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Stanley Baldwin Quotes
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Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, was a British statesman of the Conservative Party who dominated the government in his country between the world wars. Three times Prime Minister, he is the only British premier to have served under three monarchs .Baldwin first entered the House of Commons in 1908 as the Member of Parliament for Bewdley, succeeding his father Alfred Baldwin. He held government office in the coalition ministry of David Lloyd George. In 1922, Baldwin was one of the prime movers in the withdrawal of Conservative support from Lloyd George; he subsequently became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Bonar Law's Conservative ministry. Upon Bonar Law's resignation due to health reasons in May 1923, Baldwin became Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. He called an election on the issue of tariffs and lost the Conservatives' parliamentary majority, after which Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority Labour government.

After winning the 1924 general election Baldwin formed his second government, which saw important tenures of office by Sir Austen Chamberlain , Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain . The latter two ministers strengthened Conservative appeal by reforms in areas formerly associated with the Liberal Party. They included industrial conciliation, unemployment insurance, a more extensive old-age pension system, slum clearance, more private housing, and expansion of maternal and childcare. However, continuing sluggish economic growth and declines in mining and heavy industry weakened his base of support and, although Baldwin was supportive of Labour politicians forming minority governments at Westminster, his government also saw the General Strike in 1926 and the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 to curb the powers of trade unions.Baldwin narrowly lost the 1929 general election and his continued leadership of the party was subject to extensive criticism by the press barons Lord Rothermere and Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook. In 1931, Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald formed a National Government, most of whose ministers were Conservatives, and which won an enormous majority at the 1931 general election. As Lord President of the Council, and one of four Conservatives among the small ten-member Cabinet, Baldwin took over many of the Prime Minister's duties due to MacDonald's failing health. This government saw an Act delivering increased self-government for India, a measure opposed by Churchill and by many rank-and-file Conservatives. The Statute of Westminster 1931 gave Dominion status to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, while establishing the first step towards the Commonwealth of Nations. As party leader, Baldwin made many striking innovations, such as clever use of radio and film, that made him highly visible to the public and strengthened Conservative appeal.

In 1935, Baldwin replaced MacDonald as Prime Minister of the National Government, and won the 1935 general election with another large majority. During this time, he oversaw the beginning of the rearmament process of the British military, as well as the very difficult abdication of King Edward VIII. Baldwin's third government saw a number of crises in foreign affairs, including the public uproar over the Hoare–Laval Pact, Remilitarization of the Rhineland and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Baldwin retired in 1937 and was succeeded by Neville Chamberlain. At that time, Baldwin was regarded as a popular and successful Prime Minister, but for the final decade of his life, and for many years afterwards, he was vilified for having presided over high unemployment in the 1930s and as one of the "Guilty Men" who had tried to appease Adolf Hitler and who had – supposedly – not rearmed sufficiently to prepare for the Second World War. Today, modern scholars generally rank him in the upper half of British prime ministers.

✵ 3. August 1867 – 14. December 1947
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Stanley Baldwin: 225   quotes 3   likes

Stanley Baldwin Quotes

“If I were to be asked what two of the root principles are which we should always keep in view in trying to decide on a political issue, in judging of legislation, in judging of political action, I think I should say common sense and the preservation of what always has been the most precious thing in this country—individual freedom. If you apply these tests, you will seldom go far wrong. There are many people to-day who think you can cure the ills of the world by legislation: but you must examine the legislation they propose to see whether it is adapted to the practical experience of daily life, whether the freedom of the individual is affected by it. And if you cannot be satisfied on those points, you may be quite sure that that legislation in the long run will do more harm than it will do good.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the thirtieth anniversary of the Junior Imperial League in Kingsway Hall (19 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 18-19.
1926

Life , People , World , Thinking

“Toryism, as we know it, was illuminated, expounded, and made a gospel for a large portion of this country by the genius of Benjamin Disraeli. Most of us who have worked for our great party have founded our beliefs on, and derived our inspiration from that statesman.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 37-38.
1936

Country

“That dualism of the Church and the Chapel taken together has been one of the most potent influences in the life of our country. The one fostering, perhaps, more than the other, the respect for authority and tradition and the sense of historical continuity; the other laying its main emphasis on individual obedience to eternal law. They both have defects of their qualities, but they have both been, and are, and will be great social forces with great political consequences. Both at their best penetrate life with serious purpose, and are in constant war with that spirit of secularism which finds its paradise in idleness and frivolity, with which no country can ever prosper.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Cornwall (23 June 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 55.
1927

