Neville Chamberlain by Nick Smart
Routledge Historical Biographies, £14.99
It is unlikely that the reputation of any British prime minister is so totally beyond repair as Neville Chamberlain’s. He is forever associated with appeasement and the conceited belief that he could persuade Adolf Hitler to pursue peace. It was also his ill-luck that the comparison was always bound to be made between his discredited, disappointed premiership and that of the war time administration of Winston Churchill that followed.
Nick Smart, who has written much on the politics of the period, tells us he started off with no particular assumption about Chamberlain as a person. He slowly, however, came to the conclusion that in fact he was generally unpleasant, hostile or simply indifferent to most people, including colleagues, and a rather nasty piece of work.
Neville Chamberlain was the youngest son of Joseph Chamberlain who, in his early reforming years in Birmingham municipal politics, and then as an MP, was known as Radical Joe; but he broke with the Liberals over Irish home rule and became Tory colonial secretary. There was never anything remotely radical about the staid son who stuck strictly to the orthodox and conventional opinions of the day; even his clothes and inevitable umbrella demonstrate this.
Entering Parliament at nearly 50, he benefited from the downfall of David Lloyd George and the resulting, mainly Conservative, rule; within a short time he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and beginning to groom himself for the top job. Stanley Baldwin, though, was to have a pretty lengthy run first, and Chamberlain was 68 when he got to Number 10.
Smart refers to the deep hostility which Chamberlain aroused on the Labour benches, even apart from his politics. His rasping voice, sarcasm and condescending contempt towards opponents and critics ensured there was no Tory minister the opposition loathed more. It helps to explain why Labour, though supporting the fighting, would not serve under him once war was declared.
What was wrong with trying to prevent another military conflict with Germany? Was it not at least worth the attempt, as Chamberlain’s apologists have argued? The point, as the author rightly puts it, is that appeasement was based on the premise that Hitler and Mussolini had genuine grievances and it was necessary to find ways to redress them. Treaties, and the rights of small, far away countries, as Chamberlain referred to them, would not be allowed to stand in the way, as events showed.
It was this mindset that led to Munich and agreement for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. A triumphant prime minister returned waving a piece of paper with his and Hitler’s signatures; this meant, he informed the country, peace in our time. Six months later the Nazis marched into the rest of Czechoslovakia.
I disagree with Smart when he says the wrong impression has been given over the government being forced into declaring war by the temper in the Commons once Poland was invaded. The understandable fear in the House was of a repeat of a year earlier when, in the course of debate, the premier said he had just been handed a message from Hitler inviting him to Munich. Most MPs wanted no backsliding of the guarantee given regarding Polish independence.
But appeasement, which always had powerful support in influential circles, didn’t completely go away with the war; Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, urged the new cabinet in May 1940 to seek peace, and Chamberlain sided with Churchill and others, including Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, in opposing. Actually, at another cabinet later the same month, Chamberlain started to change his tune and argued the same case as Halifax. We can well imagine what sort of terms would have been on offer with France on the verge of defeat.
Smart has produced a valuable portrait of a flawed individual who at the most dangerous times was hopelessly out of his depth in dealing with dictators bent on aggression and conquest: the wrong man at the wrong time.
David Winnick
