Home failed in his first attempt, but was elected as a Conservative member from Lanarkshire in 1931. He felt that the Conservative Party would do more to end unemployment in Scotland than the Liberals. Britain, as well as the rest of the world, was locked in the grip of the Great Depression. After Home was returned to Parliament in 1935, he became first private secretary to ministers handling labor and Scottish questions. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked Home to serve as his parliamentary private secretary in 1937. When Chamberlain replaced Stanley Baldwin as prime minister, Home was privy to the events leading to World War II. Although he did not make policy, Home was at Chamberlain's side at the Munich conference of 1938 when he agreed to the partition of Czechoslovakia in exchange for a guarantee of no further territorial claims from the German government of Adolf Hitler. Germany soon broke the agreement and seized the Sudentenland, causing an angry reaction from the British public.
Chamberlain's policy of appeasement had failed and the British people turned against him. Home was a casualty of this failed policy and his career appeared to be over.
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