Stanley Baldwin, heresthetics and the realignment of British politics

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 429-463

  Taylor, Andrew J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 22544473044     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123405000244     Document Type: Review

References (193)

1. The Times, 26 October 1923.
2. Stuart Ball, 'The Conservative Dominance, 1918-1940', Modern History Review, 3 (1991), 25-8;
3. and Alan J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945 (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1965), p. 283.
4. Christopher Cook, The Age of Alignment: Electoral Politics, 1922-29 (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 113.
5. Robert Self, ed., The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters: Volume 2. The Reform Years, 7927-27 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 193. Chamberlain was elected an MP in 1918 after a brief and unhappy period as director of national service. He served as Bonar Law's postmaster general and then as minister of health under Baldwin. Chamberlain quickly developed into one of the Conservative party's most effective politicians with a substantial reputation as a reformer and strategist.
6. In a speech delivered in April 1924 Baldwin reminded his victorious party that it stood 'for the union of those two nations of which Disraeli spoke two generations ago'. 'Democracy and the Spirit of Service', in Stanley Baldwin, On England (London: Philip Alan, 1926), pp. 70-4, at p. 73.
7. Michael Kinnear, The Fall of Lloyd George (London: Macmillan, 1973);
8. and Kenneth O. Morgan, Consensus and Disunity: The Lloyd George Coalition Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) cover these debates and events in detail.
9. Ralph J. Q. Adams, Bonar Law (London: John Murray, 1999), pp. 363-70 for the circumstances surrounding Baldwin's appointment.
10. William H. Riker, 'Political Theory and the Art of Heresthetics', in Ada W. Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1983), pp. 47-67, at p. 55;
11. The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), p. ix and p. xi;
12. and The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 9.
13. In 'Political Theory and the Art of Heresthetics', Riker suggests it is not easy to define heresthetics 'other than by examples' (p. 56). For a critique and analysis, see lain McLean, 'Review Article: William H. Riker and the Invention of Heresthetic(s)', British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 535-58.
14. Jack H. Nagel, 'Populism, Heresthetics and Political Stability: Richard Seddon and the Art of Majority Rule', British Journal of Political Science, 23 (1993), 139-74, p. 156.
15. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, pp. 1 and 150-1.
16. Nagel, 'Populism, Heresthetics and Political Stability', pp. 134-5.
17. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 66, acknowledges that manipulation involves fixing dimensionality by maintaining or reducing the number of issue dimensions.
18. Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour, 1920-24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 275-307;
19. Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), pp. 212-49;
20. and John Ramsden, A History of the Conservative Party: The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902-1940 (London: Longman, 1978), pp. 154-83.
21. Nagel, 'Populism, Heresthetics and Political Stability', p. 144 (emphasis in the original).
22. For Riker's emphasis on losers, see, for example, 'Political Theory and the Art of Heresthetics', pp. 58 and 62-3.
23. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 142.
24. Britain is not a majoritarian democracy because governments are never based on 50 per cent plus of the electorate and very rarely on 50 per cent of the votes cast. Office is determined by seats, not votes, won. This is pluralitarian democracy and the government's majority represents a minority of the electorate (see Jack H. Nagel, 'Expanding the Spectrum of Democracies: Reflections on Proportional Representation in New Zealand', in Markus M. L. Crepaz, Thomas A. Koelble and David Wilsford, eds, Democracy and Institutions: The Life Work of Arend Lijphart (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), at pp. 118-19).
25. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 146.
26. Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 9.
27. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 151.
28. David H. Close, 'Conservatives and Coalition after the First World War', Journal of Modern History, 47 (1973), 240-60. This strategy was based in part on the belief that Conservatives were a natural minority in British politics and that there existed a natural 'progressive' majority. The main weakness of this thesis is that this progressive majority has never been consistently mobilized and is largely based on the arithmetical observation that the anti-Conservative vote is usually greater than the Conservative vote. Politically and historically it makes more sense to argue for the existence of an anti-Labour majority.
29. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Vol. IV Companion: Part 3 Documents April 1921-November 1922 (London: Heinemann, 1977), p. 2081. At this point Churchill was a Liberal advocating anti-socialist unity but was moving towards the Conservative party as the best weapon to fight socialism. Losing his seat in 1923, he was narrowly defeated in the Abbey by-election as an Independent. Elected as a Conservative in 1924, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Baldwin.
30. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 5.
31. Riker, The Strategy of Rhetoric, pp. 9-10. Space precludes a detailed analysis of Baldwin's rhetoric and political language but this aspect of Baldwin's politics has been frequently examined, most recently and persuasively by Williamson.
