John Barnes, Historian

Sir Douglas Hacking Bt. 1^st Baron Hacking (1884 - 1950)

A tall, handsome man, with a most friendly way and considerable readiness of wit, Douglas Hacking held a succession of Parliamentary Under Secretaryships between 1925 and 1936, but never seemed likely to secure high office. Baldwin made him Party Chairman in March 1936 and he retained the job under both Chamberlain and Churchill. The latter is said to have persuaded him to remain in the post in December 1940 to allay fears of a party split. He had the foresight to warn of the need to adjust "the party's outlook to the radically different trends of thought which prevail at a time like this"[1]; but once he had returned to the backbenches, he led the assault on Bevin's Catering Wages Bill, believing it to run contrary to the underlying rationale of the wartime government, which was to avoid controversial issues that might disrupt the political unity necessary to win the war.

Douglas Hewitt Hacking was the son of Joshua Hacking JP, a soap manufacturer, and his wife Eliza Boyle. He was born on 4 August 1884 at his parents' home, Henfield House, Clayton-le-Moors in Lancashire. He was educated at Giggleswick School and Manchester University. He married Margery, the eldest daughter of Harry Bolton, on 15 April 1909. Their eldest son, Douglas, was born on 7 December 1910 and their family was completed by a second son and a daughter. Hacking was commissioned in the East Lancashire regiment in August 1914. He served two years in France and was mentioned in despatches.

Towards the end of the First World War a political career beckoned and in the 1918 General Election, Hacking was elected for the Chorley Division of Lancashire, a seat that he held for the remainder of his Parliamentary career. He served as PPS to James Craig at the Ministry of Pensions in 1920 and went with him to the Admiralty in 1920-21. When Craig returned to Ulster, Hacking became PPS to Sir Laming Worthington Evans at the War Office 1921-22. After the fall of the Coalition and the subsequent General Election found himself in the Whips Office as Vice Chamberlain of the Household, a post which he retained until January 1924 and to which he returned in November 1924 after a spell in opposition. He served as a member of the Empire Parliamentary Delegation to South Africa in 1924.

On 8 December 1925 he was appointed Under Secretary of Sate at the Home Office and he also represented the Office of Works in the House of Commons. He chaired Home Office committees on compensation for silicosis and taxicabs. As The Times later recorded, he "gained a considerable reputation by the brevity and wit of his answers to questions".[2] His next appointment, in November 1927, as Secretary of the Department of Overseas Trade where he ranked as Parliamentary Secretary to both the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, was in many ways the culmination of his ministerial career. He presided over an organisation that had what he described as many scouts abroad looking for export opportunities, but while he was appreciative of the value of his department - a recent threat to abolish it had met with serious opposition in business circles - he set in train an enquiry to see if the exports credit guarantee scheme could be privatised.

In 1928 he was responsible for the creation of the Travel Association of Great Britain and when his party went into opposition he served as Vice President of the Hotels and Restaurants Association, a post that he held until 1933 and resumed in 1944. He also served as President of the Residential Hotels Association 1931-33.

Hacking was not included in the National Government, although he was sufficiently well thought of for Hoare to put his name forward to chair a Research Department Committee that in 1932 looked at the possibility of an economic agreement between Britain and India. From 1930 until 1933 he served as Vice Chairman of the National Union and chaired the North Western Area 1932-4. In addition in 1931 he was Chancellor of the Primrose League. These posts were fitting preparation for his later appointment as Party Chairman, but before Baldwin appointed him to that position, his ministerial career revived with a succession of Parliamentary Under Secretaryships, at the Home Office from February 1933 to June 1934, at the War Office from June 1934 to November 1935 and at the Dominions office from November 1935 until March 1936. He had also served in 1933 as a Government delegate to the League of Nations at Geneva.

Hacking was appointed as Chairman of the Conservative Party Organisation in March 1936 and one shrewd if rather cantankerous of the political scene, Sir Cuthbert Headlam, thought him "a great improvement on that silly little ass Stonehaven."[3] The two were to clash later, but it is interesting to note that Headlam thought he would prove a "tactful and possibly intelligent" holder of the post, and while he later concluded that he was "rather a dull dog", he added that he was "doing well.... because he is taking trouble - and going about in the Areas."[4] He threw himself into his new job with energy and enthusiasm, and his decision to tell his constituents in 1937 that he would stand down at the next general election signalled his intention to devote more time to it in the run up to the election. In fact Baldwin had asked him to commit himself for five years. He had something of a baptism of fire at his first Central Council when he asked that a motion calling for redistribution of constituencies over 100,000 in size should be remitted to the executive and the mover insisted on it being put to the vote. It was carried unanimously. No precedent was set, and Hacking soon proved himself an effective Chairman. He was created a Baronet in 1938.

