally blessed the General Strike. “Our hearts are with you,” he had said, and sung the Red Flag, probably for the last time in his life. He had been a pacifist in 1914-1918 and therefore felt no anxieties now about the strength of the Air Force. Farming he did not understand, and as a Presbyterian cared nothing for the disputes over the Prayer Book. The Gold Standard which he would one day strive so earnestly to preserve, did not yet interest him. The unemployed constituted a considerable reservoir of votes, and to them he made impassioned speeches of sympathy and promise.
There was a third contestant in the electoral field of 1929. This was Lloyd George who had “won the War” by his galvanising leadership plus a prodigal expenditure of public money. Now, backed by a number of expansionist business men and inflationist economists, he proposed an energetic and grandiose programme of public works to “conquer unemployment”.
Neither Mr. Baldwin nor Mr. MacDonald viewed Mr. Lloyd George with favour. The re-eruption of this incalculable figure into their orderly arena might well upset their implicit understanding of taking turn and turn about in office. Also, the fellow wanted to do something.
This was decisive. It was not that Lloyd George was, in the belief of either of them, about to do harm or even do good. His offence was supremely that he wanted to do something. Both Mr. Baldwin and Mr. MacDonald had already fallen once from the premiership by reason of doing a foolish thing; henceforth they were resolved to sit fast and do absolutely nothing.
Thus it came about that this May morning the Tory Premier and the Leader of the Socialist Opposition chatted on Crewe Station. What did they say? I cannot remember the small talk, but this I will never forget. As they parted Mr. MacDonald remarked, “Well, whatever happens we shall keep out the Welshman.”
In this Mr. Baldwin and Mr. MacDonald succeeded. They kept Lloyd George out. The national misfortune is that for the next eight years they kept themselves in. Our country had already endured a six years’ stretch of Baldwin, MacDonald, Baldwin. It was now to suffer a further and longer span of MacDonald, MacDonald-Baldwin, and finally Baldwin-MacDonald.
First in turn, and then together they ruled Britain for an age. They found us at the end of a great war, wounded indeed and weary, but victorious, confident of solving our manifold problems and capable of doing so. MacDonald and Baldwin took over a great empire, supreme in arms and secure in liberty. They conducted it to the edge of national annihilation.
The unemployed remained the unemployed, except that the million rose to two million and nearly three. The land was denuded of 600,000 workers. The Air Force declined from being fifth to being sixth. The Army went unprovided, or half provided, with mechanised and motorised power. It was inadequate in cannon, equipment and establishment.
This MacDonald-Baldwin ascendancy, so shameful and harmful to the Commonwealth, came to an end in 1937 when Earl Baldwin at last and forever resigned his seals of office. But by then we had entered deep into the region of shadow. Hitler had set up his monstrous tyranny in Germany. He had seized and fortified the Rhineland, brought in conscription, raised an Air Force which already exceeded our own, and transformed all Germany into one gigantic arsenal. The German sword was poised over Austria and Czechoslovakia.
The fearful menace of the new Nazi Imperialism had been appreciated and forcefully exposed for five years past by a few clear-eyed and courageous figures in British public life, chief of all Mr. Winston Churchill. But under MacDonald-Baldwin these warnings were derided, their authors charged with cheap adventurism or alarmism. All criticism of the regime or its own policy of ostrichism was discounted, discouraged and denounced. In the House of Commons a huge and docile majority yessed the Government through every situation. A miasma of acquiescence settled upon our parliamentary institutions and over a considerable section of the Press. Independent-minded Members went into individual opposition or, in disgust, out of public life.
When the time came, only three years ago, for MacDonald-Baldwin to wind up their firm at last and relinquish their emoluments they bequeathed to their successor, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, besides a mass of urgent problems which they had fumbled or funked, a well tested political apparatus for smudging the sharp edges of every issue and for smearing the personalities of those who raised complaint concerning it.
Thus for years Churchill was kept down — and out. He had no judgment and he wanted office! So did Amery, Lord Lloyd, Lord Wolmer. Lord Salisbury’s misgivings were the fears of an old man, out of the current of information. Beaverbrook and his Grow- more-food campaigns were contemptuously smiled off. Another Press stunt! Rothermere’s long propaganda for more airplanes was a House of Commons smoke- room joke. His criticism of Baldwin was, of course, a mere Vendetta. When Anthony Eden and Duff Cooper could no longer tolerate the complacent betrayal of British interests they were dismissed. They could not carry corn!
The House of Commons gradually fell under the spell of this deadening influence. I shall demonstrate later exactly how the Whips’ office became in time the private appanage of the Head of the Government and how the party machine of the Government parties became the instrument of his personal will. The reader will understand then just how it was possible to bring a nation to the verge of disaster.
But to grasp these facts we must patiently and clearly trace the origin and monstrous growth of this regime of little men.
Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin
This war broke out in 1939. But the genesis of our military misfortunes must be dated at 1929. One sunny May morning in that year two trains stood for a few minutes close to one another in Crewe railway junction. The first train bore Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to the North. The second one bore Socialist Leader Ramsay MacDonald from the North.
Both these politicians were electioneering, for a few weeks earlier Mr. Baldwin had decided to “go to the country”. Hе was now on his way to speak in the great northеrn city where Mr. MacDonald had performed the previous evening. Such are the amenities of British politics that the rival protagonists hastened to greet one another and exchange opinions.
