Hugh Dalton
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs | |
---|---|
In office 11 June 1929 – 3 September 1931 | |
Prime Minister | Ramsay MacDonald |
Preceded by | Anthony Eden |
Succeeded by | James Stanhope |
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal | |
In office 28 January 1960 – 13 February 1962 Life Peerage | |
Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland | |
In office 14 November 1935 – 18 September 1959 | |
Preceded by | Aaron Curry |
Succeeded by | James Boyden |
In office 30 May 1929 – 7 October 1931 | |
Preceded by | Ruth Dalton |
Succeeded by | Aaron Curry |
Member of Parliament for Peckham | |
In office 29 October 1924 – 10 May 1929 | |
Preceded by | Collingwood Hughes |
Succeeded by | John Beckett |
Personal details | |
Born | Neath, Wales | 26 August 1887
Died | 13 February 1962 | (aged 74)
Political party | Labour |
Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge, London School of Economics |
Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, Baron Dalton,
His biographer Ben Pimlott characterised Dalton as peevish, irascible, given to poor judgment and lacking administrative talent.[2] Pimlott also recognised that Dalton was a genuine radical and an inspired politician; a man, to quote his old friend and critic John Freeman, "of feeling, humanity, and unshakeable loyalty to people which matched his talent."[3]
Early life
Hugh Dalton was born in Neath in South Wales. His father, John Neale Dalton, was a Church of England clergyman who became chaplain to Queen Victoria, tutor to the princes George (later King George V) and Albert Victor, and a canon of Windsor.
Dalton was educated at
He went on to study at the
There have been suggestions that he was homosexual, but they are rejected by his major biographer Ben Pimlott, who states "no evidence exists that Dalton ever had a sexual relationship with another man, and his private life seems to have been one of blameless monogamy."[6] However he does refer to Dalton having "homosexual tendencies", mentioned below.
Political career
Dalton stood unsuccessfully for Parliament four times: at the 1922 Cambridge by-election, in Maidstone at the 1922 general election, in Cardiff East at the 1923 general election, and the 1924 Holland with Boston by-election, before entering Parliament for Peckham at the 1924 general election.
At the 1929 general election, he succeeded his wife Ruth Dalton, who retired, as Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Bishop Auckland. Widely respected for his intellectual achievements in economics, he rose in the Labour Party's ranks, with election in 1925 to the shadow cabinet and, with strong union backing, to the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC). He gained ministerial and foreign policy experience as Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in Ramsay MacDonald's second government, between 1929 and 1931. He lost this position when he, and most Labour leaders, rejected MacDonald's National Government. As with most other Labour MPs, he lost his seat in 1931; he was elected again in 1935.
Dalton published Practical Socialism for Britain, a bold and highly influential assessment of a future Labour government's policy options, in 1935. The book revived updated nuts-and-bolts Fabianism, which had been out of favour, and could be used to attack the more militant Left. His emphasis was on using the state as a national planning agency, an approach that appealed well beyond Labour.[7]
Foreign policy
Turning his attention to the looming crisis in Europe, he became the Labour Party's spokesman on foreign policy in Parliament. Pacifism had been a strong element in Labour Party (and other parties as well), but the Spanish Civil War changed that, as the Left moved to support arms for the Republican ("Loyalist") cause. However Dalton was not enthusiastic for the Labour party policy of wanting to intervene in the Spanish Civil War,[8] later stating:
I was far from enthusiastic for the slogan "arms for Spain" if this meant, as some of my friends eagerly did, that we were to supply arms which otherwise we should keep for ourselves, for I was much more conscious than most of my friends of the terrible insufficiency of British armaments against the German danger.[9]
His views were different from those of Attlee, later recalling that before the Second World War he believed:
as Germany and Italy were potential enemies of Britain and Franco was their ally, it was in Britain's interest that Franco should not win the Spanish Civil War. It was on this proposition rather than any extravagant eulogy of the Spanish Government that I based most of my public references to this most tragic struggle.[9]
Yet Dalton admitted he was wrong in this assessment of British interests, stating that "When the Germans overran France in 1940 and reached the Pyrenees, Franco was neutral, and with remarkable skill maintained his neutrality until the end of the war. Hitler respected this and never forced his way through Spain to attack Gibraltar or crossed the Straits into Morocco." and "Hitler would not have respected the neutrality of a Spanish Republican Government. If Franco had lost the Civil War, Hitler would have occupied Spain."[9]
Aided by union votes, Dalton moved the party from semi-pacifism to a policy of armed deterrence and rejection of appeasement. He was a bitter enemy of Prime Minister