Life , War , Law , Sense

“The greatest hope I have for our country is in the widespread kindling of that real desire for education which I regard as almost the only fruit of the war on which I can look with satisfaction…we are apt to lose sight of the importance of education as an end in itself. If you regard education solely from the point of view of enabling you to earn a salary, useful as that may be, you miss one of the best things for which education stands.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 76-77.
1927

War , Education , Hope , Country

“I want to see the spirit of service to the whole nation the birthright of every member of the Unionist Party—Unionist in the sense that we stand for the union of those two nations of which Disraeli spoke two generations ago; union among our own people to make one nation of our people at home which, if secured, nothing else matters in the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 73.
1924

People , World , Home , Sense

“…protection of the home market? That has made mass production possible.”

Stanley Baldwin

Conversation with Thomas Jones (30 April 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 192
1936

Home

“There is nothing the country needs so much as another Wesley or Whitefield…To-day the world seems more irreligious than it has ever been in the Christian era. Irresponsible pleasure-seeking and prodigal luxury abound; church-going has lost the hold it had in our childhood; and candidates for the Ministry are less in number than years past. But I believe this condition of affairs will pass.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Langham Hotel (11 February 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 195-196.
1926

Pleasure , World , Past , Childhood

“This is Empire Day, and we lift up our eyes beyond our immediate surroundings and our everyday tasks to behold the great inheritance which is ours. Our feet are set in a large space, and if the Titan has known moments of weariness, if our burdens are heavy, our shoulders are yet broad, and they have long been fitted to bear the vast orb of our fate.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Hyde Park (24 May 1929), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 25. In 1902 Joseph Chamberlain said "The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of its fate".
1929

Fate

“I claim that, unlike the totalitarian States, we have managed to secure both progress and orderly development in industry while still preserving to a large measure individual freedom and our individual enterprise, qualities upon which ultimately all our trade and industry depend.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Federation of British Industries (13 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), p. 115.
1937

Freedom , Dependency

“I always maintain that the great service that education renders to democracy is the same service that we hope to gain from religion. They work, or ought to work, hand in hand. It is to keep the moral weights and measures true to standard; and not only true to standard—true to the highest standard. And let us have that applied impartially to all classes of the community from the top to the bottom. There are those who would empty the conception of the state of all moral qualities, and they would confine education to a bread-and-butter business. If I may paraphrase Nurse Cavell's dying words, such patriotism is not enough. Moral standards, applied as I suggest, are the surest way to achieve that fundamental social unity which is postulated by democracy.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 79-80.
1927

Education , Religion , Hope , Way

“…one day there came a great strike in the coalfields. It was one of the earlier strikes, and it became a national strike. We tried to carry on as long as we could, but of course it became more and more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after furnace was damped down; the chimneys erased to smoke, and about 1,000 men who had no interest in the dispute that was going on were thrown out of work through no fault of their own, at a time when there was no unemployment benefit. I confess that that event set me thinking very hard. It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men, because I looked upon them as my own family, and it hit me very hard—I would not have mentioned this only it got into the Press two or three years ago—and I made an allowance to them, not a large one, but something, for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt that they were being so unfairly treated. But there was more in it really than that. There was no conscious unfair treatment, of these men by the miners. It simply was that we were gradually passing into a new state of industry, when the small firms and the small industries were being squeezed out. Business was all tending towards great amalgamations on the one side of employers and on the other side of the men…We have to see what wise statesmanship can do to steer the country through this time of evolution, until we can get to the next stage of our industrial civilisation.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925).
1925

Men , Family , Business , Thinking

“Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron…Carlyle, Tennyson, John Henry Newman…Thackeray, Browning and Dickens. There was a galaxy of talent of the highest order in a literature that stands second to none in the world…No country can compare with our own in the literature of that period…I have always firmly held that there is no race with more ability latent than our own, or with a higher aptitude for mechanical genius. When the College was founded, Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton, all sons of working men, were inventing the machines which brought the cotton industry. I mention these names to show the stuff of which our people are made, and how that stuff is worth training and educating. It would be a very interesting subject, for anyone who cared to explore it, to see how many of the mechanical inventions which are light-heartedly attributed to Americans are really the product of British brains, whether they were British brains which have gone to work in that country, or the brains of children of British parents who have gone there.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at Birkbeck College (20 March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 143-144.
1924

Men , Children , People , World

“I get an obsession that everybody is out for what they can get during the war and it makes me sick.”

