Alec Douglas-Home

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The Rt Hon. Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Image:alechome.jpg
Period in Office: 19 October 1963 – 16 October 1964
PM Predecessor: Harold Macmillan
PM Successor: Harold Wilson
Date of Birth: July 2, 1903
Place of Birth: Mayfair, London
Political Party: Conservative
Retirement honour: Life Barony (Home of the Hirsel)

The Right Honourable Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, KT,1 PC (2 July 1903–9 October 1995), 14th Earl of Home from 1951 to 1963, was a British politician, and served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a year from October 1963 to October 1964. As such, he held a series of records: He was the last member of the House of Lords to be appointed Prime Minister, the only Prime Minister to resign from the Lords and contest a by-election to enter the House of Commons and, to date, the last Prime Minister to be personally chosen by a British monarch.

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Early life

Douglas-Home was born in Mayfair, London, the eldest son of Lord Dunglass, the eldest son of the 12th Earl of Home. After his father's succession to the Earldom in 1918 he held the courtesy title Lord Dunglass. His brother was the dramatist, William Douglas-Home. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.

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Cricket Career

He was a keen cricketer at school, club and county level. He represented the MCC, Middlesex CCC, Oxford University Cricket Club, HDG Leveson-Gower's XI, Free Foresters and Harlequins at first-class level, playing under the name "Lord Dunglass", his title at the time. Between 1924 and 1927 Dunglass played 10 first-class matches, scoring 147 runs at an average of 16.33 and a best score of 37 not out. As a right-arm fast-medium bowler he took 12 wickets at an average of 30.25 with a best of 3 for 43. Three of his first-class games were against Argentina on the MCC tour of South America in 1926-27. After Home had retired as prime minister, he became president of the MCC in 1966. 1977 to 1989 Lord Home was Governor of I Zingari, the well-known nomadic cricket team.

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Political Life

He became Conservative MP for Lanark in 1931. His aristocratic roots gave him a head start in the party as it then was, and he was soon appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Neville Chamberlain, witnessing at first hand the latter's attempts to stave off World War II through negotiation with Adolf Hitler. He was gravely ill with spinal tuberculosis in 1938.

He lost his parliamentary seat in the 1945 general election, but regained it in 1950. However he was forced to resign it in 1951, when he inherited his father's seat in the House of Lords, becoming 14th Earl of Home.

This did not blunt his political aspirations, though. Lord Home, as he then was, served not only as Commonwealth Secretary from 1955 but, from 1957, also as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council (the latter twice; briefly in 1957 and subsequently from 1959). Home traded all three for the Foreign Office in 1960. In 1962, he was created a knight of the Order of the Thistle — the highest honour outside the nobility available to a Scot — which entitled him to be styled "Sir" after later renouncing his earldom.

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Appointment as Prime Minister

In 1963, the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, suddenly resigned when diagnosed with prostate cancer from which he was (wrongly) not expected to recover. At the time, the rules of Conservative Party stated that a leader was not to be selected by a vote of party members, but rather by a decision of the party's elder statesmen. Though Rab Butler, nominally the "Deputy Prime Minister" (though officially no such constitutional office then existed, with the title on its rare usages being an honorific one), was the favourite among Conservative MPs, Home was preferred by the elder statesmen, some of whom indicated that they would refuse to serve in cabinet under Butler or the other potential candidate, Quintin Hogg, then Lord Hailsham. Macmillan advised Queen Elizabeth II of the opinion of the senior figures in the party. Though it was argued that he had no right to advise the Queen as to whom to invite to Kiss Hands as Prime Minister, and the Queen was under no obligation to accept his advice, the Queen duly invited the Earl of Home to become Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.

Home, the first British Prime Minister born in the 20th century, believed it would be impractical to serve as PM from the Lords (it was widely believed that Lord Curzon had not been invited to become prime minister in the 1920s because of his seat in the Lords). Using the Peerage Act 1963 passed earlier in the same year after Tony Benn's campaign to renounce his peerage, Home disclaimed his Earldom and, as "Sir Alec Douglas-Home", contested a by-election in the safe seat of Kinross & West Perthshire. Home duly won, entering the history books as (probably) the last peer to become Prime Minister and the only Prime Minister to resign the Lords to enter the Commons. In 1965, the rules of the Conservative Party were changed so that the party leader would henceforth be selected by the 1922 Committee, which consists of the parliamentary members of the Party.

