SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL PREMIERSHIP

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 37, 13 February 1937, Page 17 (Supplement)

SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL PREMIERSHIP

Mr- Stanley Baldwin s Detachment from the Tumult and Turmoil ot Political Conflict Makes Him the Great Party Leader He Is.

fifteen years Mr Stanley Baldwin ha* dominated the English political lanrland it may be asked just what has been the secret of Mr Baldwin’s extraordinary hold on the House of Commons of this country, scape as no man has done since Gladstone writes Mr Robert Bernays, M.P., in Pearson ’s.

Casual acquaintance gives no clue to the riddle. No stranger visiting the House of Commons, who had seen neither Mr Baldwin's photographs nor his caricatures, would ever guess that the plain, undemonstrative Englishman seated in the centre of the Treasury Bench, with his pleasant, humorous face, bright and bucolic colouring, rather untidy clothes and general appearance of listlessness and lassitude, was in reality the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Two incidents will illustrate his superb detachment from the tumult and turmoil of political conflict w’hich never leaves him. Recently he was asked a question on the new unemployment regulations by a Labour Member anxious to discover whether, as Prime Minister, he would take part in tho debate and explain certain statements he had made on the subject during election. Whereas, an Asquith or a Lloyd George would have leapt to his feet with swift/ staccato assurance that they would speak in the course of tho discussion if it were the wish of the House, Mr Baldwin shuffled uneasily, had a whispered consultation with his Chief Whip, and then, after a pause, rose to say lamely that “the order of tho Debate will be found when it takes place and I have no doubt that there will bo no difficulty, whoever speaks, in making a reply. This feeble answer reduced the spirits of his supporters to zero. Indicative of this quality, too, was the occasion when he was addressing a party of Oxford undergraduates. He was talking about the way in which the Labour Party was at tho mercy of jihrases. He paused and said: “What is tho great slogan that they always use about their socialist policy? I cannot for the life of me remember it.”

We all tried in vain to stimulate his memory and then a young mail suggested with some temerity—“Do you mean, sir, the nationalisation of all the instruments of production, distribution and exchange.” This was a phrase which was ringing from a thousand Labour platforms and it seemed incredible that tho Prime Minister should have forgotten. But so it proved to be. “Yosl that is it,” he said, “thank you. I never can remember it.” How thrilled and fascinated we were, though, by his personality. Nor has my early hero-worship of the Prirao Minister suffered from closer contact. lie stands for me now, as he did then, as the embodiment of personal integrity. I believe tho country feels the samo about him and recognises his essential honesty and sense of service.

His ignorance of the details of current controversies is compensated for, however, by a deep understanding of the British people. No man but he could have secured a majority for rearmament at the last election. “Nobody,” ho said, on one occasion, “would regard me as a man of war.” It was true. Nobody could and nobody did. The attacks on his war-mongering government rained harmlessly against it, for

the roof was proof against any deluge. He has remained to the great majority of his fellow countrymen what they themselves would most like to be—fearless, straight-forward, indifferent to criticism, scornful of intrigue; a sober and solid expression of Patriotism and Service. Mr Baldwin was discussing with a friend of mine the other day the defects of

a certain politician who, though endowed with considerable gifts, had not really made his mark in politics. “What lie lacks,** Mr Baldwin told mv friend, “is a spirit of understanding. It is for a spirit of understanding that I pray every night.”

No Prime Minister of modern times has been more zealous in his attendance on the Front Bench. Admittedly when ho is there he looks as if he were paying no attention to tho debate.

But if ho is not studying the matter of the speeches, ho is sizing up tho men who are malting them.

His favourite literature, when in tho Chamber, is Dod’s “Parliamentary Companion.” It contains a short biography of all the Members of tho House. When a man rises to speak, Mr Baldwin screws up his face, peers at him in his short-sighted manner and them looks up his record in Dod. He may not know his followers by sight, but when their names are mentioned he will know something essential about each one of them.

This close study of his followers helps him to bo what lie undoubtedly is, the great Party leader. Ho knows with an uncanny instinct the strength and weakness of his followers and the arguments that are likely to appeal to them. This was vividly illustrated on the India Bill when he was faced with a serious rebellion from the Diehards. Ido not suppose that he had ever read ono of the voluminous reports that were produced on that subject, but he grasped the essential factor in the situation.

“The unchanging East,” he said, “has changed at last,” and he went on to recall his own boyhood in Worcestershire, that pleasant and peaceful existence when the choice of neighbours was bounded by the radius of a dogcart. It was a delightful period, but it had gone with the motor age and nothing could recall it. So it was with India. The India that Mr Churchill knew in his subaltorn days had vanished and they had to face, whether they liked it or not, a now world. It was not a profound utterance, but it won over many waverers.

Certainly Mr Baldwin has succeeded as too man in our time has done in representing himself, not as the expression of Party, but as the spokesman of the Nation. It has been his consuming object to broaden tho basis of the Conservative Party so that it would be the rallying ground, to use one of his favourite expressions, “for men of good will.” And it was after the failure of the first Labour Government he realised that his Party would never form a stable Government unless it could attract to itself a substantial measure of Liberal support. Once having achieved an adhesion of strength from the Liberal side he determined never to alienate it. His policy, therefore, is that of the Left Centre and his long reign is to a groat extent due to the fact that tho country is Left Centre too.

The fact that he has always resisted the wild men of his Party has materially helped him to resist the wild men of other Parties. He has taken much of the sting out of class war for his Governments have been associated with social reforms as drastic and as farreaching as any that were produced by the great pre-war Radical administrations. With it all he has that feeling for suffering that is the characteristic of the really simple man, as was illustrated when he and Mrs Baldwin went personally to the scone of tho great mining disaster at Cwm, despite the very ugly spirit at that time in South Wales mining areas. When he arrived at tho stricken village his car was greeted with shouts and stones. With difficulty he made his way to the pit-head where he met the men engaged on tho rescue work. His courtesy and unaffected camaraderie won them completely and when he departed he was given n rousing cheer.