Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane
Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, KT, OM, PC, FRS, FSA, FBA (/ˈhɔːldeɪn/; 30 July 1856 – 19 August 1928) was a British lawyer and philosopher and an influential Liberal and later Labour politician. He was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912 during which time the "Haldane Reforms" of the British Army were implemented. As an intellectual he was fascinated with German thought. That led to his role in seeking detente with Germany in 1912 in the Haldane Mission. The mission was a failure and tensions with Berlin forced London to work more closely with Paris.
The Viscount Haldane
The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
Ramsay MacDonald
The Viscount Cave
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
H. H. Asquith
19 August 1928 (aged 72)
Auchterarder, Scotland
British
Raised to the peerage as Viscount Haldane in 1911, he was Lord Chancellor between 1912 and 1915, when he was forced to resign because of allegations of German sympathies. He later joined the Labour Party and once again served as Lord Chancellor in 1924 in the first Labour administration. Apart from his legal and political careers, Haldane was also an influential writer on philosophy, in recognition of which he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1914.[1]
Background and education[edit]
Haldane was born at 17 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, the son of Robert Haldane and his wife Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Burdon-Sanderson. He was the grandson of the Scottish evangelist James Alexander Haldane, the brother of respiratory physiologist John Scott Haldane, Sir William Haldane and author Elizabeth Haldane, and the uncle of J. B. S. Haldane, Robert Haldane Makgill and Naomi Mitchison.[2]
He received his first education at the Edinburgh Academy, and then at the University of Göttingen.[1] He gained a first and MA at University of Edinburgh where he received first-class honours in Philosophy and was Gray scholar and Ferguson scholar.[2]
After studying law in London, he was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn, in 1879,[2] and became a successful lawyer. He was taken on at 5 New Square Chambers by Horace Davey in 1882 as the junior. Haldane's practice was a specialism in conveyancing; a particular skill for pleadings at appeal and tribunal cases, bringing cases to the Privy Council and House of Lords. By 1890 he had become a Queen's Counsel.[3] By 1905 he was earning £20,000 per annum at the Bar[4] (equivalent to £2.7 million in 2023). He became a bencher at Lincoln's Inn in 1893. Amongst his early friends was Edmund Gosse, the librarian of the House of Lords library.[2]
Haldane was a deep thinker, an unusual breed: a philosopher-politician. During his stay at Göttingen he expanded an interest in the German philosophers, Schopenhauer and Hegel. He had refused a place at Balliol, but in nodding respect for the Master and philosopher, T. H. Green, he dedicated his Essays in Philosophical Criticism to him.[2]
First World War[edit]
In March 1914 Haldane's successor at the War Office, Jack Seely, resigned following the Curragh incident. Rather than appoint a successor, Asquith decided to take over responsibility for the War Office directly himself. Asquith relied heavily on Haldane as the previous War Secretary and empowered him to carry out tasks at the War Office on his behalf. As the situation in Europe worsened, Asquith kept Haldane abreast of developments with Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office. Haldane was one of the first members of the Cabinet to recognise that war with Germany was inevitable and persuaded Asquith to mobilise by assembly of the Army Council on 3 August.[41] With war imminent, Asquith was happy for Haldane to continue at the War Office formally as Secretary of State for War, but Haldane persuaded him to appoint Field Marshal Kitchener.[41]
Following the outbreak of the First World War Haldane was falsely accused of pro-German sympathies, in July 1914, for hosting Albert Ballin, a German shipping magnate and unofficial mediator between Germany and Britain. The accusations were widely believed and were even echoed in a popular music hall song ("All dressed up and nowhere to go") in the revue "Mr Manhattan". He was harried in particular by Beaverbrook's Daily Express, which gave great publicity to the claim by Professor Onkel of Heidelberg that he had said "Germany was his spiritual home". He had in fact said that about Professor Hermann Lotze's classroom at Göttingen at a dinner party given by Mrs Humphry Ward in April 1913 to enable him to meet some German professors during his mission.[4]
In 1915 Asquith ranked his Cabinet, putting Haldane only sixth of the inner cabinet members.[42] He also inveigled Kitchener and Haldane to sign the King's Pledge, a vow to abstain from alcohol for the duration of the war, which Haldane resented and which Churchill and Asquith himself completely ignored.