Second World War
When war came, Chamberlain's position became untenable after many Conservative MPs refused to support him in the
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Appointment
After the unexpected Labour victory in the 1945 general election Dalton wished to become Foreign Secretary, but the job was instead given to Ernest Bevin. Dalton, with his skills in economics, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Alongside Bevin, Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison and Stafford Cripps, Dalton was one of the "Big Five" of the Labour government.[11]
In his biography of Attlee and Churchill, Leo McKinstry wrote: "Attlee had initially decided that two of the other most vital jobs, the Treasury and the Foreign Office, should be filled by Bevin and Dalton respectively. But the King had baulked at the idea of Dalton as Foreign Secretary, seeing him as untrustworthy and partisan. Similarly, the Foreign Office exerted pressure against Dalton, the outgoing Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden declaring that ‘it should be Bevin’."[12]
Economic policy
The
During the war, most overseas investments had been sold to fund the cost of its prosecution (the state thus losing the income from them), and Britain suffered severe balance of payments problems. The $3.75 billion 50-year American loan negotiated by John Maynard Keynes in 1946 (and the $1.25 billion loan from Canada) was soon exhausted. By 1947, rationing had to be tightened and the convertibility of the pound suspended. In the atmosphere of crisis, Morrison and Cripps intrigued to replace Attlee with Bevin as Prime Minister; Bevin refused to play along, and Attlee bought off Cripps by giving him Morrison's responsibilities for economic planning. Ironically, of the "Big Five" it was Dalton who ultimately fell victim to the events of that year.
Cheaper money—that is, low interest rates—was an important goal for Dalton during his Chancellorship. He wanted to avoid the high interest rates and unemployment experienced after the First World War, and to keep down the cost of nationalization. He gained support for this cheaper money policy from Keynes, as well as from officials of the Bank of England and the Treasury.[13]
Budget
Budgetary policy under Dalton was strongly progressive, as characterised by policies such as increased food subsidies, heavily subsidised rents to council house tenants, the lifting of restrictions on housebuilding, the financing of national assistance and family allowances, and extensive assistance to rural communities and Development Areas.[11] Dalton was also responsible for funding the introduction of Britain's universal family allowances scheme, doing so "with a song in my heart", as he later put it.[14][15]
In one of his budgets, Dalton significantly increased spending on education (which included £4 million for the universities and the provision of free school milk), £38 million for the start (from August 1946) of family allowances, and an additional £10 million for Development Areas. In addition, the National Land Fund was established. Harold Macmillan, who inherited Dalton's housing responsibilities, later acknowledged his debt to Dalton's championing of New Towns, and was grateful for the legacy of Dalton's Town Development Bill, which encouraged urban overfill schemes and the movement of industry out of cities.[7]
Food subsidies were maintained at high wartime levels in order to restrain living costs, while taxation structures were altered to benefit low-wage earners, with some 2.5 million workers taken out of the tax system altogether in Dalton's first two budgets. There were also increases in surtax and death duties, which were opposed by the Opposition. According to one historian, Dalton's policies as Chancellor reflected "an unprecedented emphasis by central government on the redistribution of income".[16]
Budget-leaking and resignation
Walking into the House of Commons to give the autumn 1947 budget speech, Dalton made an off-the-cuff remark to a journalist, telling him of some of the tax changes in the budget. The news was printed in the early edition of the evening papers before he had completed his speech, and whilst the stock market was still open. This was a scandal, and led to his resignation for leaking a budget secret.[17] He was succeeded by Stafford Cripps. Though initially implicated in the allegations that led to the Lynskey tribunal in 1948, he was ultimately exonerated officially, but his reputation suffered another blow.[18]
Return to cabinet
Dalton returned to the cabinet in 1948, as
Personal life
In 1914 Dalton married Ruth with whom he had a daughter who died in infancy in the early 1920s.[20]
Dalton's biographer, Ben Pimlott, suggests that Dalton had homosexual tendencies but concludes he never acted on them.[21] Michael Bloch, on the other hand, thinks that Dalton's love for Rupert Brooke, whom he met at Cambridge University's Fabian Society, went beyond the platonic, citing bike rides in the countryside and sleeping naked under the stars.[22]
In 1908, Dalton also made advances at
In 1951, Dalton wrote to Crossman: "Thinking of Tony, with all his youth and beauty and gaiety and charm... I weep. I am more fond of that young man than I can put into words."[24] According to Nicholas Davenport,[25] Dalton's unrequited feelings for Crosland became an embarrassing joke within the Labour Party.
