Reginald Maudling (7 March 1917 – 14 February 1979)The Papers of Reginald Maudling Churchill Archives Centre, Archivesearch. Retrieved 29 October 2021 was a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1962 to 1964 and as Home Secretary from 1970 to 1972. From 1955 until the late 1960s, he was spoken of as a prospective Conservative leader, and he was twice seriously considered for the post; he was Edward Heath's chief rival in 1965. He also held directorships in several British financial firms.
As Home Secretary, he was responsible for the UK Government's Northern Ireland policy during the period that included Bloody Sunday. In July 1972, he resigned as Home Secretary due to an unrelated scandal in one of the companies of which he was director.
Early life Reginald Maudling was born in Woodside Park, North Finchley, and was named after his father, Reginald George Maudling, an actuary at R. Watson & Sons and Public Valuer, who contracted to do actuarial and financial calculations as the Commercial Calculating Company Ltd. The family moved to Bexhill to escape German air raids; Maudling won scholarships to the Merchant Taylors' School and Merton College, Oxford.
He stayed out of undergraduate politics at Oxford, and studied the works of Hegel; he was to formulate his conclusions later as to the inseparability of economic and political freedom: "the purpose of State control and the guiding principle of its application is the achievement of true freedom". He obtained a first class Greats degree.Shepherd 2004
Political career Shortly after graduating, Maudling set up a meeting with Harold Nicolson to discuss whether it would be better, as a moderate conservative, to join the Conservative Party or National Labour; Nicolson advised him to wait. Maudling was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1940. However, he did not practise as a barrister, having volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Second World War.
Owing to poor eyesight he took desk jobs in the RAF intelligence branch, where he rose—as a "Wingless Wonder", as officers who were not qualified to wear pilot's wings were nicknamed—to the rank of flight lieutenant; he was then appointed Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair.Baston, Reggie, Chapter 2
Parliamentary candidate Maudling wrote an essay on Conservative policy in November 1943, recommending that the Conservatives neither imitate the Labour Party nor reflexively oppose all controls; in the general election of July 1945, he was selected as parliamentary candidate for Heston and Isleworth, a newly created constituency in Middlesex, although there were four applicants and he had no ties to that constituency. In the subsequent Labour landslide Maudling was defeated like many others, although Heston and Isleworth had been expected to be a safe Conservative seat. After its defeat in the 1945 general election, the Conservative Party engaged in an extensive rethink of its policy. Maudling argued that the Party had depended excessively on outdated economic slogans and the popularity of Winston Churchill.
In November 1945, Maudling became the first staff member of the Conservative Parliamentary Secretariat, later the Conservative Research Department, where he was head of the Economic Section. He persuaded the party to accept much of the Labour government's nationalisation programme and social services while cutting government spending. In March 1946, Maudling was chosen as the prospective candidate for Barnet, close to his birthplace in Finchley, and began giving speeches there. Labour had unexpectedly won the seat in 1945, but it was considered to be marginal. In 1950, Maudling was elected as Member of Parliament with an absolute majority.Baston, Reggie, Chapters 3–5; "professional politician" (as opposed to gentleman amateur, born to politics, p. 49. Maudling had 53% of the vote in a three-party contest; the Conservative lead was 10,534 out of 70,687.
Member of Parliament and Cabinet Following the 1951 election, Churchill made Maudling a junior Minister at the Ministry of Civil Aviation. However, his experience of preparing economic policy led to his speaking on behalf of the Treasury on the 1952 budget and thus to an appointment, later that year, as Economic Secretary to the Treasury. With his mentor Rab Butler as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Maudling worked to reduce taxes and controls in order to move from post-war austerity to affluence. When Anthony Eden took over as prime minister in 1955, Maudling was promoted to head a department as Minister of Supply. He supported the invasion of Suez.
The Ministry was responsible for aircraft production and supplying the armed forces, and Maudling came to agree with critics who argued that it was an unnecessary intermediary; he therefore recommended its abolition. Although supportive of Harold Macmillan's appointment as prime minister over the rival claims of Butler in 1957, Maudling found himself in difficulties over his position in the new government. He refused to continue at the Ministry of Supply and also rejected an offer of the Ministry of Health because Iain Macleod, with whom he had a rivalry, had held the post five years earlier and Maudling did not want to be seen as five years behind him.