Stanley Baldwin

Letter to Lady Dickinson (28 November 1917), quoted in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910-1937 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 79.
1910s

War

“Yes, it was a success. I know it. It was almost wholly unprepared. I had a success, my dear Nicolson, at the moment I most needed it. Now is the time to go.”

Stanley Baldwin

Harold Nicolson's diary entry (10 December 1936) recording Baldwin's comments after listening to Baldwin's speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/dec/10/members-of-the-house-of-commons on the Abdication of Edward VIII. Quoted in Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters. 1930-1939 (London: Collins, 1966), p. 286.
1936

Time , Success

“Tom Mosley is a cad and a wrong 'un and they will find it out.”

Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin (21 June 1929), quoted in Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diary: Volume II (1969), p. 195. "They" were the Labour Party which had recently won the general election.
1929

“Civilisation may perish as the result of war: it would certainly perish as the result of Nazi-ism triumphant beyond the borders of the country of its birth… And now we know that should the challenge come, we shall be there. In Luther's words “we can no other.” We were there when the Spanish galleons made for Plymouth: we were on those bloody fields in the Netherlands when Louis XIV aimed at the domination of Europe: we were on duty when Napoleon bestrode the world like a demi-god, and we answered the roll call, as you did, in August, 1914. We can no other. So help us, God.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the University of Toronto (April 1939), quoted in An Interpreter of England. The Falconer Lectures (1939), pp. 117-118.
1939

God , War , World , Birth

“Difficult as the course is, the dangers do not come from the difficulties; they come from extremists in India and at home. I will tell you what I mean. I am firmly convinced that such writings as appear in such papers as the Daily Mail will do more to lose India for the British Empire, will do more to cause a revolutionary spirit, than anything that can be done in any way by anyone else. I got many letters, I need hardly say, of all points of view. I had a very characteristic one last week… It was from a colonel; he was an old man, you could tell that by his writing; and he used this phrase: He said, "You and Lord Irwin are negrophiles." Perhaps he was a member of the United Empire party. That is not the way to cement the Empire. This sort of thing, and the spirit behind it, will break up our Empire infallibly, and that is what I am out to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/mar/12/india in the House of Commons (12 March 1931).
1931

Way , Home , Appearance , Fight

“The rhetoric of to-day, the rhetoric we have to consider, is the rhetoric of the "Bulging corn bins." I suppose that this gift has been responsible for more bloodshed on this earth than all the guns and explosives that have ever been invented. If we look back only over the last century, was there anything more responsible for the French Revolution than the literary rhetoric of Rousseau, fanned by the verbal rhetoric of Robespierre and others, just as the Russian Revolution was due to the rhetoric of Kerensky— flatulent rhetoric which filled the bellies of his people with the east wind? That appalling twopenny-ha'penny gift of fluency, with the addition of a certain amount of training and of imagination in word-spinning, is the kind of rhetoric which stirs the emotions of the ignorant mob and sets it moving. It is because such forces can be set in motion by rhetoric that I have no regard for it, but a positive horror.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Cambridge Union (March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 95-96.
1924

People , Imagination , Training

“Dogmatism is the prerogative of youth.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), p. 161.
1937

Youth

“I was anxious two years ago as to the line which our party would take on the Indian question. I believed that the one course was the only one for a progressive party—and a party must be progressive to live. I believed that the other course led to the destruction of the party.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/dec/03/indian-policy in the House of Commons (3 December 1931).
1931

Question

“There is nowhere in the world, I believe, a higher standard of commercial honour than that which prevails in this country. And the same is true of our Courts of Law, which enjoy a world-wide prestige.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at his inauguration as Lord Rector of The University of Edinburgh (6 November 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 84.
1925

World , Law , Country

“Why did the [Roman] Empire come into existence at all, and why, having come into existence, did it perish?… Surely the character of the Roman played as great a part in the rise of the Empire as his character played in the fall?… to me the outstanding and peculiar strength of the Roman character lies in the words pietas and gravitas. These were the foundations of a patriotism which alone could carry the burden of Empire, a patriotism innate, a motive force of incalculable power, yet something at its best so holy that it was never paraded, sought no reward, was taken for granted, and had no single word to express it.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 103-104.
1926

