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Band of Brothers: Austen and Neville Chamberlain, and Their Eulogists
- By DAVE TURRELL
- | June 16, 2022
- Category: Churchill's Character Explore The Literary Churchill
Brothers all
They were half-brothers, sons of one of the most powerful and dynamic British politicians, Each achieved political greatness on his own. Between them they held the leading offices of state, and each left behind a very different legacy.
Austen and Neville Chamberlain died within four years of one another and were eulogized in the House of Commons—respectively by Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill, arguably in two of the finest parliamentary orations. It is interesting to compare the styles of those two eulogies, and the circumstances in which they were made. Despite the differences in their legacies, and the antagonisms between the speakers, a fundamental respect bound them all. They were a parliamentary band of brothers.
Austen Chamberlain
Austen Chamberlain was the archetypal political heir apparent. As the first-born son of Joseph Chamberlain he was, from the beginning, groomed to follow his father. Educated at Rugby School and Trinity College Cambridge, he spent time in Europe before returning to take a seat in the Commons in 1892. Austen strongly resembled his father, and adopted Joseph’s eye-monocle and orchid boutonniere. Together they occupied the government’s front bench in 1903.
Unlike many father and son political dynasties, this one was successful. Austen was his father’s lieutenant and, ultimately, his inheritor, in the fight for Tariff Reform (Protectionism). Chancellor of the Exchequer by 1903, he passed up the chance to lead the Conservative Party in 1912: He persuaded Walter Long to join him in retiring from the contest, so as to leave a clear field for Andrew Bonar Law. He was Stanley Baldwin’s foreign secretary in 1924-29, helping to achieve the Treaties of Locarno. He died as an elder statesman of his party in 1937.
Baldwin’s farewell to Austen Chamberlain
In memorializing Austen, Baldwin had a relatively easy task. Their relationship had been long and mostly cordial, with only one period of antagonism, when Austen had declined to join Baldwin’s first government in 1923. Baldwin began by emphasizing the genesis of their relationship:
It is just 29 years since I entered the House, and on that occasion I had a letter from Austen Chamberlain…asking if he, as the representative for East Worcestershire, might have the pleasure of introducing me to this Chamber. I need not tell the House with what gratitude I, a young and unknown member, accepted that compliment from one who had already held high office as Chancellor of the Exchequer.1
Baldwin went on to speak not so much of Austen’s politics or accomplishments, but rather his character as a House of Commons man.
It is for history to relate the accomplishments of our great men, and it is for the press of the day to give the facts and details of their lives. But here we dwell for a short period on the man we knew… [T]here was no man who had a profounder sense of the organic nature of Parliament and confidence in its ability to meet all the changes of life in this country for centuries yet to come.2
Chamberlain’s willingness to share and to help others had, to Baldwin, been palpable. He was, by then a mentor to his party.
No one would ever go to him to consult him on any point without his taking the keenest interest in what they were interested in. To no one did it give greater pleasure to hear a young man make a good speech. No one was looking out more eagerly in every quarter of the House to see the men on whose shoulders the mantle of the great men of the past might descend. His pride in this House, his belief in its capacity was lifelong.3
Baldwin then changed gears and slipped into his persona as the pipe-smoking down-to-earth man of the people. He became the “Honest Stan” the public loved, an image successfully reincarnated 30 years later by the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964-70, 1974-76):
In the remote parts of the countryside where I was born, and old phrases linger… Even now I hear among old people this phrase about those who die: “He has gone home”.… I think that phrase must have arisen from the sense that one day the toil would be over and the rest would come, and that rest, the cessation of toil, wherever that occurred, would be home. So they say, “He has gone home.”
So Austen Chamberlain has gone home. The sympathy of this House, from the heart of every one of us will go out to those that are left…. There is not a soul in this House but will give that sympathy from the bottom of his heart…. He always maintained that public service was the highest career a man could take. In that belief he fitted himself for it and in that belief he worked and died.4
The speech was a Baldwin tour de force, evidence that, at his finest, he could reach deep into the soul of the House and drag emotion from the stoniest. This is a moving and a recommended read. The 85 years since have not diminished this reader’s feeling that somewhere, nearby, onions are being peeled.
