RISE OF THE HOUSE OF CHAMBERLAIN

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 27, 16 December 1938, Page 7

RISE OF THE HOUSE OF CHAMBERLAIN

As a young man he wore a top-hat in the tropics, as a business man he ran a huge firm at Birmingham, as a statesman he averted a world war. Legends will grow up round the name of Neville Chamberlain in the future, as about Pitt, Disraeli and Gladstone. Meantime, the "Record" today publishes some of the facts. ; One of the most interesting things of our modern times is the growth of the House of Chamberlain.

4 enon ATHER JOSEPH (‘‘Old Joe’’) Chamberlain was the first of the three outstanding Chamberlain statesmen. He was perhaps the first progressive middleglass leader of his time. The House of Chamberlain had ~~ snipped away in London making shoes for 130 years. Their babes were born and their old folks died in bed above their shoemaking or cordwaining shop. Even today Britain’s Prime ' Minister is an honorary member of the Cordwainers’ Company. Making Screws The Industrial Revolution inspired cordwaining Chamberlains to leave London and leather, siart making screws in Birmingham in the Midlands, which was for them _ Tike having taken a Covered Wagon in dangerous search of Opportunity. In 1854, at the age of 18, the present Prime Minister’s father, Joseph Chamberlain, moved from London to Birmingham to repyresent the family’s new business interests there, and before he was half through his bold career he had made Birmingham what civic experts now recognise as "the first great municipality with an integrated and fully modern government." ‘ ae ad Slum Areas N Birmingham, Joseph Chamberlain cleared slum areas, opened parks, cracked down on unsanitary dwellings and extortionate rents. The water and gas supply was municipalised, and in 1900 the University of Birmingham was founded by Joseph Chamberlain who had long since pecome a power in the House of Commons, Never Prime Minister, but for many years a daring Colonial Secretary and a behind-the-scenes political power, Joseph Chamberlain brought to every conflict courage, the progressive humanitarianism and the trading (compromise) spirit of the Middle Class, anamma to aristocrats and _ prolerarians. For three years (1893-1201) "Old Joe," through secret emissaries travelling between London and Berlin, tried to comnstruct an alliance of the British and German Erapires. But Kaiser Withelm If would not concede Britain naval supremacy, and Foreign Minister Prince von Bulow insisted thet Germany could yield nothing which wovld undevcut her "destiny to rule the world." EVILLE CHAMBERLAIN was not brought up by Father Joseph io build for peace. Jt was always understood in the family that halibrother Austen would one day be Prime Minister and that Neville would look after the private business of the House of Chamberlain and the welfare of the City of Birmingham.

So at the age of 22 Neville is packed off by Father Joseph to manage one of his properties of 2000 acres in the Bahamas, in the West Indies, for cultivating the sisal plant. And a strange part of the world it is he finds himself in. Andros Island is 100 miles long and 40 miles broad at points, its only claim to fame the sponges it produces. There are no white men on the isiand, and young Neville is glad he has with him Knowles, the English manager. But the chief concern of the two men when they arrive is that there is no house for them. For six weeks, while one is being built, they live In a shaky native hut with 15 native carpenters, Neville finds he has to change his daily routine entirely. He rises at 5 am, hastily swallows 2 cup

of tea, then walks three-quarters of a mile to the fields to superintend the landing of lumber and to direct the natives clearing the ground, Neville is a teetotalier at this time. He knows the dangers of mataria, and lives frugally, allowing no chink in his iren-hard sonstitution. ~ At 4 o’elock he-walks back for tea. Then he goes to another small hui, steps: pehind a makeshift counter, and sells food and knickknacks to the natives on his payroll. Later, when his house is built, with its wide weil-screened verandas, he is able to sit in the evenings and read his favourite naturalists, Gherles Darwin and Alfred Russel tWVallace-and, of course, William Shekespeare, Conventionality NEVILLE" ’S vepuiation grows in the islands. The other white planters and ofiicials respect him for the way he works, even though he docs not taix and drink with them, They laugh a little at the young man’s strict adherence to the conventions: when he makes the $5-mile cea journey to Nassau for an occasional official function he is always dressed in a formal frock-coat and hat-not usually included in the wardrobe of a West Indies planter. The natives, too, respect this cold, austere Englishman, and come to him with their ailments, He bandages their wounds and gives them medicine, |