32. John Ramsden, An Appetite for Power: A History of the Conservatives since 1830 (London: Harper Collins, 1998), p. 253.
33. Williamson, Baldwin, p. 13 (emphasis in the original).
34. 'Baldwin's deepest concerns were on a different plane and proceeded at a different pace to the ordinary dictates of parliamentary time-table and party need ... His real power lay in the roles of teacher and moralist, and in his creation of a public personality able to sustain those roles. In Baldwin's projection of himself as plain, honest, and commonsensical, with an ease and geniality which confounded suspicions of priggishness, he was able to deliver unusually high-minded and seemingly ingenuous messages which few other politicians could have presented without ridicule or offence. He was also able to bring these qualities of teacher and moralist to bear upon the work of party leader and, for much of the time, to shift effortlessly between those functions. Above all, Baldwin's power derived from a doctrine which while certainly "conservative" was not exclusive to the Conservative Party, but had wide foundations in British public life and appealed in some degree to people of all parties and of none' (Williamson, Baldwin, pp. 155-6). There is no opinion poll data from this period to establish this but the mass of reportage and anecdote does justify the claim that Baldwin did articulate the national mood, particularly in this period.
35. Ramsden, An Appetite for Power, p. 253.
36. Andrew J. Taylor, 'The Conservative Party and Mass Opinion, c1920s-c 1950s', in Stuart Ball and Ian Holliday, eds, Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public since the 1880s (London: Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 78-99, at pp. 79-85.
37. Ross I. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures. England 1918-1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 50-9.
38. Williamson, Baldwin, pp. 15 and 16.
39. Stuart Ball, 'Local Conservatism and the Evolution of the Party Organization', in Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball, eds, Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 261-311, at p. 264.
40. Williamson, Baldwin, p. 177.
41. Riker, 'Political Theory and the Art of Heresthetics', p. 62.
42. McLean, 'William H. Riker', p. 555.
43. lain McLean, Rational Choice in British Politics: An Analysis of Rhetoric and Manipulation from Peel to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 207-8. McLean evaluates Baldwin as 'The best Conservative leader before Thatcher at projecting a cross-class appeal' (p. 208).
44. McLean, Rational Choice in British Politics, p. 7.
45. William Miller, 'Cross-voting and the Dimensionality of Party Conflict in Britain during the period of Realignment', Political Studies, 29 (1983), 455-61.
46. Vernon Bogdanor and William H. Field, 'Lessons of History: Core and Periphery in British Electoral Behaviour', Electoral Studies, 12 (1993), 203-24, p. 209.
47. James Dunabin, 'British Elections in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Regional Approach', English Historical Review, 95 (1980), 241-67.
48. Quoted in William Garside, British Unemployment 1919-1936 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 37.
49. Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, 'Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments', in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross National Perspectives (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 1-64, at pp. 11-12.
50. Hugh W. Stephens, 'Party Realignment in Britain, 1900-1925: A Preliminary Analysis', Social Science History, 6 (1982), 35-66, p. 61.
51. See also Duncan Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party 1900-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
52. and John Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict 1915-1918 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).
53. Keith Middlemas, ed., Thomas Jones: Whitehall Diary, Volume 1, 1916-1925 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 258. Jones, a former professor of economics at Queen's University, Belfast, was from 1912 secretary to the National Insurance Commission for Wales and from 1917 assistant secretary to the cabinet. He was close to Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Baldwin and to a lesser degree, Ramsay MacDonald.
54. Stephen Constantine, Unemployment in Britain between the Wars (London: Longman, 1980), p. 36.
55. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 24.
56. Contemporary examples of studies of the unemployed which make these points are, E. Wight Bakke, The Unemployed Man (London: Nisbet, 1933),
57. and the Pilgrim Trust, Men Without Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938).
58. William H. Field, The Basis of Electoral Support in Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1977), p. 101.
59. William Miller, Electoral Dynamics in Britain since 1918 (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 203.
60. Field, The Basis of Electoral Support in Britain, pp. 180 and 161 (Table 5.3) for data.
61. Robert Waller, 'Conservative Electoral Support and Social Class', in Seldon and Ball, eds, Conservative Century, pp. 579-610, at p. 582.
62. Miller, Electoral Dynamics, p. 226.
63. See also, H. C. G. Matthew, R. I. McKibbin and J. Kay, 'The Franchise Factor in the Rise of the Labour Party', English Historical Review, 61 (1976), 723-52.
64. Kenneth D. Wald, Crosses on the Ballot: Patterns of British Voter Alignment since 1885 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 213-14.
