John Barnes, Historian

NOEL SKELTON (1880 - 1935)

Noel Skelton is principally remembered today for coining the phrase "a property-owning democracy". It occurred in his pamphlet Constructive Conservatism published in 1924, and was subsequently used by Eden to great effect in his post-war speeches. However, Skelton was a leading light in the loose grouping of progressive younger Conservative MPs in the 1924-29 Parliament who were nicknamed the YMCA and subsequently a leading member in a small Conservative backbench dining club that was formed very early in 1930. All its members achieved office, Skelton being the only one not to make Cabinet. In Eden's judgement that was because he died young. Writing of the 1924-29 Parliament, Harold Macmillan thought Skelton "the most striking mind and real intellectual leader of our little company.... A little older than the rest of us, he commanded not only our affection but our respect. His early death was grievous loss."[1] The many similar tributes to be found in Conservative memoirs are a fair measure of his influence, and while there is some force in Philip Williamson's that "encouraging possession of private property among the working population was an obvious strategy against Socialist collectivism and was already entering the rhetoric of Conservative leaders", the concept and the way Skelton phrased it, as Williamson acknowledges, made for "a fresh and radical restatement of Conservative 'philosophy'."[2]

Archibald Noel Skelton was born on 1 July 1880, the son of Sir John Skelton. He was educated at Trinity College, Glenalmond, at Edinburgh University, and at Christ Church, Oxford. He became a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1906. He served throughout the 1914-18 war in the Scottish Horse, a yeomanry regiment, reaching the rank of Captain.

An anonymous friend was later to recall "what he had done, between the University and the War years, to make Toryism a live creed in Scotland and to shake the rooted Scottish political tradition, hopeless though it seemed at the time. But we passed before him into Parliament, and in spite of ourselves we stood in his way." He fought his first election in December 1910 in Perthshire East, but was defeated. It was not until 1922 that he found his way into Parliament, winning the Perth division, but failing by a narrow margin to obtain an overall majority against his three opponents. His platform gifts and military record were thought to have given him an advantageous position. In 1923, however, in a straight fight with the Liberal Macgregor Mitchell, he lost, even though two of Perth's principal industries, linen and glass making, had suffered greatly from foreign competition. When Labour chose to intervene, he regained the seat in the 1924 election, beneficiary of a three cornered fight. He polled 13,022 with his Liberal opponent on 7,998 and the Socialist in third place with 5,316. Five years later, in a greatly increased electorate, he increased his vote to 14,229, but Norie-Miller, who had taken over the Liberal nomination, polled 12,669, with Labour in third place on 8,291. The threat was obvious and Skelton glad to shift to the Combined Scottish Universities, where he was returned unopposed in 1931.[3]

Skelton's maiden speech was made on the Rent Strikes Bill, and his charge that the Labour Party in moving the rejection of the Bill were moved by loot rather than legality led to a parliamentary storm. Skelton responded to continuous heckling with a quotation from Ramsay MacDonald, saying that they should behave more like a kindergarten and less like a bear garden, and when he refused to let the Labour Leader respond, pandemonium broke out. Maxton yelled: "Not one word" and Buchanan threatened to cross the floor and commit an act of violence. Eventually the Speaker had to intervene and Skelton apologised.[4]

Although ready to provoke his Labour opponents, Skelton was sensitive to the challenge they posed and his pre-war hostility to Liberalism evolved into a belief that a more progressive Conservatism was required to defeat this new challenger. Four articles in The Spectator in April/May 1923 were intended as a radical restatement of Conservative principles appropriate to the new era. He republished them in September 1924 as a pamphlet entitled Constructive Conservatism. Macmillan recalled that it "had a great effect on all the younger Members of the party." Skelton argued that it was inevitable in an era dominated by political democracy the electorate would be particularly concerned with and perceptive about issues of social conscience.[5] The appeal of Socialism lay in its comprehensive view of life and politics and Conservatism in response would have to be thought out anew. It would have to reach beyond the caretaker view of the state with which it was associated and realise that an attitude resting on a concept of restricted government and a belief in the limitations of politics would have no appeal to the mass of the electorate.[6] The key issue for them was economic status. They enjoyed political rights and educational opportunity, but the industrial and commercial regime which gave them a living afforded them little by way of recognition, initiative and responsibility. To Skelton's mind this lopsided structure of society rendered it unstable and he saw the central problem of politics as the restoration of a balanced society. The Conservative solution was to spread the ownership of property to the working class in the well-founded belief that it would act as an antidote to the collectivism of the Labour Party and he envisaged industrial co-partnership and profit sharing together with agricultural smallholding, and co-operatives as vehicles to achieve this end.[7] To describe what he was about Skelton coined the phrase "property owning democracy". Effectively he sought to give wage earners an economic status commensurate with their political enfranchisement and to "bridge the economic gulf.... Between Labour and Capital",[8] but it is important to note the stress laid on the importance of the individual: he was providing a "vehicle for the moral and economic progress of the individual".[9]