Dalton's papers, including his diaries, are held at the LSE Library. His diaries have been digitised and are available on LSE's Digital Library.[26]
Awards
Dalton was president of the
Contributions in economics
Dalton substantially expanded
Following a suggestion by Pigou (1912, p. 24), Dalton proposed the condition that a transfer of income from a richer to a poorer person, so long as that transfer does not reverse the ranking of the two, will result in greater equity (Dalton, p. 351). This principle has come to be known as the Pigou–Dalton principle (see, e.g., Amartya Sen, 1973).
Dalton offered a theoretical proposition of a positive functional relationship between income and economic welfare, stating that economic welfare increases at an exponentially decreasing rate with increased income, leading to the conclusion that maximum social welfare is achievable only when all incomes are equal.[29]
Arms
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References
- ISSN 0707-5332.
- ISBN 9781579584269
- ^ Pimlott (1985), p. 639.
- ^ "LSE Archives".
- ^ Great Britain. Committee on Industry and Trade, Factors in industrial and commercial efficiency (London: HMSO, 1927), ii.
- ^ Pimlott (1985), p. 66.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32697. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Holroyd-Doveton, John (2013). Maxim Litvinov: A Biography. Woodland Publications. p. 378.
- ^ a b c Dalton, Hugh (1957). The Fateful Years; Memoirs 1931-1945. London: Frederick Muller. p. 97.
- ^ a b c d e f g Smetana 2008, p. 110.
- ^ ISBN 978-0192851505
- ^ Leo McKinstry 'Attlee and Churchill: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace' Atlantic Books, 2020, chapter 26.
- JSTOR 2596254.
- ^ Nicholas Timmins, The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State
- ^ Francis Beckett, Clem Attlee
- ^ Jefferys, Kevin The Attlee Governments 1945–1951
- ^ Pimlott (1985), pp. 524–48.
- ^ Pimlott (1985), pp. 558–64.
- ISBN 9781137029027.
- ISBN 9781860647437.
- ^ Pimlott (1985), p. 66
- ^ ISBN 978-1408704127.
- ^ Delaney, Paul (1987). The Neo-Pagans. Macmillan. pp. 49–50.
- ISBN 978-1408704127.
- ^ Davenport, Nicholas (1974). Memoirs of a City Radical. Weidenfeld. p. 171.
- ^ "Hugh Dalton's Diaries". LSE Digital Library. Retrieved 8 October 2021.
- ^ "No. 41942". The London Gazette. 29 January 1960. p. 764.
- ^ "LORD DALTON (Hansard, 3 February 1960)". api.parliament.uk.
- ^ Rogers, F. H. (2004). The Measurement and Decomposition of Achievement Equity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University.
- ^ "Life Peerages – D". www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk.
Cited sources
- Pimlott, Ben (1985). Hugh Dalton. Macmillan. ISBN 9780333412510.
- Smetana, Vít (2008). In the Shadow of Munich British Policy Towards Czechslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich Agreement (1938-1942). Prague: Charles University Press. ISBN 9788024613734.
Further reading
- Brady, Robert A. (1950). Crisis in Britain: Plans and Achievements of the Labour Government. University of California Press., detailed coverage of nationalisation, welfare state and planning
- Dell, Edmund. The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945–90 (HarperCollins, 1997) pp 15–93.
Primary sources
- Hugh Dalton With British Guns in Italy (1919)
- Hugh Dalton Call Back Yesterday: Memoirs – 1887–1931 (1953)
- Hugh Dalton The Fateful Years: Memoirs – 1931–1945 (1957)
- Hugh Dalton High Tide and After: Memoirs – 1945–1960 (1962)
References
- ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
- Dalton, H. The measurement of the inequality of incomes, Economic Journal, 30 (1920), pp. 348–461.
External links
Media related to Hugh Dalton at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by Hugh Dalton at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Hugh Dalton at Internet Archive
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Hugh Dalton
- "Archival material relating to Hugh Dalton". UK National Archives.
- Hugh Dalton's papers at LSE Archives
- Newspaper clippings about Hugh Dalton in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
- Portraits of Hugh Dalton at the National Portrait Gallery, London