John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon
John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon, GCSI, GCVO, OBE, PC (28 February 1873 – 11 January 1954) was a British politician who held senior Cabinet posts from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second World War. He is one of three people to have served as Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, the others being Rab Butler and James Callaghan.
"Sir John Simon" redirects here. For other people named John Simon, see John Simon.
The Viscount Simon
Seat abolished
11 January 1954 (aged 80)
Westminster, London, England
-
Ethel Venables(m. 1899; died 1902)
He also served as Lord Chancellor, the most senior position in the British legal system. Beginning his career as a Liberal (identified initially with the left wing[1] but later with the right wing of the party),[2] he joined the National Government in 1931, creating the Liberal National Party in the process. At the end of his career, he was essentially a Conservative.
Background and education[edit]
Simon was born in a terraced house on Moss Side, Manchester, the eldest child and only son[3][4] of Edwin Simon (1843–1920) and wife Fanny Allsebrook (1846–1936).[3] His father was a Congregationalist minister, like three of his five brothers, and was pastor of Zion Chapel in Hulme, Manchester. His mother was a farmer's daughter and a descendant of Sir Richard Pole and his wife, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury.[3]
Congregational ministers were expected to move about the country.[5] Simon was educated at King Edward's School, Bath, as his father was President of Somerset Congregational Union.[3] He was then a scholar of Fettes College in Edinburgh,[5][3] where he was Head of School and won many prizes.[6]
He failed to win a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, but won an open scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford.[3][6] He arrived at Wadham in 1892.[7] He achieved Seconds in Mathematics and Classical Moderations.[7] He spoke in support of Herbert Samuel for South Oxfordshire in the 1895 election[7] and, after two terms as Junior Treasurer, became President of the Oxford Union in Hilary Term 1896,[3][7] Simon won the Barstow Law Scholarship and graduated with a first in Greats in 1896.[3][7]
Simon's attendance at Wadham overlapped with those of F. E. Smith, the cricketer C. B. Fry[3] and the journalist Francis Hirst.[7] Smith, Fry and Simon played in the Wadham Rugby XV together.[8][7] Simon and Smith began a rivalry that lasted throughout their legal and political careers over the next 30 years. Simon was, in David Dutton's view, a finer scholar than Smith. Although Smith thought Simon pompous, Simon, in the words of a contemporary, thought that Smith excelled at "the cheap score".[7] A famous (although clearly untrue) malicious story had it that Smith and Simon had tossed a coin to decide which party to join.[9]
Simon was briefly a trainee leader writer for the Manchester Guardian under C. P. Scott.[8] Simon shared lodgings with Leo Amery while both were studying for the All Souls Fellowship (both were successful).[7] He became a Fellow of All Souls in 1897.[3]
Simon left Oxford at the end of 1898[3] and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1899.[3] He was a pupil of A. J. Ram and then of Sir Reginald Acland.[3] Like many barristers, his career got off to a slow start: he earned a mere £27 in his first year at the bar.[8] At first, he earned some extra money by coaching candidates for the bar exams.[7] As a barrister, he relied on logic and reason rather than oratory and histrionics, and he excelled at simplifying complex issues.[3] He was a brilliant advocate of complex cases before judges although rather less so before juries.[10] Some of his work was done on the Western Circuit at Bristol. He worked exceptionally hard, often preparing his cases through the night several times a week. His initial lack of connections made his eventual success at the Bar all the more impressive.[7]
Simon was widowed in 1902 and took solace in his work. He became a successful lawyer, and in 1903, he acted for the British government in the Alaska boundary dispute.[11] Even three years after his wife's death, he spent Christmas Day 1905 alone by walking aimlessly in France.[3]
First World War[edit]
On 25 May 1915, Simon became Home Secretary in Asquith's new coalition government. He declined an offer of the job of Lord Chancellor, which would have meant going to the Lords and restricting his active political career thereafter.[3] As home secretary, he satisfied nobody. He tried to defend the Union of Democratic Control against Edward Carson's attempt to prosecute it. However, he tried to ban The Times and the Daily Mail for criticising the government's conduct of the war but failed to obtain Cabinet support.[21]
He resigned in January 1916 in protest against the introduction of conscription of single men, which he thought a breach of Liberal principles.[3] McKenna and Walter Runciman also opposed conscription but for different reasons: they thought that it would weaken British industry and wanted Britain to concentrate her war effort on the Royal Navy and supporting the other Allies with finance.[21] In his memoirs, Simon would admit that his resignation from the Home Office had been a mistake.[22]
