Editing Stanley Baldwin (section)

==Retirement==
[[File:Stanley Baldwin, wife and daughter LCCN2014715581.jpg|thumb|Baldwin photographed by the American press on board a ship, with his wife and daughter]]
{{Toryism |expanded=people}}

===Leaving office and peerage===
Following the [[coronation of George VI]], Baldwin announced on 27 May 1937 that he would resign the premiership the next day. His last act as prime minister was to raise the salaries of MPs from £400 a year to £600 and to give the [[Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom)|leader of the Opposition]] a salary. That was the first rise in MPs' wages since their introduction in 1911, and it particularly benefited Labour MPs. [[Harold Nicolson]] wrote in his diary that it "was done with Baldwin's usual consummate taste. No man has ever left in such a blaze of affection".<ref>Nicolson, p. 301.</ref> Baldwin was appointed a [[Knight of the Garter|Knight Companion of the Garter]] (KG) on 28 May<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=34403|date=1 June 1937|page=3508}}</ref> and ennobled as '''[[Earl Baldwin of Bewdley]]''' and '''Viscount Corvedale''', ''of [[Corvedale]] in the County of Salop''<!--sic--> on 8 June.<ref name="Stuart_Ball"/><ref>{{London Gazette|issue=34405|date=8 June 1937|page=3663}}</ref> In a BBC radio broadcast transmitted on 8 December 1938, Baldwin made a nationwide appeal for funds to help Jewish and other refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany.<ref>The Times 9 December 1938</ref> For this, Baldwin was dubbed a "guttersnipe" by a Berlin newspaper.<ref>TIME 26 December 1938</ref> The "Lord Baldwin Fund for Refugees", helping the kindertransport and other relief schemes, raised over £500,000, equivalent to £36,000,000 in 2022.<ref>The Times 29 July 1939</ref>

===Attitude to appeasement===
Baldwin supported the [[Munich Agreement]] and said to Chamberlain on 26 September 1938: "If you can secure peace, you may be cursed by a lot of hotheads but my word you will be blessed in Europe and by future generations".<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1045.</ref> Baldwin made a rare speech in the House of Lords on 4 October and said that he could not have gone to Munich but praised Chamberlain's courage. He also said the responsibility of a prime minister was not to commit a country to war until he was sure that it was ready to fight. If there was a 95% chance of war in the future, he would still choose peace. He also said he would put industry on a war footing the next day, as the opposition to such a move had disappeared.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1046.</ref> Churchill said in a speech: "He says he would mobilise tomorrow. I think it would have been much better if Earl Baldwin had said that two and a half years ago when everyone demanded a Ministry of Supply".<ref>Cato, ''Guilty Men'' (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1940), p. 84.</ref>

Two weeks after Munich, Baldwin said prophetically in a conversation with [[Victor Montagu|Lord Hinchingbrooke]]: "Can't we turn Hitler East? [[Napoleon]] [[French invasion of Russia|broke himself against the Russians]]. Hitler might [[Eastern Front (World War II)|do the same]]".<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1047.</ref>

Baldwin's years in retirement were quiet. After Chamberlain's death in 1940, Baldwin's perceived part in prewar [[appeasement]] made him an unpopular figure during and after [[World War II]].<ref name="Middlemas4">Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1055.</ref> With a succession of British military failures in 1940, Baldwin started to receive critical letters: "insidious to begin with, then increasingly violent and abusive; then the newspapers; finally the polemicists who, with time and wit at their disposal, could debate at leisure how to wound the deepest".<ref name="Middlemas4"/> He did not have a secretary and so was not shielded from the often-unpleasant letters that were sent to him.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1054, p. 1057.</ref> After a bitterly critical letter was sent to him by a member of the public, Baldwin wrote: "I can understand his bitterness. He wants a scapegoat and the men provided him with one". His biographers Middlemas and Barnes claim that "the men" almost certainly meant the authors of ''[[Guilty Men]]''.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1058 and note 1.</ref>

===Letter to Lord Halifax===
After Lord Halifax made a speech on the strength of prayer as the instrument that could be invoked by the humblest to use in their country's service, Baldwin wrote to him on 23 July 1940:

<blockquote>With millions of others I had prayed hard at the time of [[Dunkirk evacuation|Dunkirk]] and never did prayer seem to be more speedily answered to the full. And we prayed for France and the next day she surrendered. I thought much, and when I went to bed I lay for a long time vividly awake. And I went over in my mind what had happened, concentrating on the thoughts that you had dwelt on, that prayer to be effective must be in accordance with God's will, and that by far the hardest thing to say from the heart and indeed the last lesson we learn (if we ever do) is to say and mean it, 'Thy will be done.' And I thought what mites we all are and how we can never see God's plan, a plan on such a scale that it ''must'' be incomprehensible. And suddenly for what must have been a couple of minutes I seemed to see with extraordinary and vivid clarity and to hear someone speaking to me. The words at the time were clear, but the recollection of them had passed when I seemed to come to, as it were, but the sense remained, and the sense was this. 'You cannot see the plan'; then 'Have you not thought there is a purpose in stripping you one by one of all the human props on which you depend, that you are being left alone in the world? You have now one upon whom to lean and I have chosen you as my instrument to work with my will. Why then are you afraid?' And to prove ourselves worthy of that tremendous task is our job.<ref>The Earl of Halifax, ''Fulness of Days'' (London: Collins, 1957), p. 225.</ref></blockquote>

===Iron gates criticism===
In September 1941, Baldwin's old enemy, Lord Beaverbrook, asked all local authorities to survey their area's iron and steel railings and gates that could be used for the war effort. Owners of such materials could appeal for an exemption on grounds of artistic or historic merit, which would be decided by a panel set up by local authorities. Baldwin applied for exemption for the iron gates of his country home on artistic grounds and his local council sent an architect to assess them. In December, the architect advised for them to be exempt, but in February 1942, the Ministry of Supply overruled that and said all his gates must go except the ones at the main entrance.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, pp. 1059–60.</ref> A newspaper campaign hounded him for not donating the gates to war production. The ''[[Daily Mirror]]'' columnist ''[[William Connor|Cassandra]]'' denounced Baldwin:

<blockquote>Here was the country in deadly peril with half the Empire swinging in the wind like a busted barn door hanging on one hinge. Here was Old England half smothered in a shroud crying for steel to cut her way out, and right in the heart of beautiful Worcestershire was a one-time Prime Minister, refusing to give up the gates of his estate to make guns for our defence – and his. Here was an old stupid politician who had tricked the nation into complacency about rearmament for fear of losing an election.... Here is the very shrine of stupidity.... This National Park of Failure....<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, pp. 1056–7.</ref></blockquote>

There were fears that if the gates were not taken by the proper authorities, "others without authority might".<ref>Baldwin, ''My Father: The True Story'', p. 321.</ref> Thus, months before any other collections were made, Baldwin's gates were removed except for those at the main entrance. Two of Beaverbrook's friends after the war claimed that it was Beaverbrook's decision despite Churchill saying, "Lay off Baldwin's gates".<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1061.</ref> At [[Question Time]] in the House of Commons, Conservative MP Captain [[Alan Crosland Graham|Alan Graham]] said: "Is the honourable Member aware that it is very necessary to leave Lord Baldwin his gates in order to protect him from the just indignation of the mob?"<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1060.</ref>

===Comments on politics===
During the war, Churchill consulted him only once, in February 1943, on the advisability of his speaking out strongly against the continued neutrality of [[Éamon de Valera]]'s [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]]. Baldwin saw the draft of Churchill's speech and advised against it, which Churchill followed.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, pp. 1065–6.</ref> A few months after this visit to Churchill, Baldwin told Harold Nicolson, "I went into Downing Street.... a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that he is still not quite out of things. But it was also pure patriotic joy that my country at such a time should have found such a leader. The furnace of the war has smeltered out all base metals from him".<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1065.</ref> To D. H. Barber, Baldwin wrote of Churchill: "You can take it from me he is a really big man, the War has brought out the best that was in him. His head isn't turned the least little bit by the great position he occupies in the eyes of the world. I pray he is spared to see us through".<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 066.</ref>

In private, Baldwin defended his conduct in the 1930s:

<blockquote>the critics have no historical sense. I have no Cabinet papers by me and do not want to trust my memory. But recall the Fulham election, the peace ballot, Singapore, sanctions, Malta. The English will only learn by example. When I first heard of Hitler, when Ribbentrop came to see me, I thought they were all crazy. I think I brought Ramsay and Simon to meet Ribbentrop. Remember that Ramsay's health was breaking up in the last two years. He had lost his nerve in the House in the last year. I had to take all the important speeches. The moment he went, I prepared for a general election and got a bigger majority for rearmament. No power on earth could have got rearmament without a general election except by a big split. Simon was inefficient. I had to lead the House, keep the machine together with those Labour fellows.<ref name="Middlemas5">Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1063.</ref></blockquote>

In December 1944, strongly advised by friends, Baldwin decided to respond to criticisms of him through a biographer. He asked [[G. M. Young]], who accepted, and asked Churchill to grant permission to Young to see Cabinet papers. Baldwin wrote:

<blockquote>I am the last person to complain of fair criticism, but when one book after another appears and I am compared, for example, to [[Pierre Laval|Laval]], my gorge rises; but I am crippled and cannot go and examine the files of the Cabinet Office. Could G. M. Young go on my behalf?<ref name="Middlemas5"/></blockquote>