Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) is widely regarded today as a disastrous Prime Minister, one of the worst in British history. The shadow of appeasement falls perpetually on his reputation, and hardly anyone has a good word to say about that policy, which is the only thing that is widely known about him.
Why did he not stand up to Hitler and prevent war, people ask over and over again? Chamberlain had a double policy, as he himself put it: to try and prevent war first by removing features of the 1919 Versailles Treaty which had stirred deep resentment in Germany, and second by re-equipping Britain with the armaments that it would need to fight a war successfully. He said: “Hope for peace and prepare for war”.
It was almost certain to be a world war. Britain was threatened on three fronts: mainland Europe (attack by Hitler), the Mediterranean (attack by Mussolini) and the Far East (attack by Japan). The Soviet Union was a fourth potential enemy. Britain had just one major European ally, France, plagued by acute political instability .The United States had turned its back on the rest of the world . Could the massive dangers facing Britain be reduced by defusing the acute tension in Anglo- German relations?
Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938, the critical year for success or failure, was based on a clear principle: self-determination, which lay at the heart of the Versailles Treaty itself. Munich in September 1938 rested squarely on that principle: it transferred three million Germans from Czechoslovakia (a creation of Versailles) to the Reich.
Hitler’s subsequent demands breached the principle. Chamberlain ended his quest for conciliation. In 1939 he increased defence spending to its highest ever level in peace-time. Deterrence had become his objective; appeasement was finished. His double policy had been reduced to a single strand. Chamberlain responded astutely and patriotically to changed circumstances.
Chamberlain is misunderstood because of the never ending preoccupation with the last years of his life, 1938-40. He had a vision for the future of his country which made him a great statesman. He sought the end of poverty in Britain through a comprehensive welfare state based on radical principles inherited from his father, Joe Chamberlain( Neville always insisted he was not a Tory). He introduced major reforms in social insurance, health, pensions, local government and housing as Minister of Health (1924-29) and added significantly to them as Chancellor of the Exchequer when he brought Britain out of economic depression(1931-37) and as Prime Minister(1937-40). He wanted to do much, much more. He sought peace in his time in order to be able to continue his mission of prosperity for all.
As he lay dying in October 1940, Chamberlain received a letter from a Cabinet colleague praising him for having “done more than any man alive to improve the conditions of life for poorer folk”. Neville Chamberlain replied, “It gave me particular pleasure that you remembered my efforts for social improvement. It was the hope of doing something to improve the conditions of life for the poorer people that brought me at past middle life into politics [he was nearly fifty when he became a MP], and it is some satisfaction that I was able to carry out some part of my ambition”. He was the greatest social reformer in the history of the Conservative Party.
Alistair Lexden outlined these points in an interview for a programme about Neville Chamberlain to be shown on BBC One Midlands on 9 October at 7.30 pm. He will deal with them fully in a televised lecture next year, the 80th anniversary of Munich.
Clips of the programme can be found here: BBC iPlayer