Although Ramsden is inclined to attribute the tightening up of party organisation that took place in the late '30s "as much to pressure from the constituencies as to initiatives from the centre",[5] there is every evidence that Central Office worked hard to gear the party up to wing the General Election that was expected to come in 1939. Central Office announced in 1937 an extension of its scheme for training agents and by the time war broke out 392 qualified agents were in place to serve the 520 English and Welsh constituencies. Speakers' classes were organised at Area Offices and a canvassing corps created. A weekend course at Ashridge in 1938 was run, with ministers and party managers in attendance, with the specific purpose of briefing prospective candidates on government policy and party tactics. As Ramsden notes, this was "an unprecedented step, but one that was much imitated later."[6] There was also a largely successful effort to establish co-ordinating committees in the areas to bring together the different party elements that made up the National Government.

Of greater long-term prospective importance were the investigations, set in train with Chamberlain's blessing, into party finance, candidates' financial contributions to constituencies, and the party's organisation in London. In addition, Sir Malcolm Fraser was appointed Vice Chairman of the Party Organisation with the task of investigating the party's youth organisation. However, the immediate consequences were relatively small and emphasise the limits on a Party Chairman's ability to effect change. A telling entry in Headlam's diary recounts how at one of the regular meetings of area chairmen, they "discussed a report on the Junior Imperial League. It struck me as a lot of hot air - without money the League can never be of much more value than it is at present and it appears that money is not forthcoming. The idea of CO is of course to centralize it as much as possible - to have a certain number of organizers to be sent about the country and to do away with the Area Organizers - or at least no longer to go on helping to pay for them." Headlam was not alone in thinking this a retrograde step.

A Treasurer's department was established in the winter of 1938/9 "to deal with the collection of funds for Headquarters, and the giving of advice where requested to Area Councils and constituencies in organizing their own financial methods and procedure"[7], but the revolution in the way the party financed its activities and its translation into a mass membership party had to wait until after the war. So too with the controversial question of candidates in effect buying the party nomination. When Conference resolved in 1937 that no capable and desirable person should be precluded from standing by reason of finance, Hacking replied that the first requirement of a candidate must be characters and ability. But when the Federation of University Conservative and Unionist Associations recurred to the subject at the turn of the following year, it seemed clear that the ball was in the constituency court.[8] The examination that Hacking had set in train into the financial obligations that MPs incurred as a means of gaining selection was eventually to bear fruit in the Maxwell Fyfe reforms after the war, but despite the efforts of Ian Harvey, Lady Astor and their supporters at the Central Council in March 1939, no action resulted.

One of the most controversial issues addressed was how best to counter Labour in London. Against Conservative party expectations, it increased its majority on the London County Council in 1937 and consolidated its hold on the metropolitan boroughs. Hacking appointed a London Organization Committee under Sir Kingsley Wood to investigate what had gone wrong and to suggest remedies. When it reported to Neville Chamberlain in June 1938, it had startling suggestions to make both about the structure of London's government and about the party's organisation. Effectively it wanted the question of London's boundaries re-examined. Enlarging the area of the London County Council would improve the party's electoral prospects, although it would entail prolonged controversy and opposition from the suburbs, who would not wish to be merged in a Greater London. Nevertheless that was what the committee proposed, arguing that political power would lie with the suburbs. It was equally radical in its suggestions for party organization. There was to be a nominated Cabinet minister to co-ordinate the actions of government and party on the LCC, universal adoption of the Conservative label and a common Conservative policy throughout the capital, a London department of the Central office, which would be headed by the leader's nominee as London "supreme", and consequently the almost total emasculation of the London Municipal Society, which had hitherto masterminded the activities of the party in London.

The Conservative Agent's Journal in June 1938 made clear the widespread opposition to the concentration of power implicit in the appointment of a figure independent of Central Office and this may explain the fierceness of Hacking's reaction. At all events he quietly campaigned against the proposals and the onset of the Munich crisis distracted Chamberlain's attention, as it turned out for good. The whole question was not to be revisited for twenty years.

