Letter submitted to The Telegraph
From Mr. A. J. L. Barnes
Sir, - It is both sad and something of a surprise that an historian of Simon Heffer’s quality should perpetuate lies about Baldwin’s conduct of the 1935 General Election which were first put into circulation by left-leaning polemicist in the dark days of 1940. (Stanley Baldwin offers a lesson for Rishi Sunak - Sunday Telegraph 28 May). Careful study of the speech made in November 1936, which Heffer cites, will show that Baldwin's actual claim was to have obtained a mandate for rearmament in that election, something that nobody would have thought possible in the winter of 1933-4 following the loss of the East Fulham seat to “a pacifist candidate”.
In fact the expansion of the R.A.F. as a deterrent to Hitler had actually begun in July 1934, a programme agreed by a committee chaired by Baldwin, and it was twice accelerated in November 1934 and May 1935 some time before the election was called. It was also Baldwin, not yet Prime Minister, who wished to bring in a Defence Loan, something rejected by his colleagues on the advice of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Defence estimates were sharply increased in the spring of 1935 and a White Paper issued justifying the measures Britain was already taking with specific reference to Germany. As Churchill stated in November 1936, the election was fought and largely won on the question of rearmament and Baldwin in his election speeches, and in statements on radio and on film, emphasised that it was essential that Britain’s defences were repaired.
Why then “no great armaments”? The phrase, which was well known, was that used by Britain’s Foreign Secretary in 1914 when explaining in his memoirs that “great armaments lead inevitably to war”. The Labour Opposition in 1935 was accusing Baldwin’s National Government of starting an arms race, and Baldwin consciously used the phrase to emphasise that what he was seeking to do was to put Britain into a position where she would be secure against attack, not looking to start an arms race. It is worth adding that but for the measures already taken and the programmes adopted following the election, above all the shadow factory scheme, Britain would have been in no position to survive the fall of France. That should stand to the lasting credit of both Baldwin and his Chancellor, Neville Chamberlain.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN BARNES