VISCOUNT CRANBORNEMy Lords, I realize that it is most unusual for a tribute to be paid in your Lordships' House to the memory of a member of another place, but the death of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in office justifies, I think, a relaxation of the usual customs of this House. I know that your Lordships have heard with a profound sense of shock the news of the sudden death of Sir Kingsley Wood. It is a severe loss to the nation, and to the Government, and a deep sorrow to his many friends.
I will not attempt to assess Sir Kingsley Wood's achievements at the Treasury. My noble and learned friend upon the Woolsack, who I understand intends to speak, can do that with far more authority than I. I should, however, like to say one personal word. In the days before the war, I did not always see eye to eye with Sir Kingsley on certain aspects of public policy on which we were both entitled to our views. But those issues are now happily dead, and I have been brought into close contact with him during the last two years since I have been in the Government. I have sat by his side, day after day, hour after hour, in committees, and I feel very sad to-day to know that I shall never do it again. Everyone who has had the experience of working with him will have learnt to appreciate his many and great qualities. His courage, his shrewdness, his imperturbability, his cheerfulness, and his bubbling sense of humour made him a charming and valuable colleague, and his ready accessibility and genuine desire to listen to every point of view were qualities all too rare in politics, and were probably the secret of his outstanding success as Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am very glad to have had this, opportunity to pay this brief but most sincere tribute to him, and I am sure that your Lordships will wish to extend the deep sympathy of this House to his widow.
§ LORD ADDISONMy Lords, I should like to associate myself and my friends with what the noble Viscount the Leader of the House has said, and to support his view on the Tightness, on this occasion, of making an exception to the usual procedure of your Lordships' House. I think that I can claim that I was one of those who were responsible for giving Sir Kingsley Wood his first official appoint- 62 ment. Before the termination of the last war, when I was Minister of Reconstruction, he was a great help to me in negotiating the inclusion of the approved societies in connexion with what was then the proposed Ministry of Health, and in helping me to overcome a great many difficulties to which he addressed the qualities of open-mindedness, of humour and of imperturbability to which the Leader of the House has referred. Afterwards, when I became Minister of Health in the Government of that day, I appointed Sir Kingsley Wood, though he was not of my own political Party, to be my Parliamentary Private Secretary, and that was the beginning of his association with the Department, of which, of course, he ultimately became the head.
I should like to express one's sense of deep loss, which must be very widespread to-day, at what the State and its councils must have lost by reason of Sir Kingsley's death. I never knew him to be flurried. I never knew him to lose his sense of realities, and I often used to think, from the outside, that that must surely have been one of the reasons why he became, as I think he did become, so exceedingly influential in the counsels of the Party to which he belonged. He brought an originality of mind and a readiness to accept suggestions to every office which he filled. There are two things in particular which I think we ought not to fail to mention. I believe that the establishment of the very highly successful overseas air training scheme was largely due to his assistance in the early days; and he will certainly always be known for his successful conduct of the great office in the service of which he died. I am one of those who are fully conscious of how immensely better these affairs have been managed during this war than they were in the last. What he has done in using his influence in restraining inflation, and in making it difficult to spend, and thereby diverting into savings an immense proportion of the incomes of the people, is an achievement which I think must be almost the envy of the whole world.
Finally, I think that his administration of this office brought into prominence one of his greatest qualities. I do not know that he posed as a particular authority on finance, but he did bring into his office men of great experience from the outside, who have helped to guide the nation 63 in these difficult days, and he was great enough to take their advice. For those qualities of accessibility and willingness to take the advice of men of high experience the nation owes a great deal to him, and I should like to associate myself and my noble friends whole-heartedly with what has fallen from the Leader of the House.
§ LORD MOTTISTONEMy Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Crewe, owing to domestic bereavement, I should naturally wish to associate those of us who sit on these Benches with this expression of appreciation of the great services rendered by Sir Kingsley Wood, and of our sympathy with his relatives. In my own case, I saw him so often in connexion with National Savings, to which he gave such singular help and sympathy, that I should have been glad to do so in any case, but I expressed my personal view at yesterday's sitting. On these Benches, moreover, is Lord Catto, who has been closely in contact with him all through these arduous years, and who was with him only a few hours before his death. Therefore I rise only to express on behalf of us all our sympathy, and I hope that my noble friend Lord Catto will add something to the tributes which have been paid.