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Defeat and opposition

Douglas-Home could point to few accomplishments in office. After the Profumo Affair and other problems, the government had been too badly damaged to survive. The October 1964 general election was won by the Labour Party under the new leadership of Harold Wilson, but by a much narrower margin than was expected. It was in this campaign that Home made his most famous remark. Wilson kept gibing that Home was not a man of a people as he was the 14th Earl of Home. Home's response: "As far as the 14th Earl is concerned I suppose that Mr. Wilson, when you come to think of it, is the 14th Mr. Wilson".

Home remained leader of the party until his resignation in July of the following year. The resulting leadership election was won by Edward Heath, who defeated Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell. Over the following six years, Home was notably loyal to Heath, comparing those who questioned his position with impatient gardeners who would keep digging up a tree to gauge its progress by examining its roots. When, in 1970, Heath became prime minister, Home returned to the post of Foreign Secretary which was deemed to suit him so well.

In 1973 Home intimated his intention to retire from Parliament and government at the next general election, but was overtaken by the calling of a snap general election in February 1974. Following the defeat of the Heath government by that of Harold Wilson in 1974, Home retired from front-line politics, standing down from the Commons at the October 1974 election.

He was then restored to the House of Lords when he accepted a life peerage, becoming known as Baron Home of the Hirsel (The Hirsel being his family seat in Berwickshire), and continued to appear in the House of Lords into his nineties. To date, Home ranks as the third-longest-lived British Prime Minister, behind James Callaghan and Harold Macmillan. His autobiography, The Way The Wind Blows, was published in 1976. On his death at Coldstream in 1995, he was succeeded as Earl of Home by his son, David.

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Titles from birth to death

Arms of Alec Douglas-Home
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Arms of Alec Douglas-Home
  • Alexander Douglas-Home, Esq (1903–1918)
  • Lord Dunglass (1918–1931)
  • Lord Dunglass, MP (1931–1945)
  • Lord Dunglass (1945–1950)
  • Lord Dunglass, MP (1950–1951)
  • The Right Honourable Lord Dunglass, MP (1951)
  • The Right Honourable The Earl of Home, PC (1951–1962)
  • The Right Honourable The Earl of Home, KT, PC (1962–1963)
  • The Right Honourable Sir Alexander Douglas-Home, KT, PC (1963–1974)
  • The Right Honourable The Lord Home of the Hirsel, KT, PC (1974–1995)
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Nicknames

Home was referred to as 'Baillie Vass' by the magazine Private Eye. This running joke began in 1964 when a provincial newspaper, the Aberdeen Evening Express, accidentally used a picture of Home over a caption referring to a baillie called Vass. Private Eye then affected to believe that Home was an imposter whom the newspaper had unmasked, and the magazine maintained this conceit until Home's death.

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Sir Alec Douglas-Home's Government, October 1963 – October 1964

For a full list of Ministerial office-holders, see Conservative Government 1957-1964.

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Changes

  • April 1964: Quintin McGarel Hogg becomes Secretary of State for Education and Science. Sir Edward Boyle leaves the Cabinet.


Preceded by:
The Viscount Swinton		 Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
1955–1960		 Succeeded by:
Duncan Sandys
Preceded by:
The Marquess of Salisbury		 Leader of the House of Lords
1957–1960		 Succeeded by:
The Viscount Hailsham
Preceded by:
The Marquess of Salisbury		 Lord President of the Council
1957		 Succeeded by:
The Viscount Hailsham
Preceded by:
The Viscount Hailsham		 Lord President of the Council
1959–1960		 Succeeded by:
The Viscount Hailsham
Preceded by:
Selwyn Lloyd		 Foreign Secretary
1960–1963		 Succeeded by:
Rab Butler
Preceded by:
Harold Macmillan		 Prime Minister
1963–1964		 Succeeded by:
Harold Wilson
Leader of the British Conservative Party
1963–1965		 Succeeded by:
Edward Heath
Preceded by:
Michael Stewart		 Foreign Secretary
1970–1974		 Succeeded by:
James Callaghan


Preceded by:
Charles Douglas-Home		 Earl of Home
(Disclaimed)		 Succeeded by:
David Douglas-Home
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Notes

1 The family name and title of Home are both pronounced Hume.

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References

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Douglas-Home"
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