‘B.M.G. … “Baldwin (this time) must go!”’: The frustrations of Opposition, June 1929 – July 1931

Abstract

Although electoral defeat and loss of office can never be a welcome experience, in June 1929 the pain of Ansten Chamberlain's transition to the Opposition benches was temporarily alleviated by a sense of personal relief at his continued presence in the House of Commons at all. After the 1924 election he had confessed that the position in his West Birmingham constituency made him ‘very anxious’. Predicting that ‘it will be a suffer fight next time’ he had thus resolved to ‘try somehow to see more of them’. Four and a half years at the Foreign Office did nothing to help him redeem that pledge. By 1929 Chamberlain confronted not only an increasingly difficult situation in West Birmingham where the slums and poverty had given him cause to wonder at a Conservative victory in the past, but also the general electoral disillusion with the Baldwin's government's promise of ‘Safety First’ and their failure to revive the economy. Although never an active or particularly diligent constituency MP, in 1929 Chamberlain almost fell victim to a more general decline in Conservative support within the West Midlands. Since 1886 the Conservatives had never lost more than one Birmingham seat. In 1929 Labour were in confident mood and took no less than six of the twelve seats. After the canvass returns, Chamberlain had warned his family to expect defeat and during the two counts he confessed himself to be ‘in a very philosophic mood’. In the event, he scraped in by just 43 votes in a seat held continuously by a Chamberlain for almost half a century.