HL Deb 30 April 1946 vol 140 cc912-6

2.37 p.m.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON)

My Lords, I am sure it is in accordance with your Lordships' wishes that the first business on our re-assembly should be to pay tribute to a very distinguished member of this House who has died since we separated—Lord Keynes. It is very difficult to estimate the extent or our loss, the extent of our national loss, and even the extent of the international loss which has followed the death of Lord Keynes. He had a penetration and clarity in complicated matters that in my estimation amounted to genius, and the country owes more than we can yet clearly appreciate to the guidance which he gave us in very critical times.

It seems almost as if it were only the other day that we heard him speaking from the Bench opposite on the subject of the American Loan in a brilliant, penetrating discourse, to which it was a joy to listen, and which I am sure will be a perpetual inspiration to read. It was an exceptional Parliamentary performance, and I am sure that all your Lordships, whatever your views on the merits of the matter under discussion, were united in appreciating it from that aspect. Lord Keynes had the happy knack of dealing with highly complicated issues without using jargon. He made them plain to ordinary people. To those of us, including myself, who made no pretence to having penetrated the so-called mysteries of high finance, he made things clear and understandable. He made the principles clear. As with his speeches, so with his writings. Those of your Lordships who have had the advantage, as many of your Lordships have had, of reading his departmental memoranda, will doubtless treasure them for their scholarship, their wit, and the apt and penetrating way in which they pointed to conclusions. I know of few Government papers that can compare with those for which Lord Keynes was responsible, in the delight which they give us to re-read.

Those inside the circles of Government of course knew the value of the advice and guidance that Lord Keynes gave, and appreciated the great debt that was owed to him. I believe it is true to say that his loss almost spread dismay amongst the ranks of those who were in the best position to judge the high value of his services. As a matter of fact, if we review his exposition of the principles of national financial policy during the last twenty-five years we shall I think agree that the mass of the people of this country owe much more to Lord Keynes than they suspect. They certainly owe to him a great deal of their ability to buy things during a time of scarcity. They certainly owe a great deal to him in the fact that at the end of these difficult years their savings are greater than ever. It is impossible at a moment when his loss is so recent, to appreciate what the country really does owe to Lord Keynes for the guidance he has given us and the help he has rendered in matters vital to the life, the well-being, matters such as the weekly earnings and the weekly living costs of millions of people. I doubt not, my Lords, that his memorial in the history of this country will be found most fittingly in the benefits to the lives and well-being of the mass of the people which followed the policies he advocated. I am sure your Lordships will wish me to associate with this tribute to the memory of a great public: servant our heartfelt sympathy with his widow and his aged parents.

2.46 p.m.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

My Lords, it is right that in this House, where only so short time ago he made his last great speech, we should pay our tribute to one who was a prophetic teacher and a great public servant. There can be no doubt that Keynes's influence on economic thought was revolutionary. I suppose that the only parallel of an economist with equal influence is to be found in Adam Smith, but I think Keynes's influence was even more remarkable. Adam Smith propounded an economic philosophy which made a ready appeal to the sentiments and to the commercial trend of his time. He found his public, so to speak, ready-made and receptive. Keynes preached a faith which in important aspects challenged long-established doctrine and dogma and which ran counter to very strong nationalistic sentiment and nationalistic prejudices in the postwar world after the last war. I think it is all the more remarkable that he succeeded so well and so quickly.

Sooner or later great economic writers have influenced the men of State, generally at second hand. It was given to Keynes not only to inspire and instruct but himself to play a leading part; and a leading part it certainly was. At times, indeed, he was so far ahead that others could not follow, or could not follow at once. But he was receptive enough and human enough to accept limitations and practical compromises. Towards the end this must have been specially hard for him, for only he and those nearest him knew how he was taxing his strength and how he was wearing himself out. He must indeed, in those last months, have echoed the cry of another: "So much to do: so little time to do it in."

Wherein lay the secret of his signal success? There was his burning faith in what he taught; there was his gift of expression, equally clear and cogent in the written or the spoken word. There was equally his very human sympathy, and his ability to see the picture whole, which perhaps was why he was so often right. He gave all he had, his great gifts of mind and character and more than his strength, to the service of his country and of the world. Quite literally, he was a casualty of the peace, giving his life to try to build the peace for which others had died in war. He leaves affectionate and grateful memories in many walks of life which will live as long as the youngest of his friends and disciples survives; and he leaves a memorial which will last longer still in the faith he taught and lived long enough to see, in part at any rate, come true.

2.50 p.m.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, it is often said that this is an age of specialists and of narrowed lives, but we have among us from time to time examples of many-sided talent. John Maynard Keynes was certainly such an one. He was a man of wide knowledge and broad culture; he was devoted to the arts, especially to the theatre, music, painting and literature. He was himself gifted with an admirable prose style, and was an excellent speaker and a brilliant conversationalist. He did not allow his energies, however, to be dissipated by diffusion but concentrated on his own subject, economics, theoretical and applied. There he was supreme. It is seldom that the word "genius" is used in application to an economist, but it is the one that comes naturally to the lips when one is speaking of Keynes. His influence spread wide and sank deep. He was indeed one of the seminal minds of this generation of mankind.

Speaking from this Bench perhaps I may be allowed to recall that he was in politics all his life a Liberal. When, not quite twenty years ago, we faced the task of reshaping British Liberalism in the light of twentieth century economics and of reformulating its creed and policy, a book was written which had considerable influence in this country and elsewhere, in the universities and on the platforms, and which was reflected not least in many parts of the programme of the present Government. On that work Keynes's mind, fertile in ideas, very practical in their application, left its stamp more than that of any other man.

But he had his greatest opportunity and rendered his most valuable service in the management of our national finances during the late war. It is commonly agreed that those finances were far better managed during the second world war than during the first, and that was due to the fact that the Government of the day had at its disposal a galaxy of outstanding talent, drawn from the worlds of industry and finance, from the civil service and from the universities. Among those men Keynes was unquestionably the leader. Declining any remuneration, out of sheer public spirit and love of the work, he served at the Treasury all through the war, giving all that he had and, as it proved, physically more than he had, to the service of his country and, through it, to the service of the world. His last speech in your Lordships' House was undoubtedly his greatest speech. Although he looked so ill after his return from his labours in America, he spoke with much energy. That speech was a model of cogent argument, illuminated by brilliance and by wit, and it had a profound effect at a critical moment upon your Lordships' House and upon the nation. How we shall miss him in the years to come in this difficult and dangerous field of the management of the public finances! He leaves to his devoted wife and family proud and precious memories, and to the world a great and honoured name.