§ LORD CATTOMy Lords, it is perhaps fitting that a member of your Lordships' House who has been in daily and almost hourly association with the late Sir Kingsley Wood, should add a few words to the eloquent and touching tributes which have fallen from the lips of the Leader of your Lordships' House and from the noble Lords, Lord Addison and Lord Mottistone, and which, I am sure, will fall from the lips of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. May I say, too, that I am sure my noble friend Lord Keynes, who is in Washington, would have been glad to associate himself with these tributes had he been able to be present? When, in 1940, I was invited to become Financial Adviser to the Treasury, I had no personal acquaintance with Sir Kingsley Wood, but in those anxious, difficult and dangerous days of 1940 and 1941 and since I came to know him well and to appreciate his wisdom and ripe experience. Above all, I came to appreciate those rarer qualities of heart and mind which endeared him to all who had the privilege of working with him. 64 He was at all times approachable, and he listened with courtesy and attention and with great patience to the opinions of others. More than that, he had the rare quality of sometimes accepting such opinions, and that often requires a degree of courage which we do not always appreciate. Sir Kingsley Wood had that courage in a remarkable degree; but I would add that he accepted those opinions only if his ripe judgment were convinced of their worth.
I was at a long meeting with him on Monday afternoon, and he showed no sign of strain or of fatigue; yet he has passed from amongst us with tragic suddenness. His place in the political history of the country is assured, for he died in the fullness of his powers and at the height of his success as a great war Chancellor. But it is not of his remarkable public career of which I would speak; I should like to end this tribute with just these words, speaking of the man as we knew him in the Treasury. In Sir Kingsley Wood we have lost a wise chief and a kindly friend, and the country has lost a great public servant. Our deep sympathy goes out to the gracious lady his wife and to all the members of his family.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SIMON)My Lords, at the request of the Leader of the House, I rise to add a few words to what has already been said, though indeed I feel that the tributes already paid have been so fitting that there is little I would wish to say. I am glad, however, to take part, for Sir Kingsley Wood and I were ministerial colleagues in various offices for a continuous stretch of twelve years, and after the first nine months of war, when I came to this House, he took up the task from me at the Treasury. Nobody could have had this long and intimate acquaintance with our departed friend without gaining a real admiration for his qualities and his character.
On these recurring occasions, when the wheels of Parliament are stopped for a moment that we may dwell in memory on the career of some distinguished public man, we do not aim at general and indiscriminate eulogy; we try to pick out one or two of the fine characteristic qualities which we should like to remember in the man that has gone. I will mention two, which, in an experience which now 65 covers many years, stand out very prominently in my mind as associated with the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. The first, touched upon in very moving words by the noble Lord, Lord Catto, just now, is what I may describe as his invariable energy of mind. He was never slack or indifferent about any piece of public work in which he was taking a part. He came to every committee well primed with the documents which had been circulated; he listened, as Lord Catto has said, carefully and thoughtfully. He contributed himself, and was very willing to receive: the views of others. But when he had reached his conclusion he asserted it with great clearness, great firmness and sometimes with great courage, and nothing could move him from the conclusion at which he had felt bound to arrive, except some later superior consideration.
I have never known a Minister of whom you might be so sure that he would always be at the top of his form whatever his form might be. That explains a great deal of his success. He never had the air of a weary Titan. He never claimed that the labours of Government were bearing him down and his pleasant, simple manner and confident smile, I think, tended to make people judge him at less than his real worth. If you take his first great office, the office of Postmaster-General, in three years he achieved tremendous results. By this same constant energy there were improvements made there, transformations indeed, made there, during the time that he was Postmaster-General, for which we shall always be grateful. Then I was particularly glad to hear my noble friend Lord Addison make another reference to him. When he was at the Air Ministry he had a most important part in that which to-day is a satisfaction and an encouragement to everybody engaged on the side of freedom in the war. He was one of the Ministers who carried through and helped to establish with the co-operation of the Dominion of Canada that great air training scheme in the Dominion which since then has meant so much for the cause of liberty.
The other quality which I would venture to mention is the happy knack that he had, when engaged it might be in the most intense controversy, of promoting and maintaining a level of good humour and pleasantness, with the result that I really 66 think it is true to say of him what is often said, but not always truly said, about some others, that in the course of Parliamentary life he hardly made an enemy. That quality, the ability to join in keen controversy, with high conviction on either side, and at the same time to contribute to the general ease and calm of the discussion is a quality which we all may admire but which not everybody can emulate.
These then are two of the things which I think were really characteristic of our friend. I will not attempt to prolong the list though it would be easy to do so. We do right here in this House to depart from our usual custom and take note of the passing of this distinguished Commoner, full of the business of his great office, who has contributed so much to the strength of this country in time of war, now that the place that knew him will know him no more. There was a man who has devoted all that was in him—unstinted, unswerving, single-minded—to the service of his country.