When Bonar Law retired through illness in May 1923, Baldwin became Prime Minister. In Andrew Bonar Law’s Conservative government he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1921 he entered the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, but in October 1922 he played a leading part in a Conservative rebellion that overthrew the coalition government and the premiership of Lloyd George. He himself gave a fifth of his own wealth. Concerned at the financial costs of the war, under the false name of ‘FST’ in a 1919 letter in The Times he appealed for voluntary donations by the rich to help reduce the war debt. His business experience helped his appointment as Financial Secretary of the Treasury in 1917, in David Lloyd George’s wartime coalition government.
On Alfred’s death in 1908, Stanley succeeded him as MP. His father, Alfred Baldwin, was also Conservative MP for West Worcestershire (Bewdley) from 1892. His mother’s family had artistic and literary interests: his uncles included the artists Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, and Rudyard Kipling was a cousin. His father’s family were wealthy industrialists and he helped his father create what was, from 1902, one of Britain’s largest iron and steel firms, Baldwins Ltd. Stanley Baldwin had a double inheritance.
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