Sir Samuel Hoare, a Political Biography with a foreword by The Rt Hon. Lord Butler, K.G., C.H. J. A. Cross JONATHAN CAPE THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE LO_NDON FIRST PUBLISHED I 977 ©J· A. CROSS 1977 JONATHAN CAPE LTD, 30 BEDFORD SQ.UARE LONDON WCI British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Contents Cross, John Arthur Sir Samuel Hoare, a Political Biography. Bihl. - Index. ISBN 0-224-01350-5 941.083'092'4 DA566.9.H/ Hoare, Samuel John Gurney, Viscount Templewood Foreword by The Rt Hon. Lord Butler, K.G., C.H. IX Preface Xlll Acknowledgements xv Early Career 1 I 2 Wartime Missions and Post-war Politics 38 3 Air Ministry and Shadow Cabinet 83 4 India 125 5 Foreign Secretary 180 • 6 The Hoare-Laval 'Pact'V 225 7 Return to High Office 266 \l D1~'1~ 8 From War Cabinet to Madrid Embassy 301 Epilogue: The Last Years 346 Bibliographical Note 356 Notes 358 Index 4°3 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY W & J MACKAY LIMITED, CHATHAM Illustrations between pages and 112 113 1 Hoare's parents: Samuel and Katharin Hoare 2 Hoare as a boy 3 The young Hoare in levee dress 4 The aeroplane which flew the Hoares to India in December 1926 5 At the 1927 R.A.F. Display at Hendon with King George V and Queen Mary between pages 44 and 45 l l 6 Hoare with Lady Maud and his sister Christabel's son Richard at Cromer, 1929 (Sport & General Press Agency) 7 Hoare, as Secretary of State for Air, presenting the Esher Trophy, 1929 (The Times) 8 Hoare and Lady Maud with the R101 construction team at Cardington, c. 1928 9 Under skating instruction at St Moritz, c. 1928 10 Hoare and Neville Chamberlain soon after the formation of the National Government between pages 304 and 305 11 The National Government, August 1931 (Associated Press Ltd) 12 The Second Indian Round Table Conference September December 1931 (Associated Press Ltd) 13 Hoare being greeted by Anthony Eden on his arrival in Geneva, 9th September, 1935 (Associated Press Ltd) 14 Hoare addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations, 11th September, 1935 (Associated Press Ltd) Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS between pages 336 and 337 15 Departure of the Royal Family for Canada, May 1939 (Associated Press Ltd) 6 Hoare with Sir Robert Vansittart, August 1939 (The 1 Times) 17 Hoare and Lady Maud leaving for Spain, May 1940 Foreword (Keystone Press Agency) 18 Lady Templewood 19 Lord Templewood, 1958 THE RT HoN. LoRD BUTLER, K.G., C.H. 20 Hoare's Norfolk home: Templewood, Northrepps, near Cromer Sam Hoare gave me my start in political life making me first Parliamentary Private Secretary and then, on the retirement of Lord Lothian~ Under-Secretary for India for nearly five years. I succeeded as Parliamentary Private Secretary my uncle, Sir Geoffrey Butler, Senior Burgess for the University of Cam bridge. He was a great admirer and friend of Hoare's and advised him from an early age to press for the Foreign Office. Sam's wife Maud was even more ambitious and advised him to press for the Prime Ministership. When I got to know Sam I was not in favour of either of these pieces of advice for the reason that we had had such a gruelling time together during the India Bill that I knew his physique could not stand an immediate transference to the Foreign Office and this proved alas too true, ending in the trauma of the Hoare-Laval Pact. Sam Hoare's health, although maintained by skating, was never very robust and he ought certainly to have taken three months' holiday after working from sixteen to eighteen hours a day on the India Bill and being opposed by the cunning and ruthlessness of Winston Churchill. To show how high' Sam Hoare should rank in a series of British ministers of his generation, I refer to a phrase in this book which says, 'The weary months and years of trial and tribulation before the Government of India Bill could be pre sented to the Commons in 1935 were a triumph for Hoare's courage, persistence and sheer ability to master complex issues and constitute a personal ministerial achievement without pre vious parallel in modem British history.' This is tribute enough for any man and in my opinion was more than justified in the X FOREWORD FOREWORD Xl eve nt. I have had a lifetime experience of politics · and p·o litlicdal Hoare's career, namely the Hoare-Laval Pact. The chapter in offices and do not know any man in my long experience, me u - this book on the Foreign Office does build up the Abyssinian ing Churchill, who was m~re effici~nt at handling pap~rs and picture in a very particular way and shows that the action of di. spa t ch es . He was exceedmgly qmck and. retudr"n ed sh·i s Fo"v edr - Sam Hoare, aided by Vansittart, in signing an agreement with night boxes ready for his fait~ul officials, mclu mg ir m - Laval was not all that a departure from developed policy. What later Stewart early next mormng. was really wrong about the affair was that only a few weeks Another f:ature of Sam Hoare's character was what I wrote before Sam Hoare had made a magnificent speech in support · M 59 'In my experience of serving many chiefs over all of the League of Nations and the Covenant. Hence the great m ay 19 ' hi . h 1 these years, Sam Hoare was