Hacking was concerned not only with preparing the party for a general election, but in advising on its timing. The Conservative Research Department kept a close eye on by- election trends, but the position was complicated by the growing signs of division in the party over foreign policy and the difficulty of assessing whether domestic factors or foreign affairs were likely to predominate in the public mind. Eden's resignation in February 1938, closely followed by the Anschluss, had made Hacking's life difficult: "if we seemed even negatively to attack Eden the British instinct of not liking to see a man kicked when he is down would send votes against us," he told his leader.[9] Ipswich had been lost in February on a swing of 10.3 per cent and the loss of West Fulham in April compounded the worry since it was a "key seat" whose loss at a general election would be a danger sign for the government. Hacking remained hopeful that "when we are able to be more emphatic we can expect to do better"[10]; and as the summer advanced so too did Conservative fortunes. There were good results at Aylesbury, West Derbyshire, Stafford and Willesden, although the CRD cautioned that some of these results, most notably that at West Derbyshire, illustrated the vulnerability of the government candidate should the Liberals choose not to run.

Hacking was not altogether enamoured of the policies Chamberlain pursued during the Czechoslovakian crisis. As Headlam records on 19 September, "Hacking had no news - but seemed rather dubious about what appears to be Neville' policy - viz. to surrender - or make the Czechs surrender - their frontier and to allow the Reich to absorb the Sudetens." Nevertheless, when the Munich agreement was signed, he loyally put the full support of Central Office behind the Prime Minister and, aware of the unease in some quarters of the party, published a pamphlet, Chamberlain the Peacemaker, which Central Office encouraged associations to purchase and distribute. But he was strongly against any attempt to call a snap election, largely because he believed that the bitterness engendered would put the goodwill of the trade unions at risk. He confided in the journalist, Collin Brooks, his view that rearmament was impossible without that goodwill, and that to achieve it, there might need to be a broader basis to the government. "It may seem strange to you, with your right-wing views, that we have to tolerate such a position that we cannot defend the nation against the will of the unions, but there it is. It is part of the price we have to pay for this alleged democracy."[11] His preferred option was to delay a few months, but to hold an election "before people have forgotten the gas masks." It is not altogether clear where he stood in relation to the dissidents, but one thing is certain - he had no wish to throw candidates into the field against them because fighting men like Churchill, Duff Cooper and Harold Nicolson, they would have no realistic chance of victory. As late as mid November analysis of a possible election showed no sign of any deterioration in the party's position vis-à-vis 1935, but in the next fortnight the outlook became far less promising and David Clarke at the CRD counselled that "only a small turnover of votes would defeat the Government." By December Chamberlain had abandoned any thought of an early election and his Party Chairman was in full agreement. Although the party had held the seat in the by-election precipitated by the Duchess of Atholl in Kinross, and had won a hotly contested by-election in Oxford City, Dartford and Bridgewater had been lost, the latter to an independent on a swing of 7.6% against the Government. Nor did Hacking think the international situation conducive to an early election. The atmosphere was too febrile. As late as February, he thought the Government should "hold off an election as long as possible". By the summer, the intention was to go the country in October, all being well. Hacking indicated this publicly in June, when he also gave strong support to conscription, but he made it clear that Hitler's actions would determine whether or not the Government would go to the country. It is highly probable that, had they been able to so, it would have won a third term.

When the war came, Hacking circulated a request from the authorities that associations close down for the duration of the war "in the interests of the economy", but he was left "greatly worried about the party's position.... whatever the duration of the war may be, it will be disastrous if, when hostilities have ceased, we find ourselves confronted with a situation where the other parties are in possession of their organisation and ours has ceased to exist."[12] With the Labour Party able to rely heavily on the trade unions, this was a more than reasonable fear, and, as the National Union Executive were told, he felt very strongly that the party must maintain a separate political existence as the war would promote state intervention and collectivism.[13] However, on 26 September the three major parties agreed upon a truce so far as contesting by-elections was concerned. The Nuffield study of the 1945 election suggests that "it involved a complete lapse of political activity in the constituencies", but that was not the case, nor was there any formal disbanding of the staff of constituency organisations. However, there was substantial erosion as war service removed many MPs and their agents for the duration. While the Party's Central Council in April 1940 called for the suspension of party strife in the interests of national unity, it also passed unanimously a resolution "that constituency associations should use every means to maintain their organisations at full strength, in order to provide facilities for members of the party to make such contributions as they can to the great war effort of the nation."[14] This reinforced an earlier message despatched by the Executive Committee urging associations to maintain their organisation "in as complete a state of efficiency as present circumstances will permit".

