Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax
Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, KG, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, TD, PC (16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959), known as the Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and the Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a senior British Conservative politician of the 1930s. He held several senior ministerial posts during this time, most notably those of Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931 and of Foreign Secretary between 1938 and 1940. He was one of the architects of the policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1936–1938, working closely with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. However, after Kristallnacht (on 9–10 November 1938) and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 he was one of those who pushed for a new policy of attempting to deter further German aggression by promising to go to war to defend Poland.
"Lord Halifax" redirects here. For other holders of the title, see Marquess of Halifax and Earl of Halifax.
The Earl of Halifax
Winston Churchill
- Neville Chamberlain
- Winston Churchill
Anthony Eden
Stanley Baldwin
Neville Chamberlain
Ramsay MacDonald
Douglas Hogg, 1st Viscount Hailsham
Stanley Baldwin
Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry
- Stanley Baldwin
- Ramsay MacDonald
Stanley Baldwin
Bonar Law
Stanley Baldwin
Created Baron Irwin in 1925 (inherited his father's titles in 1934)
23 December 1959 (aged 78)
Garrowby, England
5, including Charles Wood, 2nd Earl of Halifax, and Richard Wood, Baron Holderness
On Chamberlain's resignation early in May 1940, Halifax effectively declined the position of prime minister as he felt that Winston Churchill would be a more suitable war leader (Halifax's membership in the House of Lords was given as the official reason). A few weeks later, with the Allies facing apparently catastrophic defeat and British forces falling back to Dunkirk, Halifax favoured approaching Italy to see if acceptable peace terms could be negotiated. He was overruled by Churchill after a series of stormy meetings of the War cabinet. From 1941 to 1946, he served as British Ambassador to the United States.
Early life and education[edit]
Wood was born on 16 April 1881 at Powderham Castle in Devon at the home of his maternal grandfather, William Courtenay, 11th Earl of Devon. He was born into a Yorkshire family, the sixth child and fourth son of Charles Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax (1839–1934), and Lady Agnes Elizabeth Courtenay (1838–1919). His father was President of the English Church Union, which pushed for ecumenical reunion, in 1868, 1919, and 1927–1934. His great-grandfather was Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, of tea fame, also the prime minister who introduced the Great Reform Act of 1832.[1]
Between 1886 and 1890, Wood's three older brothers died young, leaving him, at the age of nine, heir to his father's fortune and seat in the House of Lords.[2] He was brought up in a world of religion and hunting. His religiosity as a devout Anglo-Catholic like his father earned him the nickname, possibly coined by Churchill, of the "Holy Fox". He was born with an atrophied left arm and no left hand, which did not stop him from enjoying riding, hunting and shooting.[1] He had an artificial left hand with a spring-operated thumb, with which he could hold reins or open gates.[3]
Wood's childhood was divided mainly between two houses in Yorkshire: Hickleton Hall, near Doncaster, and Garrowby.
Halifax attended St David's Prep School from September 1892 and Eton College from September 1894. He was not happy at school as he was not talented either at sport or classics. He went up to Christ Church, Oxford, in October 1899. He took no part in student politics but blossomed academically, graduating with a first class degree in Modern History.[1] Whilst at Oxford he was a member of the private all-male dining society the Bullingdon Club known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, and bad behaviour.[4]
From November 1903 until 1910, he was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.[1] After a year at All Souls, he went on a Grand Tour of South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand with Ludovic Heathcoat-Amory. In 1905, he returned to England for two years of study at All Souls.[5] He visited Canada in 1907.[6] He wrote a short biography of the Victorian cleric John Keble (1909).[5]
Early political career and war service[edit]
Wood had not stood in the 1906 general election, at which the Liberals won a landslide victory, choosing to devote his energies to his All Souls Fellowship. By 1909 the political tides had turned enough for Wood to put himself forward for the Conservative candidacy at Ripon in Yorkshire, and he was easily selected through local influence.[7] Ripon had gone Liberal in 1906; Wood won it with a 1,000 vote majority in January 1910 and held it with a reduced majority in December 1910. He remained Member of Parliament for Ripon until his elevation to the Lords in 1925.[5] He was a Ditcher (i.e. opposed to the bitter end and ready to "die in the last ditch" to defend the House of Lords' right to veto legislation) in the disputes over the Parliament Act 1911 but really made little impact on politics before 1914. He was vigorously opposed to Welsh Disestablishment.[5]
Before the First World War he was already a captain in the Queen's Own Yorkshire Dragoons, a West Riding yeomanry regiment. He made a rare intervention in debate, urging that conscription be introduced immediately. He was sent to the front line in 1916. In January 1917 he was mentioned in despatches ("Heaven Knows What For" he wrote). He rose to the rank of major. He was then deputy director of Labour Supply at the Ministry of National Service from November 1917 to the end of 1918. He was initially sympathetic to Lord Lansdowne's proposal for a compromise peace, but ultimately demanded all-out victory and a punitive peace.[5]