distinguished for s anxiety to e p upset when the British public read of the Hoare-Laval Pact his subordinates.' which seemed Realpolitik rather than collective security. I re Perhaps Hoare's greatest achievemen~ during the ~assage of member as an M.P. having more letters about the Hoare-Laval the India Bill was his answering of questions on the Jomt Select Pact than on any other subject when I was in Parliament. Here Committee. Lord Salisbury, one orhis great. oppo?ents, wrote !o we come up against one of the most interesting features of him to admire 'his intellectual achievement m sitt~ng for ho~rs i~ Hoare's character and life. He was of Quaker descent and as that chair and answering questions on eve~ c?ncei:ra?le subject. Home Secretary he embraced both liberal and radical reforms. The author of this book is very percepb.ve m pomtmg out that He had what may be described as a Quaker conscience and he the team at the India Office suited Hoare b~tter than ~he team had a high sense of morality in public affairs. Nevertheless he at the Foreign Office. Hoare himself describes the differei:ice did not seem able to distinguish between the speech on the or between the two rooms, the small one, now.a par~ the Foreign Covenant and the occasion in Paris and this I put down to his Office, with Mogul paintings, in the India bmldmg, ai:id the inveterate habit of working exceedingly quickly and being able huge draughty chamber in which I have sat myself m the not only to move from one subject to another but from one job to Foreign Office. another. He was in fact, like George Canning, invested with It would be interesting to compare Sam Hoar.e to George vaulting ambition. However, I think a human view must be Canning. They were both obliged to take an Iberian E.mbassy taken of the Hoare-Laval Pact. He wrote to Clive Wigram to due to discomfort in home political life. Of cours.e, Cani:img was ask for royal permission to take his Permanent Secretary with an infinitely greater orator than Hoare ever claimed himself to him to Paris. He writes, 'As you know I have had no proper be and Canning had infinitely more time and more scope at the holiday for several years. My doctor has been insistent upon my Foreign Office. The Madrid Embassy ~as the only way o~t for getting off as soon as possible, particularly as I have recently had Hoare when his great enemy, Churchill, _became the nab.anal a series offainting fits, one of which took place last night.' Prime Minister in wartime. There was a difference betw~en the This all goes back to what I said at the opening of this intro tenancy of Canning and Hoare since the former held it for a duction, that Hoare should have had a proper holiday after the very short time and the latter for the majority of the war. Sam terrible strains of the India Bill. It is rather extraordinary that Hoare was two or three times tempted to ~eek and a~cept ~e Vansittart, who played an important part in the Hoare-Laval viceroyalty oflndia but on the second occasion ~hurc?ill wa:' m discussions, should have remained even in my time 1938-41, as no mood to give it to him and o~ the. first occ_asion his apphca principal adviser at the Foreign Office, while Sam Hoare's tion was really too late. His services m 1'!adnd are well rec?g career should have had such a forced interruption. Of course he nised by the author in this book and the importance of keepmg made good again at the Admiralty and the Home Office and has Spain out of the war could not then and cannot now be exagger- left a name as a first-class diplomat. s The biographer does not miss any of the more curious acts of ated. . · · I now come to the central disaster or turmng pomt m am Sam's life, such as the peculiar letter from Maud to Beaver- FOREWORD xii brook asking for money or his own ill-chosen explanation to his Chelsea constituents of the Hoare-Laval proceedings, or his unwise declaration just before March 1939, when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, about a prospect of peace ahead. These lapses make all the more remarkable the tributes which I have already paid and the solid achievements ofa life's work. His achievements Preface fell short of the hopes he had himself entertained by the high point of his career inJune 1935, but not below his own statement on leaving the House of Commons after a speech as Secret~ry of State for Air, following upon the Norwegian fiasco and prior to the big change of government which led him into the overseas post at Madrid. He told his wi~e .on leaving t~e House that that might be his last speech as Minister, and this show~ a sens~ of The political career of Samuel Hoare, first and only Viscount reality which redeems many of the rather cold impressions Templewood, spanned most of the first half of the twentieth which he left on his colleagues. Perhaps his own statement that century and took in some of the highest ministerial offices. As he was a Liberal amongst Conservatives and a Conservative Secretary of State for Air in the 192os he successfully defe nded amongst Liberals is a true one. He was certainly a Liberal as the R.A.F. from take-over bids by the older services. As Secre Home Secretary and later when working on the Abolition of the