Calls for rearmament
editFrom 1934 to 1937, Chamberlain was, with Winston Churchill, Roger Keyes and Leo Amery, the most prominent voice calling for British rearmament in the face of a growing threat from Nazi Germany.
However, in 1935, the British Government produced a White Paper and announced modest rearmament[1]. Although Baldwin would forever be condemned for his failure to rearm sufficiently, the Labour Party opposed the White Paper. Attlee said:
We believe in a League system in which the whole world would be ranged against an aggressor. If it is shown that someone is proposing to break the peace, let us bring the whole world opinion against her.[2]
Afterwards, Austen Chamberlain, the former British Foreign Secretary, fully supported Stanley Baldwin and severely criticised Attlee’s speech with the words:
If war breaks out, and we become involved in a struggle and if the Honourable Member for Limehouse [Clement Attlee] is sitting on the government benches while London is being bombed, do you think he will hold the language he held today? If he does he will be one of the first victims of the war, for he will be strung up by an angry and justifiably angry populace to the nearest lamp post.[3]
In addition to speaking eloquently in Parliament on the matter, he was the chairman of two Conservative parliamentary delegations in late 1936 that met with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to remonstrate with him about his government's delay in rearming the British defence forces.[4] More respected than Churchill, Chamberlain became something of an icon to young Conservatives, as the last survivor of Victorian high politics.
Though he never again served in a government, he survived in good health until March 1937, dying just ten weeks before his younger half-brother, Neville, became the first and only member of the Chamberlain dynasty to become Prime Minister.
Chamberlain died at the age of 73 in his London home, 24 Egerton Terrace, on 16 March 1937. He is buried in East Finchley Cemetery in London.
His estate was valued at probate at £45,044, a relatively modest sum for such a famous public figure. Much of his father's fortune had been lost in a failed attempt by his younger brother Neville to grow sisal in the West Indies in the early 1890s, and unlike Neville, he never went into business to make money for himself.
His personal and political papers are housed in the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham.
- ^ Holroyd-Doveton, John (2013). Maxim Litvinov: A Biography. Woodland Publications. p. 288.
- ^ "Hansard". 299. 11 March 1935: 40.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ "Hansard". 299. 11 March 1935: 77.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Alfred F. Havighurst (1985). Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press. p. 252. ISBN 9780226319704. Archived from the original on 4 May 2016. Retrieved 26 October 2015.