While Neville oversaw negro workers, Austen sipped champagne with the Kaiser, was long the house guest of Prince Bismarck, learned aimost everything there was to know about diplomacy---sonsidered in Eurepe as semething impossible to practise without years of special training, as for the faw. UT the Islands venture failed. There was a sickness in the plants and they would not mature. Neville came back to enter the family business at Birmingham. it was at this Ysiands. stage of his life that he made great friends with his young cousin, Norman Chamberlain. The two were always together on Woville’s leave. Later, at the outbreak of war, Norman is to go

te Wrance. Neville is to receive @ lelier: "I know now what fear -naked and absclute-imeans, and it isn’t pleasant." hAissing QN December 7, 1927, he is to be posited missing. In February, 1918, he is to be identificd-tying far ahead of his men and facing the enemy. And from that date Neville is to Rave a profound, a lasting horror of war-of war which drinks so Aceply of the Sweet, red wine of youth. Th was a dispirited Neville Chamberiain who had returned to Engjand in 1897. Bvt he found that the resources of character developed on lonely Andros Isiand-the gift of patience, the attention to detail, the handling of men-were invaluable in business. Be had shown little interest in politics in his early life, but a good deal in civic administration, WOVE on to 1911. Neville is "" married now, married to the lovely Ann Vere Cole whom he met in 1906 at his brother Austen’s wedding. Cireumstanees are changed. His wife is the daughter of an old irish sporting family, haifIrish herself, a great-niece of the poet, Aubrey de Vere, a cousin of Lord Monteagle. She is full of Irish charm, has progressive ideas about running a household, cooks superbly-and is for her husband. ° Thus when Neville is asked to

become candidate for a seat on the city council it is she who persuades him to accept. Twenty-one years Sater, when he is receiving the freedom of the city, he is to say: "I firmly belicved the council chamber would see not only the beginning but the end of my public career. Man proposes but the disposition is in other hands." He is to do well to alter the quotation. The hands might well bejong to his wife. ‘SHE civic and business and moral problems of Birmingham were grappled with by Neville Chamberlain for many long years. He, too, gave the city a progressive administration. During his mayoralty a Birmingham municipal bank, first institution of its kind in Wngiand, was established. He was chairman of the extreme: ly active Birmingham Town-Plan-ning Committee: He reached the House of Commons in 1918 fighting against the licuor traffic and for the Gothenburg (control) system, The prestige of the House of Chamberlain, added to Son Neville’s mainly munipical achievements, entitled him to become Ghancellor of the Exchequer in 1923. This exalted and. showy office, whieh he was later to hold from 193f until he became Prime Minister, displeased him at first beeause he was still engrossed in civies. Uinshey WY OF id ice {® soon chose the unshowy office of Minister of Health in 1924, tecause he could push pensions for widows and orphans, the Milk and Dairies Order, pure food laws, and most of all, British housing---which became the "British Housing Boom." Nobody suspected. in those days that one Adolf Hitler would smash the Law in Germany and substituie a Government of one man; or that in a few years four men would be ‘as important as they were recently at Munich,

ee en -------- Sut by the time Germany had found her man, the House of Ghamberlain was ready with a man whe is no product of Europe’s old-school diplomacy. Today, many old-school Britons are aghast at the "shirtsleeve diplomacy" and "American methods" of Reville Ghamberlain. The British aristocracy sniff at: his Middle-Class, unheroic conviction that more is always lost by fighting than by trading. © it is largely the artistocracy-not the proletariat--who now pose the auestion: will Adolf, Hitler trade, will he give a quid pro quo in the long run? Or must both the Fuehrer and I] Duce ultimately be fought-at any cost--be-cause they are not traders? So vast were the issues broached at Munich that no man can say with firm assurance whether history will record the Munich Agreement as a first great stride on the. youd to peace or as a first great slip toward world war. Not a Trade ANY man could see, however, that in itself the Munich Agreement was not a trade. To give a man a sixpenny bit to waich your car because you believe he wili slash the tyres unless you do is not a trade. At Runich it was impossible to enll the police, as Neville Chambevrisin would have done in the Municipality of Birmingham, if Adolf Hitler had offered to slash ivres, There are no international police. "Tt is good to have a giant’s sirengsth," Neville Chamberlain noted several weeks before the Czechosiovak Crisis arose: "It is tyrannous to use it." If only the world can be made quite definitely more like Bim mingham, the House of Chamber lain will consider this much bet ter than if one of its sons had turned out to be a Napoleon or a Lenin-or an Eden.