tary of State for India in the early 1930s he presided over the Death Penalty in the House of Lords. He states about himself enactment of the greatest measure of Indian constitutional re that he preferred committee discussion in Parliament to heated form before the post-war granting of independence. His short tenure of the Foreign Office, during the international crisis pro scenes of partisan fury. It is very timely that a book dedicated to his career should be voked by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, ended in the written so fairly. Considering the vital part he played in many failure of a diplomatic initiative (the so-called 'Hoare-Laval crises of our national life, tributes paid to his tenacity and Pact') which continues to arouse controversy over forty years forward-looking policy are long overdue. There has in fact been later. Restored to office after a brief period in the political wilder too much ignorant criticism of Sam Hoare and too little ness Hoare became a member of the inner group of four in the Chamberlain Cabinet most closely associated with the policy of admiration for his oustanding qualities. 'appeasement', in addition to being that still fairly rare minis terial phenomenon, a reforming Home Secretary. Discarded from the War Cabinet by Churchill in 1940 he emerged in a new guise as an unorthodox but highly effective wartime Ambassador to Spain. There has as yet been no comprehensive study of Hoare's career. The present work is an attempt to fill this gap. The need to keep it to a length which is publishable in present economic conditions has compelled the use of a broad brush to delineate most of what was a long and eventful record of public service. The central episode - Hoare's six months as Foreign Secretary -was, however, so crucial to his career and to our under standing of it that it has deliberately been treated here at more XlV PREFACE than proportionate length. The aim throughout has been to reveal Hoare as what he undoubtedly was - one of the most important figures in pre-war British politics. · I am grateful to the staffs of the libraries and repositories which house the sources used for this book; to several former political and official colleagues of Hoare who gave me their impressions of the man and his work; to the Leverhulme Trust Acknowledgements for financially assisting my research; and to the staff ofJ onathan Cape, above all David Machin and Belinda Foster-Melliar. I am honoured that Lord Butler so readily agreed to contribute a foreword which he is uniquely qualified to write. My particular thanks are due to my Cardiff colleague, Paul Wilkinson, who first drew my attention to the need for a study of Hoare and who I am grateful to the following for permission to quote from throughout its compilation has been an unfailing source of material of which they hold the copyright: Her Majesty the stimulation and informed criticism. Queen, The Rt Hon. Julian Amery, M.P., The Beaverbrook My chief debt is to Lord Templewood's nephew and heir, Foundation, Lord Brabazon of Tara, Major-General Viscount Paul Paget, who allowed me complete freedom to use as I saw Bridgeman, K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O., M.C., R. H. W. Bullock, fit the extensive collection of Templewood papers of which he Esq., C.B., The Rt Hon. Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, K.G., holds the copyright. He also gave me the benefit of his special C.H., Mrs Stephen Lloyd, Sir John Lomax, K.B.E., C.M.G., knowledge of his uncle's life and career: a knowledge derived M.C., The Marquess of Lothian, Sir Godfrey Nicholson, Bt, not only from the close family bond (in some ways he took the P. E. Paget, Esq., C.V.O., F.R.l.B.A., F.S.A., Sir Folliott place of the son Templewood never had) but from acting on Sandford, K.B.E., C.M.G., R. J. Stopford, Esq., C.M.G., Lord occasion as one of his uncle's private secretaries (as at the Air Trenchard, M.C., and Lady Vansittart. Ministry in the early 1920s) and as designer, with his archi tectural partner John Seely, of the Norfolk house from which Hoare took his title on his elevation to the peerage and which Mr Paget eventually inherited. The final work, including any undetected errors, is, of course, the entire responsibility of the author. J. A. CROSS Cardiff I Early Career Although the Hoares are an old-established English family, trac ing their lineage back at least to the fifteenth century, the branch from which the future Lord Templewood descended had its origins in Ireland, in Cork, where Edward Hoare had been given land as a reward for his services to the Cromwellian cause in the Civil War. When, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the first of six generations of Hoares to bear the name Samuel (Lord Templewood being the last) moved from Cork to London, he took with him two firmly established family tradi tions: a vocational commitment to banking and a religious commitment to the Society of Friends. With the Quaker persuasion went an active interest in questions of social reform, and at various times Hoares played leading parts in the campaigns for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and in the improvement of conditions in British