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BALDWIN'S REPUTATION: POLITICS AND HISTORY, 1937–1967

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2004

PHILIP WILLIAMSON
Affiliation:
University of Durham

Abstract

In one fundamental sense, a British post-war consensus certainly existed: repudiation and denigration of interwar governments and their leaders. Stanley Baldwin was the chief victim, as it became widely believed during the 1940s that he had ‘failed to rearm’ the nation in the 1930s. Examination of the history of Baldwin's reputation after his retirement – precisely why and how it collapsed – reveals a striking case of the contingent construction of historical interpretation. Partisan politics, legitimation of a new regime, a Churchillian bandwagon, self-exoneration, and selective recollection together reinforced hindsight and a wartime appetite for scapegoats to create a public myth, which despite manifest evidence to the contrary was accepted as historical ‘truth’ by historians and other intellectuals. The main indictment was accepted even by Baldwin's appointed biographer, who added a further layer of supposed psychological deficiencies. Attempts to establish an effective defence were long constrained by official secrecy and the force of Churchill's post-war prestige. Only during the 1960s did political distance and then the opening of government records lead to more balanced historical assessments; yet the myth had become so central to larger myths about the 1930s and 1940s that it persists in general belief.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am grateful to the 4th Earl Baldwin of Bewdley for allowing me to consult and quote from family papers of his grandfather and his father (hereafter cited as [Stanley] Baldwin additional papers and W. [Windham] Baldwin papers, which are to join the Baldwin [political] papers and other Baldwiniana in Cambridge University Library); to Duff Hart-Davis and Lori Curtis at the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, for copies from the Hart-Davis papers; to Peter Ghosh and Julia Stapleton for further materials and suggestive ideas; and to David Reynolds, Ross McKibbin, and his Oxford Modern British History seminar, John Ramsden, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. I am further indebted to the British Academy for a research readership during which this article was completed.