In August 1916, Simon became chairman of the Royal Commission on the Arrest... and Subsequent Treatment of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Thomas Dickson and Patrick James McIntyre. The Commission published its report in September but without the evidential proceedings.[23]
After Asquith's fall in December 1916, Simon remained in opposition as an Asquithian Liberal.[22]
Simon proved his patriotism by serving as an officer on Trenchard's staff in the Royal Flying Corps[3] for about a year, starting in the summer of 1917.[22] His duties included purchasing supplies in Paris, where he married his second wife towards the end of 1917.[24] Amidst questions as to whether it was appropriate for a serving officer to do so, Simon spoke in Trenchard's defence in Parliament when Trenchard resigned as Chief of Air Staff after Trenchard had fallen out with the President of the Air Council Lord Rothermere, who soon resigned. However, Simon was attacked in the Northcliffe Press (Northcliffe was Rothermere's brother).[25]
Simon's Walthamstow constituency was split up at the "Coupon Election" in 1918 and he was defeated at the new Walthamstow East division[3][11] by a margin of more than 4,000 votes.[22]
1920s[edit]
Out of Parliament[edit]
In 1919, he attempted to return to Parliament at the Spen Valley by-election. Lloyd George put up a coalition Liberal candidate in Spen Valley to keep Simon out[3] and was active behind the scenes trying to see him defeated.[26]
Although the Coalition Liberals, who had formerly held the seat, were pushed into third place, Simon came second; in the view of Maurice Cowling (The Impact of Labour 1920-4), his defeat by Labour marked the point at which Labour began to be seen as a serious threat by the older political parties.[27]
Deputy leader of Liberals[edit]
In the early 1920s, he practised successfully at the bar before being elected for Spen Valley at the general election in 1922, and from 1922 to 1924, he served as deputy leader of the Liberal Party (under Asquith).[28][29] In the early 1920s, he spoke in the House of Commons about socialism, the League of Nations, unemployment and Ireland. He may well have hoped to succeed Asquith as Liberal leader. He retired temporarily from the Bar around then.[30]
In October 1924, Simon moved the amendment that brought down the first Labour government. At that year's general election, the Conservatives were returned to power, and the Liberals were reduced to a rump of just over 40 MPs. Although Asquith, who had lost his seat, remained leader of the party, Lloyd George was elected chairman of the Liberal MPs by 29 votes to 9. Simon abstained in the vote. By this time he was increasingly anti-socialist and quite friendly to the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin and clashed increasingly with Lloyd George. He stood down as deputy leader and returned to the Bar.[3][30]
General strike and Simon Commission[edit]
Unlike Lloyd George, Simon opposed the 1926 general strike. On 6 May, the fourth day of the strike, he declared in the House of Commons that the strike was illegal[3] and argued that it was not entitled to the legal privileges of the Trade Disputes Act 1906 and that the union bosses would be "liable to the utmost farthing" in damages for the harm that they inflicted on businesses and for inciting the men to break their contracts of employment. Simon was highly respected as an authority on the law but was neither popular nor seen as a political leader.[31] Trade Union historian Henry Pelling comments that Simon's speech was clearly intended to intimidate, but had little effect. A few days later he was answered by Labour’s Sir Henry Slesser, who argued that a strike was only illegal if it could be proven to be a seditious conspiracy against the state. Pelling believes that Slesser was right as sympathetic strikes were not explicitly made illegal until the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927.[32][33]
Simon was then one of the highest-paid barristers of his generation and was believed to earn between £36,000 and £70,000 per annum (equivalent to £5,100,000 in 2023).[22][34] It seemed for a while that he might abandon politics altogether.[3] Simon spoke for Newfoundland in the Labrador boundary dispute with Canada before he announced his permanent retirement from the Bar.[35]
From 1927 to 1931, he chaired the Indian Constitutional Development Committee or the Indian Statutory Commission, known as the Simon Commission, on the constitution of India.[36][3]
Upon the commission's arrival in Bombay in February 1928, it was immediately met with a hartal and protestors holding black flags and banners reading "Simon Go Back" (coined by Yusuf Meherally) involving prominent Indian political leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai and Tanguturi Prakasam. The protests erupted due to the lack of Indian representation on the commission, with the group composed of seven all-British Members of Parliament.[37]
His personality was already something of an issue: Neville Chamberlain wrote of him to the Viceroy of India Lord Irwin (12 August 1928): "I am always trying to like him, and believing I shall succeed when something crops up to put me off".[38][3] Dutton describes Simon's eventual report as a "lucid exposition of the problems of the subcontinent in all their complexity". However, Simon had been hampered by the inquiry's terms of reference (no Indians had been included on the committee), and his conclusions were overshadowed by the Irwin Declaration of October 1929, which Simon opposed, which promised India eventual dominion status.[36][3] Simon was appointed GCSI 1930.[3]
