Chamberlain deserves a memorial or two
SIR – Neville Chamberlain died 80 years ago today. The erection of a plaque at Birmingham City Council where, as Lord Mayor in the First World War he pioneered urban planning and health services for all, was postponed by the current crisis.
The finest administrator of his time, he worked round the clock until weeks before his death running the home front so that Churchill, his successor as prime minister in May 1940, could concentrate on the war.
Churchill had hoped they would “go on together through the storm”.
Bitter arguments of the Thirties over Chamberlain’s quest for a settlement with Hitler had been replaced by a wartime partnership. Chamberlain’s unprecedented expenditure as prime minister on defence, rising to nearly 50 per cent of GNP, made possible Churchill’s war to destroy Hitler.
Before 1940, Churchill urged pouring money into building bombers. Chamberlain backed the fighter aircraft that won the Battle of Britain just before his death.
Unfounded attacks on his foreign policy as nothing but “appeasement” have cast his work as an architect of the welfare state into oblivion. He prepared the way for “the whole nation being brought under medical care” through the NHS.
In the Commons he was unchallenged as master of the latest medical research, expounded simply, without a note. Could we not do with someone like that today? Lord Lexden
London SW1
SIR – Chamberlain was a great field naturalist, the only prime minister to have a species named after him, Chamberlain’s Yellow Butterfly. He championed conservation, helping to set up the Wildlife Trusts and the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
In the run-up to war he went birdwatching nearly every day in St James’s Park and put up bird boxes at No 10 and Chequers.
We believe a memorial to his conservation legacy should be erected in St James’s Park. Craig Bennett
Chief Executive, Wildlife Trusts James Lloyd
Neville Chamberlain’s grandson Nicholas Milton
Author, Neville Chamberlain’s Legacy Chris Packham
Naturalist and broadcaster
Crispin Truman
Chief Executive, CPRE