Motivation , Parting

“I owe a great deal of my public and private life to my Nonconformist ancestry.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Nonconformist Unionist League (8 April 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 269.
1924

Life

“The Englishman is all right as long as he is content to be what God made him, an Englishman, but gets into trouble when he tries to be something else. There are chroniclers, or were chroniclers, who said it was the apeing of the French manners by our English ancestors that made us the prey of William the Norman, and led to our defeat at Hastings. Let that be a warning to us not to ape any foreign country. Let us be content to trust ourselves and to be ourselves.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 2.
1924

God , Country

“It is no ready made article; it has grown through the centuries as native to our country and people as the oak, ash, or thorn. It has given her people freedom and taught them the difference between freedom and licence. That is the Constitution that is threatened to-day, not quite openly yet, by the Socialist Party in their conference, tendenciously by sketching a course of action which if it takes place means the destruction of the Constitution. You may dispute that as much as you like, but in effect taking away the executive power of the House of Commons is the way every tyranny starts. It is proletarian Hitlerism and nothing else, and it can be nothing else. I want you to realize it in time.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Birmingham (6 October 1933), quoted in The Times (7 October 1933), p. 14.
1933

People , Way , Freedom , Time

“My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument.”

Stanley Baldwin

Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 January 1946), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 540.
1940s

“Now, surely, when we want to educate ourselves for the purpose of citizenship…If you can clear the mind of cant and detect the fallacy, whatever guise it may be wearing, I think you have made a long step forward in the education that every citizen in a democracy that may hope to endure must have. I think that we all of us realise to-day that no civilised community is bound necessarily and by an inscrutable fate to progress, and there are such things in civilisation as checks, that there is such a thing as retrogression, and that the mere existence of a civilised community is no guarantee either for its continuance or for its progress— in other words, that unless we are the faithful guardians of such civilisation as we have already attained to, we run the risk of seeing the whole of the progress that has been made with such infinite labour up to our own time gradually slipping back and back and back.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 150-151.
1923

Fate , Education , Faith , Hope

“If I did not believe that our work was done in the faith and hope that at some day, it may be a million years hence, the Kingdom of God will spread over the whole world, I would have no hope, I could do no work, and I would give my office over this morning to anyone who would take it.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the British and Foreign Bible Society (2 May 1928); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 92 - 93
1928

God , World , Faith , Hope

“The right hon. Gentleman's statement was that Germany has already at this moment a military air force which is approaching equality with our own, and that by this time next year, if Germany continues to execute her programme without acceleration and if we continue to carry out the increase announced to Parliament in July last, the German military air force will be at least as strong as, and may be stronger than, our own…It is not the case that Germany is rapidly approaching equality with us…Even if we confine the comparison to the German air strength and the strength of the Royal Air Force immediately available in Europe, Germany is actively engaged in the production of service aircraft, but her real strength is not 50 per cent. of our strength in Europe to-day. As for the position this time next year, if she continues to execute her air programme without acceleration and if we continue to carry out at the present approved rate the expansion announced to Parliament in July…so far from the German military air force being at least as strong as and probably stronger than our own, we estimate that we shall still have in Europe a margin—in Europe alone—of nearly 50 per cent.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1934/nov/28/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (28 November 1934).
1934

Strong , Time

“The conception of freedom in our country was one so precious, so hallowed, it has been obtained as the result of such age-long struggles, that I felt convinced that in no other country, whatever advantages in other respects they may have over us—in no other country was freedom treasured and regarded as it was in this country, and in its attainment there was no country in the world that had anything which in all circumstances it could teach us.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the thirtieth anniversary of the Junior Imperial League in Kingsway Hall (19 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 19.
1926

Age , World , Freedom , Country

“The Englishman is made for a time of crisis, and for a time of emergency. He is serene in difficulties, but may seem to be indifferent when times are easy. He may not look ahead, he may not heed warnings, he may not prepare, but when he once starts he is persistent to the death, and he is ruthless in action. It is these gifts that have made the Englishman what he is, and that have enabled the Englishman to make England and the Empire what it is.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 3-4.
1924

Death , Time , Indifference

“All parties are alike implicated in the measures of relief now in force. All are agreed that destitution ought not to be tolerated. But are we all quite happy that in giving John Smith state benefits in this wholesale way we are not at the same time taking away from John Smith something which will make him poor indeed?”

