Oliver Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley

Who was Oliver Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley?

Oliver Ridsdale Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, known as Viscount Corvedale from 1937 to 1947, was a British politician who had a quixotic career at political odds to his father, three-time Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. He is also a first cousin once removed of author Rudyard Kipling.

Baldwin was educated at Eton College, and grew up in the shadow of his father's political career. He joined the Irish Guards on 30 July 1917 and served in France through the remainder of World War I. After the war he travelled extensively and worked as a journalist and travel writer. He was in Armenia with the job of an infantry instructor. There the Bolsheviks imprisoned him for two months and later he was imprisoned by the Turks for a further grim five months. Despite his Conservative family, he gradually grew to adopt left-wing views and eventually announced that he was a Marxist and joined the Labour Party. He frequently addressed crowds from a socialist platform at Hyde Park Corner.

At the 1924 elections Baldwin contested the seat of Dudley for Labour. By this time his father was leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, and his candidacy naturally attracted press comment. At the 1929 election he won Dudley, and served as a backbench member of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government, facing his defeated father across the House.