Minister of Defence (United Kingdom) Minister of Defence (United Kingdom) The post of Minister of Defence was responsible for co-ordination of defence and security from its creation in 1940 until its abolition in 1964. The post was a Cabinet-level post and generally ranked above the three service ministers, some of whom, however, continued to also serve in Cabinet. Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, concerns about British forces being understrength led in 1936 to the creation of the post of Minister for Coordination of Defence by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. The post was abolished by Baldwin's successor Neville Chamberlain in April 1940.
Monica Baldwin supplementary note in issue 50, April 2011. Monica Baldwin Monica Baldwin (1893–1975) was a British writer, a niece of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who was a canoness regular for 28 years. After leaving her enclosed Order, she wrote of her experiences in a series of books which received a widespread audience at the time, giving the first direct account of life in a Religious Order, from a former member, in that period. Baldwin joined an enclosed monastery of Augustinian canonesses in 1914, a few months before the beginning of World War I. Ten years later she began to think