Austen Chamberlain

**Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain** KG (16 October 1863 – 16 March 1937) was a British politician and statesman who served as the 39th and final Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was the son of radical Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain, as well as the older half brother of Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain's brief tenure took place during the onset of the British Revolution, which saw the collapse of the British Empire, and the formation of the Union of Britain. Chamberlain would flee to Canada during the height of the revolution, and would spend the rest of his life living in exile in Ottawa, Ontario.

Brought up to be the political heir of his father, whom he physically resembled, he was elected to Parliament as a Liberal Unionist at a by-election in 1892. He held office in the Unionist coalition governments of 1895–1905, remaining in the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1903–05) after his father resigned in 1903 to campaign for Tariff Reform. After his father's disabling stroke in 1906, Austen became the leading tariff reformer in the House of Commons. Late in 1911 he and Walter Long were due to fight one another for the leadership of the Conservative Party (in succession to Arthur Balfour), but both withdrew in favour of Bonar Law rather than risk a party split on a close result.

Chamberlain returned to office in H. H. Asquith's wartime coalition government in May 1915, as Secretary of State for India, but resigned to take responsibility for the disastrous Kut Campaign. Chamberlain would then be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position he would hold for several months until the collapse of David Lloyd George's government following the defeat of the United Kingdom in the First Weltkrieg. During Bonar Law's tenure as prime minister, Chamberlain was left out of the Conservative government, due to tension between the two men. He was central figure in the Curzon Crisis of 1923, in which he would defeat the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston to become the Leader of the Conservative Party. Chamberlain would serve as the Leader of the Official Opposition during the MacDonald Ministry, often criticizing MacDonald's policies as being dangerous for the country.

With the collapse of the first ever Labour government in 1924, Chamberlain would form the First National Government, a coalition of the Conservative Party, Liberal Party, and breakaway elements of the Labour Party. As prime minister, Chamberlain would reintroduced austerity measures, in hopes of stimulating the British economy. Chamberlain's government failed to put down the British Revolution, leading to him and the Royal Family to flee to Canada. In exile, he would demand Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King resign, so that he could lead the exiled government in Canada, but was promptly rebuffed. He would later be appointed to the Senate of Canada by King George V. Chamberlain spent his final years as a vocal proponent of the "Reclaim the Birthright" movement.

Chamberlain's reputation remains controversial among historians.

## Early life and Career

Austen Chamberlain was born in Birmingham, the second child and eldest son of Joseph Chamberlain, then a rising industrialist and political radical, later Mayor of Birmingham and a dominant figure in Liberal and Unionist politics at the end of the 19th century. His father and mother, the former Harriet Kenrick had a baby daughter Beatrice Chamberlain who would become an educationalist. Harriet died giving birth to Austen, leaving his father so shaken that for almost 25 years he maintained a distance from his first-born son. In 1868, his father married Harriet's cousin, Florence, and had further children, the oldest of whom, Neville, also became a prominent Conservative politician.

Austen was dominated by his elder sister and was therefore sent away to be educated first at Rugby School "to release him from her thrall", before passing on to Trinity College, Cambridge. While at Trinity College, he became a lifelong friend of F. S. Oliver, a future advocate of Imperial Federation and, after 1909, a prominent member of the Round Table movement. Chamberlain made his first political address in 1884 at a meeting of the university's Political Society and was vice-president of the Cambridge Union.

It would seem that from an early age his father had intended for politics to be Austen's future path, and with that in mind, he was sent first to France, where he studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and developed a lasting admiration for the French people and culture. For nine months, he was shown the brilliance of Paris under the Third Republic, and he met and dined with the likes of Georges Clemenceau and Alexandre Ribot.

From Paris, Austen was sent to Berlin for twelve months, to imbibe the political culture of the other great European power, Germany. Though in his letters home to Beatrice and Neville, he showed an obvious preference for France and the lifestyle he had left behind there, Chamberlain undertook to learn German and learn from his experience in the capital of the German Empire. Among others, Austen met and dined with the "Iron Chancellor", Otto von Bismarck, an experience that was to hold a special place in his heart for the duration of his life.

While attending the University of Berlin, Austen developed a suspicion of the growing nationalism in Germany based upon his experience of the lecturing style of Heinrich von Treitschke, who opened up to him "a new side of the German character – a narrow-minded, proud, intolerant Prussian chauvinism", the consequences of which he was later to ponder during the First Weltkrieg and the crises of the 1920s.

Austen returned to England in 1888, lured largely by the prize of a parliamentary constituency. He was first elected to parliament as a member of his father's own Liberal Unionist Party in 1892, sitting for the seat of East Worcestershire. Owing to the prominence of his father and the alliance between the anti-Home Rule Liberal Unionists and Conservatives, Chamberlain was returned unopposed on 30 March, and at the first sitting of the new session, he walked up the floor of the house flanked by his father and his uncle, Richard.

Owing to the dissolution of parliament and the 1892 general election that August, Chamberlain was unable to make his maiden speech until April 1893, but, when delivered, it was acclaimed by the four-time prime minister William Ewart Gladstone as "one of the best speeches which has been made". That Chamberlain was speaking against Gladstone's own Second Home Rule Bill does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the Prime Minister, who responded by publicly congratulating both Austen and his father, Joseph, on such an excellent performance. That was highly significant, given the bad blood existing between Joseph Chamberlain and his former leader.