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Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on three separate occasions.

Born in 1867 at Bewdley in Worcestershire he was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, and went into the family business. He became a Conservative MP in 1906, and was appointed president of the Board of Trade in 1921. The unexpected illness and death from cancer of Andrew Bonar Law resulted in Baldwin being selected to replace him as prime minister in 1923, but his government lasted only months.

After a brief interlude in which Britain's first-ever Labour government came to power, Baldwin regained his position as prime minister in the following year, and retained it until 1929. This period included the General Strike of 1926, a crisis which the government managed to weather, despite the havoc it caused nationally. In 1931 he and the Conservatives entered into a coalition with Labour Party Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. This decision led to MacDonald's expulsion from his own party, and Baldwin, as Lord President of the Council became de facto Prime Minister for the increasingly senile MacDonald over the next four years, when he, once again, became Prime Minister. During his third term of office, in 1935-1937, his foreign policy was much criticised, and he also faced the problem of the abdication of King Edward VIII. In the face of the growing Nazi threat to Europe, he resigned and was created Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. He died in 1947.

Stanley Baldwin's First Government, May 1923 - January 1924

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Stanley Baldwin's Second Cabinet, November 1924 - June 1929

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Stanley Baldwin's Third Cabinet, May 1935 - May 1937

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