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain’s path into the political world was radically different from his half-brother’s. Most of his earlier life he followed closer in Joseph’s business footsteps than in his political ones. Sent to The Bahamas to start a sisal business and revive his family’s sagging fortunes, he instead spent six years presiding over a £50,000 loss. Subsequently, he was placed by the family in a metal company and was managing director there for 17 years. In 1915 he moved closer to his father’s political footsteps by becoming Lord Mayor of Birmingham.
Neville’s first political appointment came in 1916-17, when he served as Lloyd George’s Director of National Service. In 1918 he won a seat in Parliament and thereafter his rise was precipitous. He served Bonar Law, Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald as Postmaster General, Minister of Health and, following once more in the family footsteps, Chancellor of the Exchequer. When Baldwin resigned in 1937, Neville inherited the premiership, a goal which had eluded both his father and brother. He died of cancer in November 1941.
Churchill lays rivalry to rest
In eulogizing Neville, Churchill was walking a much finer line that Baldwin faced with Austen. He was laying to rest a bitter rivalry that had raged on through much of the 1930s. Even in late 1941, 18 months after he had wrested the premiership from Neville, there was a sizeable rump of Chamberlain supporters in the House. Churchill’s grasp over the Conservative Party was not yet by any means as tight as it would later become.
Wisely, Churchill chose not to reopen any of the specific points they had fought over. Instead, drawing on seemingly limitless reserves of good will, he treated the House to a masterly sketch of how good people can do the wrong thing and still remain good. The well-meaning statesman who is tricked by fate and circumstance can still be worthy of honor.
In one of the most moving and evocative phrases of the speech he noted: “Herr Hitler protests with frantic words and gestures that he has only desired peace. What do these ravings and outpourings count before the silence of Neville Chamberlain’s tomb?”5 The imagery is profound. Churchill then went on to vindicate Neville’s intentions, and his resolve to make things right when those intentions had failed.
When, contrary to all his hopes, beliefs and exertions, the war came upon him, and when, as he himself said, all that he had worked for was shattered, there was no man more resolved to pursue the unsought quarrel to the death. The same qualities which made him one of the last to enter the war made him one of the last who would quit it before the full victory of a righteous cause was won.6
Churchill then moved from the specific to the general. And in doing so he expressed his deep-rooted and lifelong faith in the underlying goodness of most people.
The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour…. After he left the Government he refused all honours. He would die like his father, plain Mr. Chamberlain… He met the approach of death with a steady eye. If he grieved at all, it was that he could not be a spectator of our victory; but I think he died with the comfort of knowing that our country had, at least, turned the corner.7
This last passage presaged Churchill’s 1952 remarks on the death of King George VI, a man for whom “death came as a friend.” The tone was pitch perfect, the reception enduring. The speech remains etched in the canon as one of Churchill’s most skillful and moving orations.
In death: understanding
In 1937 it was Baldwin and Austen Chamberlain; in 1941, Churchill and Neville Chamberlain. Finally, in 1950, the circle was closed when Churchill spoke at the dedication of Baldwin’s memorial, not far from Bewdley.
He had chosen not to speak in the Commons at the time of Baldwin’s death. Indeed, at the time of his Chamberlain oration, Churchill had said to Harold Nicolson “I pray to God in his infinite mercy that I shall not have to deliver a similar oration on Baldwin. That indeed would be difficult to do.”[8]
But by 1950 his inherent magnanimity prevailed. His speech was short, but in it he returned to the theme which he had followed with Chamberlain. Baldwin was an honest politician, in the end overcome by problems with which he was not equipped to deal. And Churchill gave full recognition to the public support that Baldwin had been given: “No one who accepted his guidance then has a right to reproach his memory now.”9
Churchill, Baldwin, Neville and Austen Chamberlain are all now firmly established in the great pantheon of the House of Commons. All, in their lifetimes, experienced failure in one form or another. All engendered controversy; they still do, and likely always will. But in death, all passion spent, they can also now be evaluated for the characters that lay beneath their politics. And, in common, a deep seam of basic decency can be found.
Perhaps Churchill could have added a fifth line to his famous moral:10 In Death: Understanding
Endnotes
1 Stanley Baldwin, Service of Our Lives (London: Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1937), 84-93.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Winston S. Churchill, The Unrelenting Struggle, (London: Cassell, 1942), 1-4.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Nigel Nicolson, ed., Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1939-45. (London: Collins, 1967), 129.
9 Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), VIII: 8007-08.
10 In War: Resolution; In Defeat: Defiance; In Victory: Magnanimity; In Peace: Goodwill