65. Miller, Electoral Dynamics, p. 4.
66. Waller, 'Conservative Electoral Support and Social Class', p. 590.
67. David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 156, 162, 165, 167-8 and 170.
68. Miller, Electoral Dynamics, p. 226;
69. Tom J. Nossiter, 'Recent Work on English Elections 1832-1935', Political Studies, 18 (1970), 525-8, p. 527, argues that the 1924 general election saw large numbers of non-conformists vote Conservative for the first time.
70. McLean, Rational Choice, p. 56.
71. Henry Pelling, The Social Geography of British Elections, 1885-1910 (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 229-38 (Peak-Don Region), pp. 358-62 (industrial Wales), and pp. 400-10 (industrial Scotland).
72. Robert C. Self, ed., The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 223. Elected to Parliament in 1892, Chamberlain was, by 1903, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Balfour's government. Seen as the inheritor of his father Jo Chamberlain's tariff reform mission, he proved to be a poor manager when party leader between March 1921 and October 1922. In 1924 Baldwin appointed him Foreign Secretary. He and William Hague are the only Conservative leaders in the twentieth century never to be prime minister.
73. Baldwin famously described the 1918 Parliament (in which Conservative MPs were a majority) as 'a lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war'.
74. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, p. 352.
75. Kenneth A. Shepsle, 'Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional Voting Models', American Journal of Political Science, 23 (1979), 27-59, p. 28.
76. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1959), p. 217 (emphasis in the original). Boix has mapped the conditions under which ruling parties choose different electoral rules and concludes they always chose rules that are to their advantage. As long as the electoral situation does not change substantially and the rules continue to benefit the dominant parties, there is no incentive to change the electoral system.
77. See Charles A. Boix, 'Setting the Rules of the Game: The Choice of Electoral Systems in Advanced Democracies', American Political Science Review, 93 (1999), 609-24.
78. Martin Pugh, Electoral Reform in Peace and War, 1906-1918 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 178-84;
79. and David Butler, The Electoral System in Britain since 1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 38-48.
80. Boix, 'Setting the Rules of the Game', p. 609.
81. Bernard Barker, ed., Ramsay MacDonald's Political Writings (London: Allen Lane, 1972), p. 221.
82. Boix, 'Setting the Rules of the Game', p. 614. Boix gives Britain an effective electoral threshold of 35 per cent.
83. Cited in William H. Riker, 'The Two-Party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science', American Political Science Review, 74 (1982), 753-66, p. 761.
84. Rein Taagepera and Matthew Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 151-2. Taagepera and Shugart speculate that if Britain had switched to PR in 1918 three-party competition would have become permanent with the parties arrayed along two issue dimensions: Left-Right and Anglican-Nonconformist.
85. McLean, Rational Choice, p. 7. This implies Baldwin could have chosen to prioritize core-periphery as his preferred organizing dimension. This was not feasible because of the legacy of Ireland and, more importantly, because a core-periphery appeal was not so easily reconciled with One Nation Conservatism as a response to socialism.
86. The relative bonus is calculated thus: ((seat share minus vote share)/vote share). See Maclean, Rational Choice and British Politics, pp. 28-32.
87. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, p. 2101 (emphasis in the original).
88. A non-Duvergerian equilibrium exists when 'two or more candidates [in this case parties] are so nearly tied for second place that the voters cannot decide which one to discount, leaving more than two significant candidates [parties] in the field.' See Gary W. Cox, Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 72.
89. Williamson, Baldwin, pp. 170-1. Middle, or central, opinion is neither easily measured nor defined. Conservative politicians, however, knew what they meant by it. It referred to those values such as patriotism, common sense, family, thrift, hard work, property, social conservatism and political moderation which could be found at all levels of the class structure and which could, therefore, underpin a cross-class Conservative appeal.
90. Ross I. McKibbin, 'Class and Conventional Wisdom: The Conservative Party and the "Public" in Inter-War Britain', in Ross I. McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain, 1880-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 259-93, especially at pp. 272-4 and 282-90.
91. David H. Close, 'The Collapse of Resistance to Democracy: Adult Suffrage, and Second Chamber Reform, 1911-1928', Historical Journal, 20 (1977), 893-918.
92. David Jarvis, 'British Conservatism and Class Politics in the 1920s', English Historical Review, 211 (1995), 59-84.
93. Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p. 217,
94. and Robert Rhodes James, ed., Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers 1910-1937 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), pp. 182-3. Davidson was elected to the Commons in 1920. From 1915 he was Law's private secretary and then Baldwin's when Law retired. In 1923 he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and party chairman, 1926-30.
95. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, p. 29.
96. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 305.