Liberal National split and moving towards Conservatives[edit]
Before serving on the committee, Simon had obtained a guarantee that he would not be opposed by a Conservative candidate at Spen Valley at the 1929 general election, and, indeed he was never again opposed by a Conservative.[39] During the late 1920s and especially during the 1929-31 Parliament, in which Labour had no majority but continued in office with the help of the Liberals, Simon was seen as the leader of the minority of Liberal MPs who disliked Lloyd George's inclination to support Labour, rather than the Conservatives. Simon still supported free trade during the 1929-31 Parliament.[3]
In 1930, Simon headed the official inquiry into the R101 airship disaster.[3]
In June 1931, before the formation of the National Government, Simon resigned the Liberal whip. In September, Simon and his 30-or-so followers became the Liberal Nationals (later renamed the "National Liberals") and increasingly aligned themselves with the Conservatives for practical purposes.[3][36] Simon was accused by Lloyd George of leaving "the slime of hypocrisy" as he crossed the floor (on another occasion, Lloyd George is said to have commented that he had "sat on the fence so long the iron has entered into his soul", but this quote is more difficult to verify).[16]
1930s: National Government[edit]
Foreign Secretary[edit]
Simon was not initially included in Ramsay MacDonald's National Government, which was formed in August 1931. Simon offered to give up his seat at Spen Valley to MacDonald if the latter had trouble holding Seaham (MacDonald held the seat in 1931 but lost it in 1935).[40] On 5 November 1931, Simon was appointed Foreign Secretary when the National Government was reconstituted.[40][3] The appointment was at first greeted with acclaim.[3] Simon's Liberal Nationals continued to support protectionism and Ramsay MacDonald's National Government after the departure of the mainstream Liberals, led by Herbert Samuel, who left the government in 1932 and formally went into Opposition in November 1933.[3]
Simon's tenure of office saw a number of important events in foreign policy, including the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had begun in September 1931, before he had taken office. Simon attracted particular opprobrium for his speech to the General Assembly of the League of Nations at Geneva on 7 December 1932 in which he failed to denounce Japan unequivocally.[3][41] Thereafter, Simon was known as the "Man of Manchukuo" and was compared unfavourably to the young Anthony Eden, who was popular at Geneva.[42]
At the same time, Adolf Hitler was coming to power in Germany in January 1933. Hitler immediately withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and announced a programme of rearmament, initially to give Germany armed forces commensurate with France and other powers. Simon did not foresee the sheer scale of Hitler's ambitions, but Dutton pointed out, the same was then true for many others.[3]
Simon's term of office also saw the failure of the World Disarmament Conference (1932-1934). His contribution was not entirely in vain since he proposed qualitative (seeking to limit or ban certain types of weapon), rather than quantitative (simple numbers of weapons), disarmament.[3]
Simon does not appear to have been considered for the post of Chancellor of Oxford University in succession to Viscount Grey in 1933 since Simon was then at the depth of his unpopularity as Foreign Secretary. Lord Irwin was elected, and since he lived until 1959, the job did not fall vacant again in Simon's lifetime.[43]
There was talk of Neville Chamberlain, who dominated the government's domestic policy, becoming Foreign Secretary, but that would have been intolerable to MacDonald, who took a keen interest in foreign affairs and wanted a leading non-Conservative in that role. In 1933 and late 1934, Simon was being criticised by both Austen and Neville Chamberlain as well as by Eden, Lloyd George, Nancy Astor, David Margesson, Vincent Massey, Runciman, Jan Smuts and Churchill.[40]
Simon accompanied MacDonald to negotiate the Stresa Front with France and Italy in April 1935, but it was MacDonald who took the lead in the negotiations.[42] Simon himself did not think that Stresa would stop German rearmament – indeed, he told the House of Commons in 1934 that Germany's rearmament was "vital to peace"[44] – but thought that it might be a useful deterrent against territorial aggression by Hitler.[45] The first stirrings of Italian aggression towards Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) were also then seen. During Simon's tenure of the Foreign Office, British defence strength was at its lowest point of the interwar period, which severely limited his freedom of action.[3]