Dismissal from office[edit]
Following the shell crisis and the resignation of Lord Fisher, in May 1915 the Liberals were obliged to form a coalition government with the Conservatives who, under the leadership of Bonar Law, insisted on the removal of Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty and the dismissal of Haldane.[43][44] Haldane's removal was on account of the popularity of the press's campaign relating to Haldane's alleged pro-German sympathies.[45] Neither the former prime minister Arthur Balfour, Haldane's closest friend amongst the Conservatives, nor Asquith, the Liberal prime minister of the day and Haldane's closest political ally and friend for over 30 years, did anything to resist Bonar Law's demands.[46][45] Roy Jenkins in his biography of Asquith describes the charges as "absolute nonsense" and Max Egremont describes Balfour as "knowing the injustice behind the charges" and "being privately indignant".[47][45]
To the detriment of their relationship, Asquith gave no personal expression to Haldane.[48] Jenkins describes the omission as "the most uncharacteristic fault of Asquith's whole career" attributing it to Asquith suffering the "indescribable blow" of the surprise announcement of the engagement of the woman he loved, Venetia Stanley, to one of his government ministers, Edwin Montagu.[49][50]
Following his departure from the government Haldane went to the front to meet his old friend General Haig, and his cousin, General Aylmer Haldane, but he was exhausted on being ejected from Cabinet.[51] Having been awarded the Order of Merit in 1915, in the personal gift of George V, he wrote a Memorandum of Events, 1906–15, to defend his reputation. It was published in April 1916. Haldane thought Lloyd George's new government, formed in December 1916, "very low class". Haldane told Lord Buckmaster at this time, "Asquith is a first-class head of a deliberative council. He is versed in precedents, acts on principle, and knows how and when to compromise. Lloyd George knows nothing for precedents and cares for no principles, but he has fire in his belly and that is what we want."[52]
As the war progressed Haldane moved increasingly close to the Labour Party, but he was held back by his ties to the Liberal Party and to Asquith. When the Irish War of Independence broke out in 1919, Haldane was one of the first British politicians to argue that the solution lay in compromise rather than force.
Contribution to Canadian constitutional law[edit]
As Lord Chancellor, Haldane was a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, at that time the court of last resort for the Empire. He retained the position even when he was no longer Chancellor. He sat on several cases from Canada dealing with the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments under the Canadian Constitution, particularly the interplay between sections 91 and 92 of the British North America Act 1867. He gave the decision for the Judicial Committee in several of those cases, and showed a marked tendency to favour the provincial powers at the expense of the federal government. For instance, in the case of In re the Board of Commerce Act, 1919, and the Combines and Fair Prices Act,[53] he gave the decision striking down federal legislation which attempted to regulate the economy, challenging the legality of the Canadian legislature.[c] In doing so, he gave very restrictive readings to both the "peace, order and good government" power of the federal government, as well as the federal criminal law power. Similarly, in Toronto Electric Commissioners v. Snider,[54] Lord Haldane struck down a federal statute attempting to regulate industrial disputes, holding that it was not within federal authority under either the peace, order and good government power, nor the federal trade and commerce power. He went so far as to suggest that the trade and commerce power was simply an ancillary federal power, which could not authorise legislation in its own right. The effects of some of these decisions have subsequently been modified by later decisions of the Judicial Committee and the Supreme Court of Canada, but they have had the long-term effect of recognising substantial provincial powers.