97. John Barnes and David Nicholson, eds, The Leo Amery Diaries: Volume 1: 1896-1929 (London: Hutchinson, 1980), p. 351. Amery was elected an MP in 1911 and was a committed protectionist. A former assistant secretary to the War Cabinet he held junior office under the coalition joining the cabinet in 1922 as First Lord of the Admiralty and in 1924 as Colonial Secretary.
98. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 190.
99. Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p. 220. 'Safeguarding' involved giving tariff protection to specific industries facing foreign competition rather than the institution of a general protective tariff.
100. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 326. The Chief Whip told Baldwin he believed there was a possibility that the government might be defeated in a censure motion by a majority composed of Liberal, Labour and pro-free trade Conservatives.
101. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, pp. 193-4.
102. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 327.
103. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 34.
104. Stephens, 'Party Realignment in Britain, 1900-1925', p. 57.
105. Close, 'The Collapse of Resistance to Democracy', pp. 898 and 904-5;
106. and Neil R. McCrillis, Taming Democracy? The Conservative Party and House of Lords Reform', Parliamentary History, 12 (1993), 259-80.
107. Douglas A. Irwin, 'Industry or Class Cleavage over Trade Policy? Evidence from the British General Election of 1923', in Robert C. Feenstra, Gene M. Grossman and Douglas A. Irwin, eds, The Political Economy of Trade: Papers in Honour of Jagdish Bhagwati (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 53-75, at p. 54.
108. William H. Riker, Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1988), p. 209.
109. Irwin, 'Industry or Class Cleavage over Trade Policy?' pp. 68 and 71.
110. Irwin, 'Industry or Class Cleavage over Trade Policy?' p. 72.
111. Mr Stanley Baldwin's Election Address [1923], in Fredrick W. S. Craig, British General Election Manifestos 1900-1974 (Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1975), pp. 45-7. The leader's constituency address was used as the party's manifesto after it had been published in the press. It was not, of course, a purely personal document. Baldwin's election manifesto stated party policy and was drafted by others (Leo Amery drafted those of 1923 and 1924), revised by senior front-bench politicians and then put to the shadow cabinet (or cabinet) for final approval.
112. See John Barnes and Richard Cockett, 'The Making of Party Policy' in Seldon and Ball, eds, The Conservative Century, pp. 347-82, at p. 355.
113. William T. Morgan, 'The British Elections of December 1923', American Political Science Review, 18 (1924), 331-40, p. 333.
114. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 261.
115. Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, 'Effective Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to West Europe', Comparative Political Studies, 12 (1979), 3-27.
116. Morgan, 'The British Elections of December 1923', pp. 335-6.
117. McLean, Rational Choice in British Politics, p. 92. If a party has a Bz of 1.00 it has total power in the assembly (i.e., a majority over all other parties), an index of 0.00 means it has no power and cannot affect legislative outcomes by virtue of the votes it controls.
118. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, pp. 229-30.
119. Morgan, 'The British Elections of December 1923', p. 339.
120. David Jarvis, 'The Road to 1931: The Conservative Party and Realignment in Early Twentieth-Century Britain', Historical Journal, 36 (1995), 468-75.
121. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 275.
122. Morgan, 'The British Elections of December 1923', p. 340.
123. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 423.
124. Davidson, for example, condemned Liberal-Conservative collusion as 'dishonest' and depriving Labour of its constitutional rights was 'the first step down the road to revolution'. See Rhodes James, Memoirs of a Conservative, p. 181.
125. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, pp. 221 and 222.
126. Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p. 196.
127. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 407.
128. Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 111.
129. Riker, The Art of Manipulation, p. 34;
130. and Williamson, Baldwin, p. 173.
131. Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p. 265.
132. See Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, pp. 188-215, for a detailed account of the emergence of the New Conservatism.
133. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 233;
134. National Union Pamphlet 1924/154, Looking Ahead, p. 2;
135. the Archives of the British Conservative Party, Series One: Pamphlets and Leaflets Part 3, 1915-1925 (Brighton: Harvester Microfilm, 1986). Hereafter, NU PAM.
136. Barnes and Nicholson, Amery Diaries, p. 375;
137. Rhodes James, Memoirs of a Conservative, p. 191;
138. and Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 219.
139. Gill Bennett, 'A most extraordinary and mysterious business': The Zinoviev Letter of 1924, Historian's Notes No. 14, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, February 1999, is the most exhaustive exploration of this episode and the letter's likely origins as a White Russian émigré forgery.
140. Christopher Andrews, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Heinemann, 1985), pp. 302-13.
141. Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, pp. 275-6. The episode was also used by CCO to show the dangers of having an inexperienced and naïve government in office. This inspired the jingle, 'Bolshevik, Bolshevik where have you been? I've been over to England where the Reds are still green'.