Mr. Baldwin’s five years’ Administration had been marked by five notable events, (i) The return to the Gold Standard, which placed the British export trade under overwhelming disabilities, thereby contributing powerfully to the attack on wages in the coal industry; (ii) The General Strike, which arose directly out of these events; (iii) An unusually eloquent debate in the House of Commons on the Prayer Book; (iv) The steady decline of British agriculture, and (v) The reduction of British air power to fifth in world rank. The Air Minister was Sir Samuel Hoare.
The unemployed stood well above a million. At the General Election Mr. Baldwin appealed to the constituencies on the slogan of “Safety First”.
Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, had formally blessed the General Strike. “Our hearts are with you,” he had said, and sung the Red Flag, probably for the last time in his life. He had been a pacifist in 1914-1918 and therefore felt no anxieties now about the strength of the Air Force. Farming he did not understand, and as a Presbyterian cared nothing for the disputes over the Prayer Book. The Gold Standard which he would one day strive so earnestly to preserve, did not yet interest him. The unemployed constituted a considerable reservoir of votes, and to them he made impassioned speeches of sympathy and promise.
There was a third contestant in the electoral field of 1929. This was Lloyd George who had “won the War” by his galvanising leadership plus a prodigal expenditure of public money. Now, backed by a number of expansionist business men and inflationist economists, he proposed an energetic and grandiose programme of public works to “conquer unemployment”.
Neither Mr. Baldwin nor Mr. MacDonald viewed Mr. Lloyd George with favour. The re-eruption of this incalculable figure into their orderly arena might well upset their implicit understanding of taking turn and turn about in office. Also, the fellow wanted to do something.
This was decisive. It was not that Lloyd George was, in the belief of either of them, about to do harm or even do good. His offence was supremely that he wanted to do something. Both Mr. Baldwin and Mr. MacDonald had already fallen once from the premiership by reason of doing a foolish thing; henceforth they were resolved to sit fast and do absolutely nothing.
Thus it came about that this May morning the Tory Premier and the Leader of the Socialist Opposition chatted on Crewe Station. What did they say? I cannot remember the small talk, but this I will never forget. As they parted Mr. MacDonald remarked, “Well, whatever happens we shall keep out the Welshman.”
In this Mr. Baldwin and Mr. MacDonald succeeded. They kept Lloyd George out. The national misfortune is that for the next eight years they kept themselves in. Our country had already endured a six years’ stretch of Baldwin, MacDonald, Baldwin. It was now to suffer a further and longer span of MacDonald, MacDonald-Baldwin, and finally Baldwin-MacDonald.
First in turn, and then together they ruled Britain for an age. They found us at the end of a great war, wounded indeed and weary, but victorious, confident of solving our manifold problems and capable of doing so. MacDonald and Baldwin took over a great empire, supreme in arms and secure in liberty. They conducted it to the edge of national annihilation.
The unemployed remained the unemployed, except that the million rose to two million and nearly three. The land was denuded of 600,000 workers. The Air Force declined from being fifth to being sixth. The Army went unprovided, or half provided, with mechanised and motorised power. It was inadequate in cannon, equipment and establishment.
This MacDonald-Baldwin ascendancy, so shameful and harmful to the Commonwealth, came to an end in 1937 when Earl Baldwin at last and forever resigned his seals of office. But by then we had entered deep into the region of shadow. Hitler had set up his monstrous tyranny in Germany. He had seized and fortified the Rhineland, brought in conscription, raised an Air Force which already exceeded our own, and transformed all Germany into one gigantic arsenal. The German sword was poised over Austria and Czechoslovakia.
The fearful menace of the new Nazi Imperialism had been appreciated and forcefully exposed for five years past by a few clear-eyed and courageous figures in British public life, chief of all Mr. Winston Churchill. But under MacDonald-Baldwin these warnings were derided, their authors charged with cheap adventurism or alarmism. All criticism of the regime or its own policy of ostrichism was discounted, discouraged and denounced. In the House of Commons a huge and docile majority yessed the Government through every situation. A miasma of acquiescence settled upon our parliamentary institutions and over a considerable section of the Press. Independent-minded Members went into individual opposition or, in disgust, out of public life.
When the time came, only three years ago, for MacDonald-Baldwin to wind up their firm at last and relinquish their emoluments they bequeathed to their successor, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, besides a mass of urgent problems which they had fumbled or funked, a well tested political apparatus for smudging the sharp edges of every issue and for smearing the personalities of those who raised complaint concerning it.
Thus for years Churchill was kept down — and out. He had no judgment and he wanted office! So did Amery, Lord Lloyd, Lord Wolmer. Lord Salisbury’s misgivings were the fears of an old man, out of the current of information. Beaverbrook and his Grow- more-food campaigns were contemptuously smiled off. Another Press stunt! Rothermere’s long propaganda for more airplanes was a House of Commons smoke- room joke. His criticism of Baldwin was, of course, a mere Vendetta. When Anthony Eden and Duff Cooper could no longer tolerate the complacent betrayal of British interests they were dismissed. They could not carry corn!
The House of Commons gradually fell under the spell of this deadening influence. I shall demonstrate later exactly how the Whips’ office became in time the private appanage of the Head of the Government and how the party machine of the Government parties became the instrument of his personal will. The reader will understand then just how it was possible to bring a nation to the verge of disaster.
But to grasp these facts we must patiently and clearly trace the origin and monstrous growth of this regime of little men.