1937 - 1940

Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) was the son of the tariff reform campaigner Joseph Chamberlain and the half-brother of Austen Chamberlain, the Conservative foreign Secretary. Elected to Parliament in 1918, he joined the Conservative government of Bonar Law in 1922, and by the following year was chancellor of the exchequer, a post he resumed under the national government of 1931, by which time he had become regarded as the natural successor to Baldwin. He finally obtained the Leadership on Baldwin's retirement in 1935. His attempts to neutralise the threat of Hitler's Germany in the Munich agreement of March 1938 were unsuccessful, and he was forced to declare war in September 1939. In May 1940 he resigned, having seen his support among his backbenchers ebbing fast in a famous debate on the Norwegian campaign. He died only a few months later.