Skelton became the intellectual leader of a loose grouping of like-minded MPs, mostly young, who took a progressive line and in general backed Baldwin's leadership. They thought of themselves as Tory Democrats. Although Boothby was writing of the role of the Scottish Unionists, the success ascribed to "the enthusiasm and unquestioned brilliance of a great political teacher" could be said also of the YMCA, as this grouping was nicknamed.[10]. It is instructive to see Noel Skelton in that role and to appreciate Boothby's judgement that he made a better mentor than either Sir Robert Horne or Walter Elliot. "Like Elliot, Skelton was a superlative talker, with a tremendous gaiety and zest for life; but in the more concentrated Edinburgh tradition. He stimulated every gathering he joined; and in a flash generated the sparks of animated and provocative talk by means of audacious sallies and observations, flung out with reckless prodigality."[11]

In addition to their Parliamentary activities and speeches outside the House, the "YMCA" resorted to journalism to promote their views. Two notable articles by Skelton developed the thinking in Constructive Conservatism: in the Quarterly Review of January 1925, he published an article on 'Labour in the New Era' and in July 1926 The English Review carried his article on 'The safeguarding of British Democracy'. When in the spring of 1925 his fellow Scot, Fred McQuisten sought legislation on the Political Levy, Skelton headed a deputation to Baldwin to be him to oppose the Bill, and he was delighted when Baldwin did so. On 2 August 1925 Skelton wrote to The Times defending the Government's decision to extend a subsidy to the mining industry, but he saw this as a temporary measure, indefensible when other workers were earning less, and on 22 May 1926 in a further letter to The Times he argued strongly for an extension of working hours in the mining industry to eight. In this he was totally at one with the views of his leader. Like Baldwin, he believed strongly in the need to secure industrial peace, but he appeared to have more constructive thoughts as to how that might be achieved. When the decision was taken that a process of transferring miners out of the industry was the only way to prevent them from being unemployed in perpetuity, Skelton urged in the debate on the Address in 1928 that some should be given agricultural smallholdings. It was a scheme that had been worked with some success in the Forest of Dean.

Although he held his own seat in 1929, the Conservative Government fell. Shortly afterwards, in November 1929, he warned Macmillan, a propos of his attempts to take forward the ideas of the YMCA by way of articles and the occasional speech, "you will get no response for thought and sacrifice from the present Unionist Party. The harrow will have to go over their backs again and again before they accept the necessity of thinking."[12] If that sounded despondent, it did not signal any relaxation of Skelton's efforts to educate his party. Early in the New Year, 1930, a half dozen of the younger Conservatives agreed to meet at a weekly dinner and work closely together. Skelton, "a thought provoking young Scotsman", as Eden recalled, took the lead with Oliver Stanley, William Ormsby Gore, Walter Elliot, W.S.Morrison and Eden himself completing the table. All were left of centre in their party, and, with the exception of Skelton, all were to become Cabinet Ministers. Clearly Skelton had a gift for friendship, with both Eden and Macmillan not only claiming him as a close friend in their memoirs, but prepared to rescue his reputation from the mists of time.

When forty four Conservative MPs called for a change in the party leadership in October 1930, Skelton penned a powerful defence of Baldwin in a letter to The Times.[13] He argued that his "assassination" would have a "deleterious effect" on both the nation and public life and on the position and prestige of the Conservative Party. The letter is worth quoting as a formidable piece of advocacy:

(1)   Mr Baldwin is trusted and respected by the country as a whole as no leading member of the Conservatives, or of any other party, is to-day. At a time when distrust and contempt for 'politicians' is growing apace, there is a steady, deep-seated confidence in the soundness of Mr Baldwin's judgment, character, and aims.