While a number of associations closed down or practically ceased to exist in the first months of the war, as late as March 1941 reports reaching party headquarters suggested that in many constituencies the efforts to maintain an efficient organisation were proving successful and that there were very few where the associations were completely inactive. Such reports were probably over-optimistic, but the decline in party political activity was probably more drawn out than many accounts of the period suggest. Crowson, for example, has drawn our attention to associations who urged greater efforts to counteract defeatism and pacifism and others who were critical of the war effort, while the public expressions of confidence in the spring of 1940, endorsing the Government's ability to prosecute the war with vigour, almost certainly suggest associations sufficiently in touch to be aware of a growing tide of public dissatisfaction.[15]

In July 1940 he asked R.A.Butler to undertake a programme of research into the currents of opinion in the country "with a view eventually to adjusting the Party's outlook to the radically different trends of thought which prevail at a time like this". Butler told Chamberlain that he hoped to use the Party to improve morale on the home front and prepare both Party and Country for the problems of reconstruction. Although little came of this immediately, the suggestion bore fruit a year later with the establishing of the Post War Problems Central Committee with Butler in the chair.

In February 1942, Hacking resigned with effect from 6 March. In an exchange of letters with Churchill, he recalled how the latter had asked him to stay on, and emphasised that "during the last two and a half years it has been my somewhat invidious duty, while maintaining the organization in the constituencies, to enjoin upon the party a policy of patience and forbearance." He claimed that this had contributed in a major way to the maintenance of national unity and Churchill acknowledged this in his reply, stating that Hacking had played a "notable part". but his worries may have extended well beyond the ban on electoral campaigning. Lunching shortly afterwards with his successor, Tommy Dugdale, and with Collin Brooks, they both told Brooks that "Winston is a difficult leader, and is not a Conservative at all, or even, perhaps, by normal standards a statesman - being a creature of 'Palace' favourites, of moods and whims and overriding egotism under his charm and geniality."

Hacking spearheaded the biggest Conservative rebellion against the Government when he led one hundred and eleven Conservatives and four National Liberals into the lobby against the Catering Wages Bill, which Bevin had persuaded Churchill and James Stuart to label uncontroversial. While the major thrust of the bill was to extend collective bargaining, the proposed commission to examine the efficiency of the industry was thought to be a step towards nationalisation. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, Malcolm McCorquodale, condemned opponents of the Bill as belonging to the Manchester School and he sought to claim the measure as Disraelian. The Tory Reform Group backed the bill, which went through, but, on his way out of the House, Hacking asked Eden whether the Government still thought the issue was uncontroversial.

However, when he asked the Government's intentions next day, Eden made it clear that the Government intended to pursue the Bill. Hacking and his colleagues tabled a large number of amendments, but with the Bill being taken in a Committee of the Whole House, it soon became clear that there was little point in pursuing them. Gracefully Hacking withdrew them all rather than waste the time of the House, but he left them on record for the minister to study in the hope that some compromise might yet be possible.

Hacking was also one of the founders of the National League for Freedom in April 1943. He had earlier speculated on "the chance of Winston's coming out against the Planners in the spring"[16], but when Churchill broadcast in March 1943, a number of Conservative MPs had set themselves to "fight the strong movement now on foot to continue unnecessary official control of trade, industry, business and private lives after the war" by forming the National League and Hacking in common with other supporters went on the become associated with Sir Ernest Benn's Society of Individualists, later the Society for Individual Freedom.

Hacking went to the Lords in Churchill's dissolution honours in 1945 as Lord Hacking of Chorley; and he again became closely engaged with the tourist industry. He was conscious of its importance as a source of invisible exports and as early as December 1943 was urging the Government to make a "Come to Britain" campaign an important part of its post-war planning. The Travel Association of Great Britain remained his main interest, although he took on other directorships. He was also a lay member of the General Medical Council and a Governor of Cranleigh School in Surrey. He died in the London Hospital on 29 July 1950 and was succeeded by his eldest son.