II.

National Reforms

Chamberlain was elected to Parliament in 1918 as Conservative MP for Birmingham Ladywood, a seat he represented until 1929 when he was returned for Birmingham Edgbaston. He refused to serve in Lloyd George’s coalition government but in 1922 he served as postmaster general under Bonar Law and in 1924 Stanley Baldwin appointed him minister of health. An efficient administrator, he was responsible for the abolition of the Poor Law, promoted the building of council housing, and passed the Local Government Act of 1929, which rationalized local government finance. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the National government headed by Ramsay MacDonald from 1931, he maintained the orthodox economic policies of low interest rates and easy credit that began to allow the British economy to recover during the Great Depression, and he reorganized unemployment assistance.