Wood was unopposed in the general elections of 1918, 1922, 1923 and 1924. He was a signatory to the April 1919 Lowther Petition calling for harsher peace terms against Germany in the Treaty of Versailles then being negotiated. In the 1918–1922 Parliament, Wood was an ally of Samuel Hoare, Philip Lloyd-Greame and Walter Elliot, all ambitious younger MPs in favour of progressive reform.[5]
In 1918, he and George Lloyd (later Lord Lloyd) wrote "The Great Opportunity", a tract aiming to set an agenda for a revived Conservative and Unionist Party following the end of the Lloyd George coalition. They urged the Conservative Party to concentrate on the welfare of the community rather than the good of the individual. With the Irish War of Independence then in progress Wood urged a federal solution. At this time he concentrated on housing and agriculture and Ireland.[8]
Early ministerial career[edit]
In May 1920, he accepted the Governor-Generalship of South Africa, but the offer was withdrawn after the South African government announced that it wanted a Cabinet minister or a member of the Royal Family.[8]
In April 1921, he was appointed Under-Secretary for the Colonies, under Churchill who was initially reluctant to meet him (on one occasion he stormed into Churchill's office and told him that he "expected to be treated like a gentleman"). In the winter of 1921–1922, Wood visited the British West Indies and wrote a report for Churchill.[8]
On 16 October 1922, Wood attended the meeting of the junior ministers who expressed disquiet at the Lloyd George Coalition. On 19 October 1922, he voted at the Carlton Club meeting for the Conservatives to fight the next election as an independent force. The Coalition ended and Bonar Law formed a purely Conservative government. Wood was promoted to the Cabinet on 24 October 1922 as President of the Board of Education. Some saw this as an improvement in the moral character of the government. Austerity policies left no room for constructive policies. Wood, who spent two days hunting each week, was neither interested nor particularly effective in the job but saw it as a stepping stone to greater things. He was not happy about Stanley Baldwin's adoption of tariffs in December 1923, which saw the Conservatives lose their majority and give way to a minority Labour government.[8]
When the Conservatives were returned to power, on 6 November 1924, Wood was appointed Minister for Agriculture, a more onerous job than Education had been. He took an Agriculture and Tithes Bill through the Commons.[8]
British politics 1931–1935[edit]
Irwin returned to the UK on 3 May 1931. He was honoured with the Order of the Garter (he became chancellor of the order in 1943). In 1931 he declined the Foreign Office in the new National Government, not least because the Tory Right would not have liked it. Officially, he declared that he wanted to spend time at home. He went to Canada, at the invitation of Vincent Massey, to speak at the University of Toronto.[10]
He was still a firm protégé of Stanley Baldwin. In June 1932, on the sudden death of Sir Donald Maclean, he returned to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Education, for the second time, having been apparently genuinely reluctant to accept. His views were somewhat old-fashioned: he declared: "We want a school to train them up to be servants and butlers".[10]
Irwin became Master of the Middleton Hunt in 1932 and was elected as Chancellor of Oxford University in 1933. In 1934 he inherited the title Viscount Halifax on the death of his 94-year-old father.[12]
He helped Samuel Hoare draft what became the Government of India Act 1935, the largest single piece of legislation of the 1931–1935 government.[12]
In June 1935, Baldwin became prime minister for the third time, and Halifax was appointed Secretary of State for War. He was pleased to give up the Education job. He felt the country was unprepared for war, but he resisted the Chiefs of Staffs' demands for rearmament.[12]
In November 1935, after the general election, Halifax became Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords.[12]
Foreign policy[edit]
Colleague of Eden[edit]
By this time, Halifax was becoming increasingly influential in foreign affairs.[12] Cabinet met on the morning of 18 December 1935 to discuss the public outcry over the Hoare–Laval Pact. Halifax, who was due to make a statement in the Lords that afternoon, insisted that the Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare must resign to save the government's position, causing J. H. Thomas, William Ormsby-Gore and Walter Elliott also to come out for his resignation. Anthony Eden was appointed Foreign Secretary in Hoare's place.[13] The following year, Halifax said the provisions of the Pact "were not so frightfully different from those put forward by the Committee of Five [of the League]. But the latter were of respectable parentage: and the Paris ones were too much like the off-the-stage arrangements of nineteenth-century diplomacy".[14]
Effectively, although not formally, Halifax was deputy Foreign Secretary to Eden. Halifax was one of the signatories to the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936.[15] In general they got on well.[12] Halifax and Eden were in agreement about the direction of foreign policy (and in line with prevailing opinion throughout Britain) that Nazi Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland, its "own backyard", would be difficult to oppose and should be welcomed insofar as it continued Germany's seeming progress towards normality after the tribulations of the post-First World War settlement.
In 1936, Neville Chamberlain recorded that Halifax was always saying he wanted to retire from public life.[16] In May 1937, when Neville Chamberlain succeeded Baldwin as prime minister, Halifax became Lord President of the Council, as well as remaining Leader of the House of Lords.[12] Chamberlain began increasingly to intervene directly in foreign policy, activity for which his background had not prepared him, and which caused increasing tension with Eden.