Stanley Baldwin

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 48.
1930

Way , Time , Happiness

“The responsibility for progress rests not only on the Government, but on every man and woman in the country. The Government can go no faster in progress than the people will allow them to do. Willing co-operation in new methods is essential, and without the will to work progress is not possible, and with constant stoppages of industry progress is not possible.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 70.
1924

People , Country

“The time was, when I was a boy, when people hardly dreamed that the day would come when there would be large numbers of Members in this House who could not afford to perform their duties here unless they had an allowance; but I think, looking at the whole Continent of Europe, that, the more the basis of our liberty and our Constitution is broadened, the better for our country. Would anyone who remembers the old days here go back to them and give up what we have gained? This Chamber, the most famous Chamber in democratic government in the world, is now open to all, and, once you admit that everybody has a right to be elected to this House if he can, you cannot logically create or leave a financial bar.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/apr/12/ministers-of-the-crown-bill in the House of Commons (12 April 1937) announcing an increase in MP's salaries.
1937

People , World , Dreams , Boy

“I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1932/nov/10/international-affairs in the House of Commons (10 November 1932).
1932

People , Thinking

“Government is carried on in this country more cleanly, I believe, than in any country of the world. It is the rarest thing in our local popular government, as in the government of our country, to find men who fall by the way and yield to temptations that may come from the direction of corruption or undue influence. There is a magnificent tradition handed down from the earliest times in this country, of public service—service for the good of all our brothers in whatever their station of life.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 20.
1934

Life , Men , World , Way

“The die-hard opinions of George III couched in the language of Edmund Burke.”

Stanley Baldwin

On Winston Churchill's speech against the Government of India Bill (1935) - (Audio file at BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/audio/38858000/rm/_38858167_churchill1.ram
1935

“The atmosphere in [the last twenty] years has been, in many parts of the country, poisoned. I do not wish to say anything here about where the faults may lie. But I do want to say that I realise, as you do, that a great deal of the propaganda which has been done during the last twenty years—the propaganda of a kind that teaches class hatred—has in many places done its evil and its poisonous work…the work that has been done in that direction cannot be undone in a moment. And it will mean the utmost goodwill, the utmost force of example to bring about, to any great extent, something better and something on which we may erect a permanent and stable building.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 66-67.
1925

Lie , Evil , Parting , Country

“There is no doubt that to our people, whether they live on the sea-coast, in the great towns, or inland, the Royal Navy is in some subtle way the repository of the spirit and the tradition of our nation.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/may/05/memorial-to-admiral-of-the-fleet-earl in the House of Commons (5 May 1936).
1936

People , Way , Sea

“Words are the currency of love and friendship, of making and marketing, of peace and war. Nations are bound and loosed by them. Three or four simple words can move waves of emotion through the hearts of multitudes like great tides of the sea: "Lest we forget."”

Stanley Baldwin

"Patriotism is not enough."
Speech at his inauguration as Lord Rector of The University of Edinburgh (6 November 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 78.
1925

Love , Friendship , War , Peace

“Our people are not going to throw over Parliament to set up divine right either of the capitalist or of the trade unionist, and we are not going to bow down to a dictatorship of either…I want to see our British Labour movement free from alien and foreign heresy. I want to see it pursued and developed on English lines, led by English men.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 169-170.
1926

Men , People

“Did I tell you that I had quite a nice letter from Winston [Churchill]? I thought I ought to send him a line but I wasn't sure whether I should get an acknowledgement! I think he is the right man at the moment and I always did feel that war would be his opportunity. He thrives in that environment.”

Stanley Baldwin

Letter to J. C. C. Davidson (22 June 1940), quoted in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910-1937 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 427.
1940s

War , Feeling , Thinking

“There are kind critics of the British race who say that we know how to combine three things—religion, patriotism and profit—better than any other nation. There are other and more complimentary explanations of our success in North America. The real fact lies in this: we transported our own stock into the new world…We had the inestimable advantage of being longer than any other country in Europe a free country, and our people pushed cross the seas in their little boats to plant the seed of freedom which had grown and flourished at home. In those people and their spirit of adventure you have the origins of Canada and of Manitoba.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Winnipeg, Canada (13 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 107-108.
1927

