Baldwin

click here for more details, find new or used items	Roy Jenkins Used from £19.79 Pages: 208 (Paperback) ISBN: 000215093X Pub: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd Pub date: 1988-08-15 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 945201

Reader Reviews:

The Unlikely Prime Minister (2/2 people found this helpful)

Stanley Baldwin dominated British politics for the best part of two decades, and yet he rose almost inconspicuously and faded from the public conciousness almost as soon as he retired. He was not initially a political animal and entered parliament in his forties out of a sense of duty as opposed to ideological committment and had it not been for the runction in Tory and Liberal politics after the first World War he would have probably not risen higher than a junior treasury minister. From reading this study of the man by Roy Jenkins it seems clear that the his political success was the result of the same characteristics as his low profile.

His leadership during Britain's most serious industrial crisis in history, the General Strike exemplifies this, from the very beginning Baldwin recognised that the strike posed a direct threat to constitutional government (as opposed to the more limited miners strike that was at the centre of the dispute), revolutionary elements within the Trades Unions were challenging the elected governments right to hold office. Baldwin was prepared so he was able to defeat the strike in just 9 days, but his willingness to be gracious in victory ensured that much of the bitterness that could have festered was avoided.

Jenkins does not brush over Stanley Baldwin's mistakes most notably the failiure to deal adequately with the rise of Adolf Hitler, but he does illuminate the context in which the decisions were made at the time.

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