Should we build statue for ‘appeaser’ Chamberlain?
> Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was born and bred in Birmingham
NEXT year marks the 80th anniversary of the death of one of the UK's most famous Prime Ministers – Birmingham's own Neville Chamberlain.
Chamberlain was the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston when he died in November 1940, six months after he resigned as Prime Minister.
But there are no statues celebrating his connection to the city. The only city memorial is a blue plaque in Westbourne Road, Edgbaston, where he lived from 1911 onwards (he grew up in nearby Augustus Road before the family moved to Highbury Hall in Moseley).
The reason for this is obvious. Chamberlain doesn't have a good reputation.
In the popular imagination, he's seen as the Prime Minister who failed to stand up to Hitler and the Nazis, pursing instead a policy of appeasement.
It was Winston Churchill who recognised the threat posed by Nazi Germany and eventually, after replacing Chamberlain as Prime Minister, led the nation to victory.
Is it possible that Birmingham is a little ashamed of Neville Chamberlain? Or, at least, would it be fair to say we don't feel proud of him?
If so, perhaps that should change. Not every historian takes an unfavourable view of Neville Chamberlain. There's a case to be made that he deserves more credit than he often receives.
It was Chamberlain, after all, who actually took this country into war with Nazi Germany. He warned
Hitler that the UK would fight if Germany invaded Poland, and when the time came he was as good as his word.
Many of us will be familiar with the famous broadcast telling the nation that we were at war: “This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.
“I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany."
The voice on the radio, of course, was that of Neville Chamberlain, not Winston Churchill.
In fact, Chamberlain led the country for the first seven months of
the war. He was forced out as Prime Minister, not because he refused to fight Hitler but because of the failure of a military campaign to occupy part of Norway, which was instead invaded by Germany.
He was replaced, of course, by Winston Churchill, and perhaps that's something we should all be grateful for. None of this is meant to denigrate Churchill or downplay his contribution to the defeat of Nazi tyranny. But while Churchill gets the credit he deserves, perhaps Chamberlain doesn't get enough.
Nothing I have set out here is a secret. It should all be familiar to anyone who studied the Second World War for a history GCSE or O-level, which I imagine is a large portion of the population.
Despite that, the popular image is rather different.
Of course, this is only part of Chamberlain's story. Before he took us to war, he followed a policy of appeasement – allowing Hitler to take much of what he wanted, in the hope of convincing the Nazis that there was no need for conflict.
Hence, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Chamberlain told the House of Commons there was nothing they could do to stop it.
In September of that year, Chamberlain (and the French prime minister) agreed to allow Germany to annex the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a largely German-speaking population. Czechoslovakia had no say in the matter, and the decision not to defend it against German aggression swiftly led to the break-up of the entire country.
The deal is known as the Munich Agreement, because that's where talks took place, and Chamberlain returned to the UK with a peace treaty signed by Adolf Hitler, declaring “peace in our time”.
Today, it is seen as such a disastrous and shameful decision that the word “Munich”, used in any discussion about diplomacy or foreign affairs, has come to mean betrayal of the highest order.
It wasn't seen like that at the time. Chamberlain was cheered when he returned to the UK. It was only 20 years since the horrors of the First World War came to an end, and many British people wanted to avoid another terrible war. Today, most of us understandably like to think that we would have agreed with Churchill, who spoke out against the pact.
But Chamberlain didn't rely on Hitler's goodwill. Even before Munich he was pursuing a policy of rearmament, increasing spending on the RAF in particular. He was attacked in Parliament for pushing up the nation's defence spending, with critics accusing him of engaging in an arms race with Germany.
Some historians say Chamberlain deserves far more credit than he receives, for preparing the UK for war and for ensuring war was delayed until we were ready to fight it. Others take a very different view.
I'm in no position to say which of them are right, and I'm not attempting to convince anyone Chamberlain was a great Prime Minister. But there is a defence to be made of him. He's more than the cartoon character – the fool, the coward or even the collaborator – of popular imagination.
He's never going to be Birmingham's great hero, but he is a part of our city's history, representing a Birmingham constituency (initially Ladywood) from 1918 until his death.
Is there not a case for some sort of memorial?
There is a defence to be made of him. He’s more than the cartoon character of popular imagination.