Rise of Neville Chamberlain the job, with responsibility for co-ordinating conscription and ensuring that essential war industries were able to function with sufficient workforces. Though reluctant to leave his post in Birmingham, Chamberlain accepted and resigned as Lord Mayor. To a great extent Chamberlain's actual responsibilities were left vague by Lloyd George. On his appointment Lloyd George implied in the House of Commons that "compulsion" (the industrial equivalent of conscription) was to be extended to industry and that Chamberlain would soon produce a system of industrial enrolment. But Chamberlain found his work to be handicapped by the Prime Minister's political manoeuvres. As Chamberlain sought
Rise of Neville Chamberlain pleasing and appropriate that Chamberlain could now promote his father's policies, and Sir Austen Chamberlain wrote to his brother in November 1931, "Father's great work will be completed in his children." The tariff issue bitterly divided the Cabinet, and threatened to end the National Government. The Cabinet accepted a proposal by Lord Hailsham, Secretary of State for War, that they agree publicly to disagree, a rare suspension of the doctrine of Cabinet collective responsibility. Chamberlain prepared his tariff bill, which exempted the Dominions pending the Ottawa Conference, set for later that year. On 4 February 1932, he laid it before