Haldane's approach to the division of powers was heavily criticised by some academics and lawyers in Canada, such as F. R. Scott[55] and Chief Justice Bora Laskin, as unduly favouring the provinces over the federal government and depriving it of the powers needed to deal with modern economic issues. More recently, one major study has characterised him as "the wicked stepfather" of the Canadian Constitution.[56]
Influence on education[edit]
In 1895, Haldane helped the Webbs found the London School of Economics. A fundamental believer in the power of improving education, he prepared the London University Act 1898. The philosophy of 'national efficiency' was central feature of the Hegelian complex, and the ideas of Schopenhauer, he had learnt on the continent, that accentuated freedom and decentralisation from an historicist's perspective.[56] His moral centrism sought to unify The New Liberalism, as he published it in Contemporary Review.[57] From a pan-European perspective he analysed the German character and economic advances towards militarism. He was largely responsible for the cross-party support for Balfour's Education Act 1902. He told Rosebery "a sense of nation is working towards ...a great centre party."[58] He was also involved in the founding of Imperial College in 1907 and in his honour the University contained the Haldane Recreational Library, which now forms part of the main library collection.[59]
Haldane was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb. He wrote a biography of Adam Smith, extolling the virtues of free trade. Unlike Joseph Chamberlain he thought there was no strong connection between fiscal and imperial unity. He opposed any attempt to protection of British trade.[60][2]
In 1904, he was President of the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club and gave the Toast to Sir Walter at the Club's annual dinner, addressing "The dedicated life" to a group of students on 10 January 1907. He also served as second Chancellor of the University of Bristol where he made an important address titled "The Civic University" outlining his educational philosophy in 1911. At the end of his life Lord Haldane was elected Chancellor of the University of St Andrews in June 1928. Perhaps his greatest speech on education was made in House of Lords on 12 July 1916, at the height of the terrible slaughter on the Western Front.[61]
Haldane co-translated the first English edition of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, published between 1883 and 1886. He wrote several philosophical works, the best known of which is The Reign of Relativity (1921), which dealt with the philosophical implications of the theory of relativity. Haldane published "The Pathway to Reality",[1] based on the Gifford Lectures which he had delivered at the University of St Andrews.[62] Some of his public addresses have also been published, including The future of democracy (1918).[63]
Later years[edit]
In December 1918, Lloyd George appointed Haldane chairman of 'The Machinery of Government' committee.[65] However, the Armistice had taken all impetus out of the reform agenda.
At the time of the Paisley by-election of January 1920 Haldane was in the process of shifting his sympathies from Liberal to Labour, and was wrongly thought to have endorsed Labour (earning a rebuke from Margot Asquith, whom Haldane thought "tiresome because she is ignorant", to his aged mother). In fact he favoured Asquith's election on a personal level.[66]
Being a fluent German speaker, ascetic philosopher and atheist, he played host to Albert Einstein, when he visited London in 1921. As President of the Institute of Public Administration, he was a leading intellectual on the philosophy of governance. "The Reign of Relativity" combined Haldane's love of all things German expressed by Goethe and his works, with the Hegelian military-industrial complex.[67] Haldane admired the fact that Germans were "trained to obey".[22] Hegel's aristocratic desire for law and order and defence of property against revolution had a mathematical symmetry. Hegel was a purist: his work attempted to keep science and philosophy apart The rising tide of New Liberalism and moral realism was for Haldane, Hegel's philological precept to improve behaviour, using the empiricism of scientific data as a proof.[68][69]
Haldane refused to join the platform for Asquith's speech at Westminster Central Hall in January 1922. He stated that his main interest in public life was now education reform and that the cause was not best served by endorsing the Liberal Party.[70] It was not until the general election of 1923 that Haldane formally sided with Labour, and made several speeches on behalf of Labour candidates. When the Labour government was formed by Ramsay MacDonald in early 1924, Haldane served once again as Lord Chancellor.[71] He was also joint Leader of the Labour Peers with Lord Parmoor. Haldane was a vital member of the Cabinet as he was one of only three members who had sat in a cabinet before.[72]
Haldane was responsible for drafting the London University Act 1926, purchasing properties in Euston. He made some famous speeches at Toynbee Hall for the Annual American Seminar.
