‘These are not really my proper jobs’: Searching for a role, January 1932 – April 1933

Abstract

Participation in the first brief National Government had disabused Chamberlain of many of his fondest illusions. Before the crisis he believed he still had a uniquely valuable role to play in foreign affairs and that others recognised such a claim to the Foreign Office. He also believed his voice carried considerable weight in party councils. The crisis and its aftermath appeared to suggest that this was not so. Or at least, it showed him that Baldwin and MacDonald had other ideas. While not entirely the same thing, such a realisation hurt him more rather than less. By the time the initial crisis had passed, Chamberlain had come to recognise that his ministerial career was at an end. Secure in a seat he intended to hold for only one more Parliament, he felt he could now ‘sing [his] Nunc Dimittis politically’. Many felt that this spelt the end of Chamberlain's political influence as well as his ministerial career. Even before the 1929 election, critics like Amery had believed that his proper role was as ‘the obvious successor to Balfour as principal Elder Statesman in a non-administrative office’ Certainly Chamberlain gave every outward appearance of being more rooted firmly in the parliaments of the late nineteenth than in the twentieth century. In his dress, manner and parliamentary conduct he seemed to many observers to be a charming anachronism. Yet such appearances were deceptive. For the next eighteen months Chamberlain was plunged into the depths of depression as he sought to accommodate himself to these new circumstances and to find a new role for himself — or even to discover whether there still remained a useful role for him to fulfil.