People , World , Religion , Home

“I want, if I may, to address a few words to the Opposition [Labour Party]… Whatever may be said of this Parliament in years to come and whatever may be said of the right hon. Gentleman's party, I believe that full tribute will be given to him and to his friends. As I and those on these benches who take part in the daily work of the House so well know, the Labour party as a whole have helped to keep the flag of Parliamentary government flying in the world through the difficult periods through which we have passed. They were nearly wiped out at the polls. Coming back with 50 Members, with hardly a man among them with experience of government, many would have thrown their hands in. But from the first day the right hon. Gentleman led his party in this House, they have taken their part as His Majesty's Opposition—and none but those who have been through the mill in opposition know what the day-to-day work is—with no Civil Service behind them, they have equipped themselves for debate after debate and held their own and put their case. I want to say that partly because I think it is due, and partly because I know that they, as I do, stand in their heart of hearts for our Constitution and for our free Parliament, and that has been preserved in the world against all difficulties and against all dangers.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1935/may/22/defence-policy in the House of Commons (22 May 1935). This speech reduced the Labour leader George Lansbury to tears (Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 149.)
1935

World , Thinking , Help , Heart

“In Athens and Rome…every ultimate problem was theirs, as it is ours, and the more you open your soul to their appeal the more profound your pity for stumbling humanity, the more eager your effort to bind together the family of man rather than to loosen it. It is no blind chance that has led one of our greatest scholars to devote his life to the ideal of the League of Nations. Rather it is his desire to make his contribution to redeeming the failure of those very Greeks whom he, more perhaps than any living man, has helped this modern world to understand.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926) on Gilbert Murray, quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 115-116.
1926

Life , World , Family , Soul

“I am a Victorian. When I was young, I lived as everybody else did at that time, in the centre of a circle with a radius of about ten miles— so far as a pair of horses could draw me. Beyond that I hardly ever went, and I was isolated from other parts of England in a way impossible to conceive by those who have only known England as a country of motor roads and motor cars.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the annual dinner of the Yorkshire Society, London (8 November 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 134.
1933

Cars , Way , Time , Horse

“The continent of Europe, a continent separated from us indeed by a narrow strip of ocean, but joined to us by a hundred links of commerce and of humanity, indissolubly bound up with our fate, whether we like it or not. … until you have stability you can have no confidence, and until you have confidence you can never get that increased productive power which is one of the absolute necessities for the bettering of our own trade in England…It is that cursed and diabolic suspicion between man and man and nation and nation that robs Europe of that sense of security that is essential to the unity of spirit which we must have before the world can function aright.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Birmingham (5 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp 25-27.
1925

Fate , World , Confidence , Sense

“The whole world has its eye to day on London. The whole world is represented in London, and they are all coming here to be with us in what, to the vast majority of our people, will be a period of rejoicing for many days, culminating in that age-long service in the Abbey a week to-day. In the Abbey on this day week our young King and his Queen, who were called suddenly and unexpectedly to the most tremendous position on earth, will kneel and dedicate themselves to the service of their people, a service which can only be ended by death. I appeal to that handful of men with whom rests peace or war to give the best present to the country that could be given at that moment, to do the one thing which would rejoice the hearts of all the people who love this country, that is, to rend and dissipate this dark cloud which has gathered over us, and show the people of the world that this democracy can still at least practise the arts of peace in a world of strife.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937).
1937

Love , Death , Men , War

“To many the last five years have been a disenchantment. Every cloud has a silver lining, and we take strength from the fact that, through all the difficulties of the time, the strength and moderation of the character of our people has once again shown itself, and in our country, almost alone in Europe, have we had freedom from unconstitutional rebellion. And more than that, I think we may say of our own people that feelings of hatred and vengeance have no permanent root in their hearts.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the unveiling of the Board of Trade war memorial (19 December 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 273-274.
1923

People , Feeling , Thinking , Freedom

“There can be no such thing in the long run as the prosperity of an isolated nation…until the trade of the world once more begins to move from one country to another and goods can be exchanged and paid for—until that happens there is no permanency to the security we have gained. Does not that bring us back to this, that while we all know that we have got to go on, and go on quickly, with this matter of armaments, there is driven into us once more the mad folly of Europe to-day in the expenditure she is making on armaments at the sacrifice of her international trade? We have to do what we can in our conversations with foreign countries to show the folly of this, which, if protracted too long, may bring ruin to us all. Therefore we have still to hold on to the faith that sooner or later it may be possible once again to discuss the reduction of armaments. If and when that time comes we must all of us throw our weight into the effort. This massing of huge armaments on the Continent, even the work that we are doing—the money would be far better used for the progress of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 44-45.
1936

Money , Faith , Time , Country