Neville Chamberlain

Some thoughts on Neville Chamberlain after reading Feiling’s The Life of Neville Chamberlain (Macmiilan 1946).

Neville Chamberlain will always be associated with (even defined by) his disastrous negotiations with Hitler at Munich in 1938. But a broader view of his life suggests that, but for Munich, Chamberlain would be remembered as a talented, conscientious and successful politician.

The first thing to note about Chamberlain is that he did not become a Member of Parliament until he was 50 years old. After some initial studies in metallurgy and science at Morley College, Birmingham, his father shipped him off to an island off Nassau to establish a sisal plantation, which was intended to rebuild the family’s capital while allowing Joseph Chamberlain to concentrate on his political career. Over 5-6 years Chamberlain laboured at the sisal, but neither climate nor soil were favourable to the crop and the family lost £50,000 on the venture – something like £2.5 million today. While Chamberlain felt the failure to be his, his father saw himself as being equally at fault.

Living as the only educated white man for 5 yearrs on a remote island must have done much to shape Chamberlain’s character. On the positive side, it taught him self-reliance and gave him time to develop a deep knowledge of English literature. Against these advantages must be set the effects of having to make every decision himself, simply because there was no one else there to consult. Whether or not this was the cause of his lifelong antipathy for consulting others, it surely contributde to his downfall.

On returning to England, Chamberlain went into business, there still being enough family capital to finance his entry into one business and his purchase of another. As his business interests grew, so his political activity in Birmingham expanded, particularly in the fields of health and social services, which, in those days, were largely charitable. It was not until 1911 that he became a local councillor (aged 40 or so), spurred on by the creation of Greater Birmingham by Act of Parliament.

By 1915 Chamberlain was Lord Mayor. So, most unusually for a future prime minister, Chamberlain spent the first 45 years of his life without even contemplating Parliament or, to be more precise, whenever he did contemplate it, his father’s prominence in Parliament was more than enough to inhibit any incipient ambitions which he might have had.

Parliament came to Chamberlain by the odd route: through war and a second career failure. In 1916 Lloyd George asked Chamberlain to become Minister of National Service. With great reluctance, Chamberlain accepted the post, his sense of duty in war overcoming his concerns about the lack of clarity as to what he was to do, and the non-existent powers that came with the job.

Chamberlain's fears soon proved true. Not being an MP and not being in the Cabinet ensured that everything that he initiated was killed off in inter-departmental battles, fought on stages to which he had no access. After just a few months he resigned, feeling that his professional life was over. This experience left him a bitter opponent of Lloyd George who, he felt, had dropped him into an impossible situation, and then had done nothing to prevent all the blame falling on Chamberlain.

In the General Election of 1918, came the event which Chamberlain had spent all his adult life avoiding – he became an MP. At that time Lloyd George was still Prime Minister. Once Baldwin became  Prime Minister in 1923 Chamberlain’s political career finally began. In the 15 years before became  Prime Minister he was, in turn, Post Master General, Minister of Housing, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Health Minister and then Chancellor again.

Leaving aside the minor post of Post Master General, Chamberlain's ministerial career is strewn with progressive legislation – the legislation of a thoughtful, caring ‘one-nation’ politician. He was driven by a desire to improve the life of ordinary people, combined with a passion for ‘efficiency’. He wanted results from the taxes that he raised and spent. The picture in these years is that of a level-headed, focused man. He wanted results, he wanted economy and, being a man of his time, balanced budgets.

If there had been no Hitler, Chamberlain  would have remained a reform-focused, efficiency-driven minister. It was his misfortune that the last four years of his political life were run to Hitler’s agenda. Chamberlain wanted disarmament, but he was the Chancellor of the Excheqeur who initiated rearmament in his 1936 budget. He wanted to reduce taxes and to spend more on health and National Assistance, but he had to raise taxes for armaments. So, Chamberlain became the Chancellor who strove to find the money to rearm.(A policy that he supported,because he saw those armaments as the deterrent that would prevent war.)

When Munich came, Chamberlain was doing the right thing: rearming, whilst doing everything possible to detach other countries from Hitler’s influence. But, from the moment that he decided to fly to see Hitler, his faults took over and doomed him to failure. There was nothing wrong in wanting to negotiate with Hitler, it was how he negotiated that was wrong.

Before leaving on that famous flight (not his first, as is often said) Chamberlain had, for months, cut the Foreign Office out of his deliberations, relying on his own non-expertise in foreign affairs and one non-professional adviser. Second, he went alone, not even taking his own interpreter, let alone any officials.  (The self-confidence of the lone planter had taken over.) As a result he fell for Hitler’s charm, thinking that he could trust an agreement made with the Führer. Yet, had Chamberlain flicked back thro’ his own letters and diaries, he would have found himself saying that dictators are not to be trusted, that Hitler was a rogue, that you should never enter into pacts that you do not have the power to enforce – and, as Chamberlain well knew, Britain had no means of enforcing the Munich agreement.

The final impression that all this leaves is that of a conscientious, talented, hard-working, effective administrator and politician, un-swayed by what his colleagues thought. He strove to make Britain a better place, particularly for the poor and vulnerable. In this he achieved many notable successes, but all the glory that might have been his had been dulled by ‘peace in our time’. He alone made the plan and conducted the negotiations, pushing his Cabinet colleagues and civil servants to one side. In the end, he has to take all the blame.

(c) Richard Freeman 2025.