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Portrait of Neville Chamberlain

Prime Ministers · 20th century

Neville Chamberlain

1869–1940 · British

Conservative

In office: 1937–1940

Neville Chamberlain, son of Joseph Chamberlain and a former Lord Mayor of Birmingham, was a reforming Minister of Health and Chancellor before becoming Conservative prime minister in 1937. He is remembered chiefly for appeasement and the Munich Agreement of 1938, after which he promised "peace for our time". He declared war on Germany in September 1939 but resigned in May 1940 after the Norway Debate and died of cancer that November.

How to spot them

  • ▸Appeasement; the Munich Agreement; 'peace for our time'
  • ▸Waving a piece of paper at Heston aerodrome; the umbrella
  • ▸Son of Joseph Chamberlain, half-brother of Austen
  • ▸Former Lord Mayor of Birmingham; failed sisal plantation in the Bahamas
  • ▸Norway Debate and 'In the name of God, go' (1940)

In office

The Munich Agreement ceding the Sudetenland to Germany (1938)

Signed with Hitler, Mussolini and Daladier on 30 September 1938

'Peace for our time' speech from a Downing Street window (1938)

Delivered on returning from Munich

'A quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing' (1938)

Radio broadcast on the Czechoslovak crisis, 27 September 1938

Return of the 'Treaty Ports' to Ireland (1938)

Part of the Anglo-Irish agreements with de Valera

Holidays with Pay Act (1938)

Encouraged paid annual holidays, boosting holiday camps

British guarantee of Polish independence (1939)

Given in March 1939 after Germany occupied Prague

Broadcast announcing 'this country is at war with Germany' (1939)

Radio address on 3 September 1939

Key ideas

  • Appeasement: settling German grievances by negotiation to avoid a second world war, while rearming
  • Efficient municipal and social reform, e.g. the Local Government Act 1929 as Minister of Health

Quick-fire facts

  • •Managed a sisal plantation on Andros in the Bahamas in the 1890s; the venture failed
  • •Lord Mayor of Birmingham 1915–16
  • •Director of National Service under Lloyd George in 1917, resigning within a year
  • •As Chancellor he introduced general import tariffs (Import Duties Act 1932)
  • •Flew to meet Hitler at Berchtesgaden and Bad Godesberg in September 1938
  • •Resigned as PM on 10 May 1940 but served in Churchill's War Cabinet until October
  • •Died on 9 November 1940 at Heckfield, Hampshire

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources