text: Londonderry toed the British government's equivocal line on disarmament but opposed in Cabinet any moves that would risk the deterrent value of the Royal Air Force. He was thus attacked by Clement Attlee and the Labour Party and became a liability to the National Government. In the spring of 1935, he was removed from the Air Ministry but retained in the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. Combined with his role as a leading member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, he attracted the popular nickname of "Londonderry Herr".
  Contacts with Nazi Germany
  The sense of hurt Lord Londonderry felt at that and accusations that he had misled Baldwin about the strength of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe led him to seek to clear his reputation as a "warmonger" by engaging in amateur diplomacy. The British historian Richard Griffiths made a distinction between appeasers, a term that he reserved for government officials who believed in appeasement of the Axis states for a variety of reasons, many quite pragmatic, and the enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, which he described a group of individuals who acting on their own as private citizens sought better relations with the Third Reich, usually for ideological reasons.
  Griffiths defined Londonderry as an enthusiast for Nazi Germany, instead of an appeaser, by noting that after June 1935, Londonderry was speaking mostly for himself when he sought out the company of Nazi leaders. Londonderry joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, a society that sought to bring together elites from Britain and Germany with the aim of forging an Anglo-German alliance.