prisons. The third Samuel Hoare (1783-1847), for example, was brother-in-law to both Elizabeth Fry and Sir Fowell Buxton and with them founded in 1816 the Society for the Reformation of Prison Discipline, the progenitor of the Howard League for Penal Re form. It was a family inheritance which was to have considerable influence on the subject of this biography, the sixth Samuel Hoare. Quakerism (but not the interest in social reform which accompanied it) was abandoned well before the mid<;lle of the nineteenth century, to be succeeded by evangelical Anglicanism, and, later still, by the Anglo-Catholicism of which the sixth Samuel Hoare was a devoted adherent. The family fortunes prospered. A base in London was always retained but from the 2 SIR SAMUEL HOARE, A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY EARLY CAREER 3 beginning of the nineteenth century substantial family property the. nomination, but not the seat, in the January 1910 election, was being acquired in Norfolk, in Cromer and its vicinity, and, which returned his eldest son to Parliament for the first time. with it, a marked enthusiasm for the traditional field sports of For that son he had long been maturing plans for the political East Anglia. The inheritance which the fifth Samuel Hoare advancement he had never himself pursued. (Lord Templewood's father) entered into in 1875, at the age of The eldest son was the fifth of seven children born to Samuel 34, represented something between £150,000 and £200,000, and Katharin Hoare in the nineteen-year period from 1867 to even after ample provision had been made for other members 188~. The first four - all girls - were Muriel (born in 1867), · of the family. Anme (1868), Elma (1871) and Marjorie (1876). It was not Samuel Hoare, who married Katharin Hart Davis in 1866, until 24th February, 1880, that their first son, christened was the first member of the family to forsake the primary voca Samuel John Gurney, was born, at the Hoares' London home tion of banking for a parliamentary career. In 1884 the Birming in Park Lane. Two years later came another son, Oliver ham banking firm of Lloyds offered to buy the Lombard Street Vaughan Gurney, and then in 1886 the Hoares' last child, an firm ofBarnetts, Hoare and Co., in which Samuel Hoare was a other daughter, Christabel. partner (and which until then had been acting as Lloyds' There seems no doubt that although Samuel and Katharin London agents). The offe r was accepted and, thus released from Hoare were exemplary parents to all their children, it was on his London business responsibilities, Hoare felt able to respond their eldest son that their chief devotion was lavished. Nothing to the local Conservative association's invitation to stand as was denied him and in so far as a spoilt child was possible in a candidate for the newly formed constituency of North Norfolk large family, young Samuel was such a child. He returned the in the election of November 1885. This first electoral foray was affection with due respect but there is no evidence that he was unsuccessful but there was not long to wait for a more favourable. attached to his parents with any great warmth. His father, a opportunity. In April 1886 the invalidation of the election of bluff, extrovert Norfolk squire with no pretensions to intellectual a Conservative member in the two-member Norwich con distinction (despite attendance at Harrow and Trinity College, stituency led to a by-election for the seat which Hoare won un Cambridge), was quite unlike the man his son was to become. opposed and held for the next twenty years, for much of the To his mother, who survived her husband sixteen years and time in double harness with a Liberal colleague. lived to see her son a minister and a leading figure in the Con Samuel Hoare senior was in many ways an archetypal Con servative party (she died inJa nuary 1931), Samuel]o hn Gurney servative backbencher: solid, loyal, in touch with the feelings of was a devoted but perhaps slightly distant son all her life. the party's grass roots. He never sought office and never Among his sisters, two of the eldest - Annie (later Mother obtained it. He performed his constituency functions con General of the Anglican Community at Wantage) and Elma scientiously and saw his majority increase in each election. In (who married Luke Paget, subsequently Bishop of Chester) - 1899 he received the recompense of the faithful Conservative were c.l osest to Samuel along with the youngest, Christabel who ' backbencher, a baronetcy. His loyalty was, however, strained was widowed at an early age and later became a Norfolk notable after 1903, when Joseph Chamberlain launched his Tariff as local government councillor and local historian. He was close Reform campaign and the party split on the issue. Hoare re also to his brother Oliver, his partner and opponent in most of mained a convinced free trader and joined with 50 other Con the sports in which both developed considerable skill, and who servative M.P.s to inaugurate the Free Food League as an followed him, two years behind, at both school and university. answer to Chamberlain's Tariff Reform League.1 But the Samuel Hoare senior may have laid no claim to intellectual