142. McLean, Rational Choice, p. 193;
143. and Kevin Matthews, 'Stanley Baldwin's Irish Question', Historical Journal, 43 (2000), 1027-49, p. 1028.
144. Matthews, 'Stanley Baldwin's Irish Question', p. 1037.
145. Matthews, 'Stanley Baldwin's Irish Question', p. 1039.
146. NU PAM 1924/154. Looking Ahead, p. 2.
147. Matthews, 'Stanley Baldwin's Irish Question', p. 1048.
148. Mr Stanley Baldwin's Election Address [1924], in Craig, British General Election Manifestos, pp. 55-70.
149. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 213. For a contemporary account of the election,
150. see Elmer D. Graper, 'The British Election', American Political Science Review, 19 (1925), 84-96.
151. Stephens, 'Party Realignment in Britain, 1900-1925', p. 632.
152. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, p. 33.
153. Tom Jeffrey, 'Suburban Nation: Politics and Class in Lewisham', in David Feldman and Gareth Stedman-Jones, eds, Metropolis (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 189-216.
154. Christopher Cook, The Age of Alignment: Electoral Politics, 1922-1929 (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 170.
155. Trevor Wilson, ed., The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911-1928 (London: Collins, 1970), p. 450. Scott was editor of the Manchester Guardian between 1872 and 1929.
156. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 301.
157. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 200.
158. Self, The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 246.
159. See Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, pp. 129-30 for the importance of coherence and discipline.
160. Barnes and Nicholson, Amery Diaries, p. 361.
161. Wilson, Diaries of C. P. Scott, pp. 449 and 460. MacDonald's attitude was not an example of his snobbery but reflected the common strategic interest both he and Baldwin had in marginalizing the Liberals.
162. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 457.
163. See Riker, The Politics of Manipulation, p. 85, for strategic alliances.
164. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 214.
165. Philip Williamson, ed., The Modernisation of Conservative Politics: The Diaries and Letters of William Bridgeman, 1904-1935 (London: The Historian's Press, 1988), pp. 175-6. Willie Bridgeman, a committed tariff reformer, entered Parliament in 1906. Appointed a Whip in 1915 he moved to the Ministry of Labour in 1916, the Board of Trade in 1919, the Mines Department in August 1920, and was Home Secretary until October 1923. Politically close to Baldwin, who respected and valued his advice, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1924.
166. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 468.
167. Self, The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters, pp. 247-8.
168. NU PAM 1924/109, What A Party!
169. NU PAM 1924/28, Patient Oxen: A Record of Nine Months' Liberal Work at Westminster.
170. Self, The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 250;
171. Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, p. 210.
172. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 276.
173. NU PAM 1924/162, Looking Ahead, pp. 15-16.
174. George Tsebelis, Veto Players:How Political Institutions Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation/Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 2.
175. Bruce P. Lenman, The Eclipse of Parliament: Appearance and Reality in British Politics since 1914 (London: Edward Arnold, 1992), p. 137.
176. Rhodes James, Memoirs of a Conservative, pp. 177-8.
177. Harold Nicolson, King George V: His Life and Reign (London: Constable, 1952), p. 373.
178. Nicolson, George V, p. 380.
179. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 326.
180. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 239. The King offered to take responsibility if Baldwin insisted on immediate resignation but this would have dragged the monarchy openly into politics by identifying it with those who wished to keep Labour out at all costs (Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p. 241).
181. Williamson, The Modernisation of Conservative Politics, p. 170.
182. Middlemas, Whitehall Diary, p. 260.
183. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, pp. 332-40.
184. Rhodes James, Memoirs of a Conservative, p. 191.
185. Nicolson, George V, p. 403. The King had made similar comments to MacDonald in January 1924. Baldwin now had a majority of 151 over Labour and 223 overall and, like the King, Baldwin was concerned about the behaviour of the class warriors in the Conservative party. This anxiety was reflected in his frequent calls for tolerance and, most famously, his March 1925 speech against the Macquisten Bill which, in line with Conservative policy, sought to strike directly at the Labour party by restoring contracting-in to trade-union political funds
186. (Brendan Evans and Andrew Taylor, From Salisbury to Major: Continuity and Change in Conservative Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 37-8).
187. Barnes and Nicholson, Amery Diaries, p. 389.
188. Stephens, 'Party Realignment in Britain, 1900-1925', p. 58.
189. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, p. 423.
190. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 66.
191. Riker, The Strategy of Rhetoric, p. 261.
192. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, p. 356.
193. McLean, 'William H. Riker', pp. 556-7.