Even Simon's colleagues thought that he had been a disastrous Foreign Secretary, "the worst since Æthelred the Unready", as one wag put it. He was better at analysing a problem than at concluding and acting.[3] Jenkins commented that he was a bad Foreign Secretary in the view of his contemporaries and ever since and concurs that he was better at analysing than solving. Neville Chamberlain thought he always sounded as though he was speaking from a brief.[46][40] Simon's officials despaired of him since he had few thoughts of his own, solutions were imposed on him by others and he defended them only weakly.[47] Leo Amery was a rare defender of Simon's record: in 1937, he recorded that Simon "really had been a sound foreign minister – and Stresa marked the nearest Europe has been to peace since 1914".[48]
Home Secretary[edit]
Simon served as Home Secretary (in Stanley Baldwin's Third Government) from 7 June 1935 to 28 May 1937. That position was in Dutton's view better suited to his abilities than the Foreign Office.[3][49] He also became Deputy Leader of the House of Commons on the understanding that the latter position would be given to Neville Chamberlain after the election (in the event, it was not).[50] In 1935, Simon was the last Home Secretary to attend a royal birth (of the present Duke of Kent).[50]
Lord Chancellor[edit]
In May 1940, following the Norway Debate, Simon urged Chamberlain to stand firm as Prime Minister although Simon offered to resign and take Samuel Hoare with him.[62] By 1940, Simon, along with his successor as Foreign Secretary, Hoare, had come to be seen as one of the "Guilty Men" responsible for appeasement of the dictators, and like Hoare, Simon was not regarded as acceptable in the War Cabinet of Churchill's new coalition. Hugh Dalton thought Simon "the snakiest of the lot".[16]
Simon became Lord Chancellor in Churchill's government but without a place on the War Cabinet. Attlee commented that he "will be quite innocuous" in the role.[62][63] On 13 May 1940, he was created Viscount Simon, of Stackpole Elidor in the County of Pembroke, a village from which his father traced descent.[3]
In Dutton's view, of all the senior positions which he held, that was the one for which he was most suited. As Lord Chancellor, he delivered important judgements on the damages due for death caused by negligence and on how the judge ought to direct the jury in a murder trial if a possible defence of manslaughter arose.[3] In 1943 alone, he delivered 43 major judgements on complex cases. RVF Heuston (Lives of the Lord Chancellors) described him as a "superb" Lord Chancellor. Jenkins comments that it is even more impressive in that many senior judges had over 20 years' experience at that level, whereas Simon had been retired from the law since 1928.[64]
Simon interrogated Rudolf Hess, who had flown to Scotland,[3][64] and also chaired the Royal Commission on the Birthrate.[64]
In May 1945, after the end of the wartime coalition, Simon continued as Lord Chancellor but was not included in the Cabinet of the short-lived Churchill caretaker ministry. After Churchill's defeat in the 1945 general election, Simon never held office again.[62]
Later life[edit]
Although he had won plaudits for his legal skills as Lord Chancellor, Clement Attlee declined to appoint him to the British delegation at the Nuremberg War Trials and told him bluntly in a letter that Simon's role in the prewar governments made it unwise.[64] Simon remained active in the House of Lords and as a senior judge on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He wrote a well-regarded practitioners' text Simon on Income Tax in 1948.[3] During the drafting of the Criminal Justice Act 1948, it was Simon who proposed the eventual insertion of the abolition of the privilege of peerage for criminal courts.[65]
In 1948, Simon succeeded Lord Sankey as High Steward of Oxford University.[3] The position is often held by a distinguished Oxonian lawyer. Relations with his nearly-alcoholic wife were somewhat strained, and he increasingly spent his weekends at All Souls,[43] of which he was Senior Fellow.[7]
Simon was a vigorous campaigner against socialism, across the country in the general elections of 1945, 1950 and 1951.[43] Churchill blocked Simon, who had stepped down as leader of the National Liberals in 1940, from joining the Conservative Party.[3] Churchill was keen to lend Conservative support to the (official) Liberals, including his old friend Lady Violet Bonham Carter, but blocked a full merger between the Conservatives and the National Liberals although a constituency-level merger was negotiated with the Conservative Party chairman Lord Woolton in 1947 (thereafter, the National Liberals were increasingly absorbed into the Conservatives for practical purposes until they fully merged in 1968).[43]
Although Simon was still physically and mentally vigorous (aged 78) when the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, Churchill offered him neither a return to the Woolsack nor any other office.[3] In 1952, Simon published his memoirs, Retrospect.[3] The quote "I so very tire of politics. The early death of too many a great man is attributed to her touch" is from Simon's memoir. Harold Nicolson reviewed the book as describing the "nectarines and peaches of office" as if they were "a bag of prunes".[10]
Simon died from a stroke on 11 January 1954. He was an atheist and was cremated in his Oxford robes.[3] His estate was valued for probate at £93,006 12s (equivalent to £3,200,000 in 2023).[66][3][34] Despite his huge earnings at the Bar, he was not particularly greedy for money and was generous to All Souls, to junior barristers and to the children of friends.[47] His personal papers are preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.[67]