(2)   Mr Baldwin has satisfied the great mass of the electorate that, under his leadership, the Conservative Party is a national, not a class, party, and that its policy is directed to the general good, not to sectional advantage.

(3)   These two predominant features of Mr Baldwin's leadership would be at any time a very great asset to the Conservative Party. They are to-day of special and paramount importance. For the immediate task of the Conservative part is to secure at the next election the substitution of a protective for a free trade system. Just because the electorate trusts and respects Mr Baldwin's judgment, character, and aims, and recognises that, with him, national interests, not class or sectional, come first, it will trust him with making this momentous change. To whom else would, in this matter, the country give - or be right to give - 'a free hand'? To jettison Mr Baldwin is to jeopardise the policy for which Conservatives stand.

(4)   For what would the country think of the deed? Widespread suspicion would surely be roused that the Conservative Party wanted a leader more complacent to the private solicitations of sectional interests, of the Press, of 'big business'. In such an atmosphere what chance would protection have of being accepted by the nation?

In Skelton's view, the electorate would infer that the party was at heart devoted to class and sectional interests and that would forge a weapon for its enemies and prove a fatal admission for itself. What was needed, he believed, was not a change in the leadership, but a change of some of its personnel in the Commons.

Baldwin survived and beat off a fresh challenge to his leadership in March 1931, but neither he nor Skelton could have conceived of the events that secured Baldwinism in the Conservative party, the creation of a National Government in August, the decision to go to the country as a National Government, and the massive victory that brought into the Commons a large number of younger Conservatives who knew that their survival at the next General Election would depend upon the moderation of their party's stance.

Skelton may well have benefited from his steady support of Baldwin's leadership. Although he had acquired a considerable reputation amongst his contemporaries, and had been tipped by The Times on 7 December 1926 as a possible candidate for Financial and Parliamentary Secretary at the Admiralty, he had not been given junior office in the 1924-29 Government. Williamson suggests that this was because his "qualities were imperfectly communicated to wider audiences", and younger contemporaries obtained preferment as a result. It is far from clear that this was the case. Skelton was an able platform speaker, and while it is true that Ormsby Gore, Davidson, Kingsley Wood, Sassoon, Duff Cooper, Hacking, Moore-Brabazon, Elliott, Williams and even Winterton were younger, there were others equally able who did not find their way into office, Eden, Oliver Stanley, Morrison, Boothby and Macmillan amongst them. For whatever reason, Skelton had evidently not found favour with the whips.

He was appointed Under Secretary of State for Scotland on 3 September 1931 with a Liberal, Sir Archibald Sinclair, as his chief, Shortly afterwards he was taken ill and had to miss the Weaver's dinner at which he was due to speak. Evidently it was not serious since he was continued in office after the landslide to the National Government in October. Health, housing and education were his responsibilities in the Scottish Office: while there was the odd flurry, most notably when a newly elected Labour majority in Glasgow determined to pay more Poor Law Benefit and was told by the local official that it would then have to treat every application individually - Skelton upheld the decision - for the most part his work attracted little attention. He was reappointed in June 1935. He successfully contested one of the three University seats, but died on 22 November 1935 in an Edinburgh nursing home. Polling had closed, but the votes had yet to be counted. In these unprecedented circumstances, the returning officer ruled that if he had achieved sufficient votes, he would be declared elected posthumously and that there would then have to be a by-election. That proved to be the case, and an opportunity afforded to Ramsay MacDonald, who had lost at Seaham, to return to the Commons almost immediately.

Skelton's death was not entirely unexpected, but was felt to be something of a tragedy. "He had found his place in the House of Commons and in the country", one of his friends wrote in The Times, "but it is one of the frustrations of our time that we shall not see Noel stretched to his full measure, and grappling with a task adequate to call out his full resources.... He proved again to our days how to combine a European outlook and culture with a personality purely and intensely Scots in peace and war, in Parliament and out.... He gave salt and savour and a heightened tension to any company where he found himself; and he was a true friend."[14] Sir Godfrey Collins, who had succeeded Sinclair at the Scottish Office in 1932, wrote that "in all matters affecting Scotland, he has been to me a wise counsellor, a loyal and able colleague, and a true friend." He added that for "his personal character, his qualities of mind and heart, his enthusiasm, his courage, and his modesty, all who knew him felt the deepest admiration."[15] Of the dead, it is always nil nisi bonum, but the tributes ring true.