Later life[edit]
Back in the United Kingdom, Halifax refused to rejoin the Conservative front bench, arguing that it would be inappropriate as he had been working for the Labour Government then still in office. The Labour Government were proposing that India become fully independent by May 1948 (later brought forward to August 1947) with no plans in place to protect minorities. Viscount Templewood (as Samuel Hoare was now known) opposed the plan, but Halifax spoke in the government's favour, arguing that it was not appropriate to oppose the plan if no alternative was suggested. He persuaded many wavering peers to support the government.[16]
In retirement he returned to largely honorary pursuits. He was Chancellor of the Order of the Garter. He was an active governor of Eton and Chancellor of Oxford University. He was an honorary Fellow of All Souls from 1934. He was Chancellor of the University of Sheffield and High Steward of Westminster Abbey. He was Master of the Middleton Hunt. He was President of the Pilgrims Society, a society dedicated to better Anglo-American relations. From 1947 he was chairman of the General Advisory Council of the BBC. From 1957 he was Grand Master of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.[16]
By the mid-1950s his health was failing.[16] One of his last major speeches in the House of Lords was in November 1956, when he criticised the government's Suez policy and the damage it was doing to Anglo-American relations.[16] He did little to challenge the critical view of appeasement which was then fashionable. His 1957 autobiography Fulness of Days was described in the Dictionary of National Biography as "gently evasive".[47] David Dutton describes it as "an extremely reticent book which added little to the historical record".[16] He gave the impression that he had been Chamberlain's faithful subordinate, omitting to mention his role in changing policy in spring 1939.[12]
He died of a heart attack at his estate at Garrowby on 23 December 1959, aged 78. His widow survived him until 1976.[16]
Halifax had sold Temple Newsam to the City of Leeds for less than market value in 1925, although a similar offer for its contents was declined by the council. In 1948 he donated 164 of his paintings to a museum being opened there by Leeds City Council.[48] His will was valued for probate at £338,800 10s 8d (not including settled land – land tied up in family trusts so that no individual has full control over it), equivalent to around £7m at 2016 prices.[49][50] Despite his great wealth, Halifax was notoriously mean with money. Rab Butler recounted a tale of how he had once been having a meeting with Halifax, his boss at the time. An official brought in two cups of tea and four biscuits for them; Halifax passed two of the biscuits back, instructing the official not to charge him for them.[49][51]
Assessments[edit]
Halifax could not pronounce his "r"s. He had professional charm and the natural authority of an aristocrat, the latter aided by his immense height. He stood 1.96 metres (6 ft 5 in).[16]
Harold Begbie described Halifax as "the highest kind of Englishman now in politics" whose "life and doctrine were in complete harmony with a very lofty moral principle, but who has no harsh judgement for men who err and go astray."[52]
Harold Macmillan said that Halifax possessed a "sweet and Christian nature."[53]
Rab Butler called him "this strange and imposing figure—half unworldly saint, half cunning politician."[54]
In 1968, the official records were released of Halifax's years as Foreign Secretary (the "fifty-year rule" was replaced by the "thirty-year rule"). Conservative historian Maurice Cowling argued that Halifax's stance of increasing resistance to Hitler, especially the Polish guarantee in the spring of 1939, was motivated not so much by considerations of strategy but by a need to keep ahead of a sea-change in British domestic opinion. He wrote in 1975: "To history, until yesterday, Halifax was the arch-appeaser. This, it is now recognised, was a mistake. His role, however, was complicated. In these pages he is not the man who stopped the rot, but the embodiment of Conservative wisdom who decided that Hitler must be obstructed because Labour could not otherwise be resisted."[55]
David Dutton argues that Halifax, like Chamberlain, was slow to appreciate the sheer evil of Hitler and was overly confident that negotiation could yield results. His period as Foreign Secretary was "the pivot of his career and it remains the period upon which his historical reputation ultimately depends"; just as Eden saved his reputation by resigning in time, so Halifax damaged his by being Foreign Secretary in 1938–40. "He deserves some credit for abandoning, or at least for decisively modifying, the policy of appeasement". His refusal to seize the premiership in May 1940 was "the most significant act of his long career". He argues that later that month, far from being a potential Quisling, Halifax based his policies on rational considerations, and that "on rational grounds, there had been much to be said for the Foreign Secretary's line that Britain should at least have investigated what peace terms were on offer." However, his "most important role in public life" was, in Dutton's view, as Ambassador to the United States, where he helped to smooth a relationship which was "often more fraught than early interpretations ... tended to suggest".[56]
Halifax College at the University of York is named after him. Lady Irwin College, a women's college in Delhi, was established under the patronage of Dorothy, Lady Irwin, in 1931.[57]
Halifax married Lady Dorothy Evelyn Augusta Onslow (1885–1976), daughter of William Onslow, 4th Earl of Onslow, former Governor-General of New Zealand, on 21 September 1909.[5]
They had five children together:[60]
In popular culture[edit]
Lord Halifax was portrayed in Richard Attenborough's blockbuster film Gandhi by John Gielgud, depicting his time as Viceroy of India and his role in negotiations with Gandhi regarding Indian independence.[63] Halifax was also portrayed, as an antagonist, in the 2017 film Darkest Hour by Stephen Dillane.[64]