Norwich Conservative association, like so many others, was distinction or political advancement but this fact perhaps in captured by the tariff reformers and Hoare lost the Conservative creased his determination to guarantee his eldest son's prospects. nomination and thus his seat in the 1906 election. He regained Success in politics, he knew, requires a highly developed com- 4 SIR SAMUEL HOARE, A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY EARLY CAREER 5 petitive spirit. While he did not compete for political office him application and effort and played to win. Oliver Hoare's self he valued the element of competition in the various sports in subsequent career in various kinds of business was only spas which he had a passionate interest (especially cricket, but also modically successful. While there is no evidence for believing tennis and golf), and sought to instil the same spirit in his son. that his elder brother ever looked upon politics as a game for By I 890 he had blooded young Samuel in the family enthusiasm demonstrating individual prowess it is undoubtedly true that he for field sports, and the family game book (on which much of wanted passionately to succeed in it and that his measure of Lord Templewood's The Unbroken Thread is based) noted on success would be the attainment of the highest political prizes. 20th December of that year that 'S.J.G.H. shot a cock pheasant If Hoare's athletic achievements at Harrow fell a little short over his head'.2 Thus began an activity which Hoare pursued of family expectations his brilliant academic career provided with great skill - he was one of the finest shots in England - some compensation. Of his five years there four were spent in the until just before his death. Then there were the ball games, upper sixth. Characteristically he prevented himself from, as he which the elder Hoare insisted on playing to win, however un termed it, 'going to seed' during four years in the same form by important the contest might be. He coached his sons at home and competing for school prizes. In I897 and again in I8g8 he won took a much closer interest in their athletic achievements than the coveted Arthur Macnamara Memorial Prize and in I 898 in their academic progress at school. After four years at a pre also the Charles Herman Prior Divinity Prize (hagiography was paratory school, the Abbey School at Beckenham, the young his favourite reading at Harrow, along with Borrow, Kinglake, Samuel gained an entrance scholarship for classics to Harrow and R. L. Stevenson). He later wrote: and entered the school in the summer term of I 894, exactly The occasional efforts had the excellent effect of concentra forty years after his father. Athletically his Harrow career was ting my energies on a limited objective. In addition ... to the distinguished but mixed. To his father's disappointment, he pleasure ... of winning a competition, they helped to teach me never gained a permanent place in the cricket eleven. But in the a lesson which since has been very useful in political life - individual game of rackets he was much more successful, re how to master quickly a particular subject and a mass of presenting the school and later going on to win a university detail.3 blue. A game like rackets, in which the player is alone respon sible for his own play, appealed to Hoare more than a team Harrow had been a valuable experience for Hoare, but main game in which he was one of several players. It would be a mis ly, he felt, because it had inculcated the habit of self-study take to read too much into this preference for individual over rather than from contact with brilliant teachers. From the team effort, but it is noticeable that the principal active leisure school the transition to university was inevitable: not, however, pursuits ofHoare's subsequent busy career were predominantly to his father's college, Trinity, Cambridge, but, by way of a those which maximised individual success and the will to win: classical exhibition gained in I899, to New College, Oxford. shooting, tennis and ice skating. There he more than confirmed the academic and athletic pro Another element in Hoare's will to succeed, even in such mise he had displayed at Harrow. He represented the uni relatively trivial activities, may have been the dynamism that versity at both rackets and tennis and played cricket with rather many small men seem to generate as if to compensate for their more success than at Harrow, although without gaining a blue. lack of inches. Samuel Hoare was short (much shorter than his After securing a first in classical moderations (in April I go I) he father) and while he developed a neat and trim figure his turned to history, in which he also (in July 1903) received the appearance was in no way impressive. Here he was quite unlike highest classification and developed an interest which was to his brother Oliver, who was tall and stunningly good looking. remain with him throughout his life. His New College tutor was Oliver was naturally good at games, but played them for the H. A. L. Fisher who, years later, as Warden of New College, enjoyment; Samuel ensured that he was good at games by was to invite Hoare to become an honorary fellow of his old