Macmillan appointed Maudling to the post of Paymaster General and spokesman in the House of Commons for the Ministry of Fuel and Power, which was technically a demotion. Nine months later, Maudling had proved his usefulness; Macmillan brought him into the Cabinet on 17 September 1957, where he acted more as a Minister without Portfolio: he had specific responsibility for persuading the six members of the embryonic European Economic Community, who had recently signed the Treaty of Rome, to abandon their proposal for a customs union in favour of a wider free-trade area where each country would preserve their own external tariffs. However, Maudling's lack of international experience led him to underestimate the importance of the nascent Community and what was constructive in it. Faced with widespread rejection of the proposals, Maudling aroused hostility in Bonn and Paris by seeking to play off the Germans against the French.
On 14 November 1958, six months after the election of General de Gaulle as premier, Jacques Soustelle, the French Minister of Information, confirmed to the Press that France would reject the Maudling plan. Two days later, the British delegation to the Community formally called an end to accession negotiations. Maudling later revised his proposals, which were to form the basis of the European Free Trade Association.
Meanwhile, Maudling became an underwriting member of Lloyd's of London in December 1957, although his assets were somewhat below average for other 'names'.Baston, Reggie, Chapter 6–8
President of the Board of Trade Maudling entered the front line of politics after the 1959 election when appointed President of the Board of Trade. He was responsible for introducing the government's proposals to help areas of high unemployment. This was achieved by paying grants to companies to create new plants in these deprived areas, and also by the government taking over unused land for development. Maudling also succeeded in negotiating a free trade agreement between the countries outside the Common Market; this became the European Free Trade Association and was some compensation for his failure to negotiate a free trade area with the Common Market. Maudling was opposed to any proposal to join the Common Market on the basis that it would end Britain's right to make commercial agreements with New Zealand and Australia. He was later to remark that "I can think of no more retrograde step economically or politically". This comment was to be quoted against him when, less than two years later, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of the reopening of negotiations for Common Market membership.Beloff, N., p. 87.
Colonial Secretary Reginald Maudling was for a short time, as Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1961, responsible for the process of decolonisation. In this position he chaired constitutional conferences for Jamaica, Northern Rhodesia and Trinidad and Tobago which prepared them for independence; his plan for Northern Rhodesia was controversial and he had to threaten resignation before it was approved. However, Maudling was keen to return to economic policy, and seized his opportunity when Macmillan made it clear in private that he supported a voluntary incomes policy. Maudling promptly made his case in public, and three weeks later was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in Macmillan's "Night of the Long Knives" attempt to rejuvenate his Cabinet.Baston, Reggie, Chapters 9 and 10
Chancellor of the Exchequer As Chancellor, Maudling soon cut purchase tax and bank interest rates.Edmund Dell, The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945–90 (HarperCollins, 1997) pp 283–303, covers his term as Chancellor. His 1963 budget"April – The Chancellor, Reginald Maudling, announces the Budget" Illingworth Exhibition: Cartoons of the 1960s. Contemporary cartoon of the budget announcement. Retrieved 25 February 2008. aimed at "expansion without inflation". Following a period of economic difficulty, with a growth target of 4%, Maudling was able to remove income tax from owner-occupiers' residential premises. He also abolished the rate of duty on home-brewed beer which in effect legalised it. This was the period in which Maudling was at his most popular within the Conservative Party and in the country.
However, later commentators have been less kind to Maudling: Harold Wilson and his Chancellor James Callaghan (who nevertheless sounded out Maudling for the governorship of the Bank of England in 1966)Baston, Chapter 16 blamed the "dash for growth" that followed the 1963 budget for increasing sterling's chronic instability between 1964 and 1967 and by greatly increasing domestic demand the budget certainly exacerbated the existing balance of payments problem. Maudling largely recognised this himself by the time of the 1964 budget and, although he increased taxes, he did little to subdue demand in an election year.
First unsuccessful leadership bid By 1963, during the Profumo affair, there was talk, encouraged by Martin Redmayne (Chief Whip) and Lord Poole (Party Chairman), of Maudling succeeding Macmillan as prime minister. Maudling visited Butler (then Deputy Prime Minister) and obtained a mutual promise that they would, if necessary, agree to serve under one another; Maudling believed that he had gained an advantage in obtaining the agreement of Butler, his senior, to serve under him if necessary. William Rees-Mogg claimed in The Times on 28 July that Butler led Maudling by 2:1 in the Cabinet, although Maudling had more support amongst backbench MPs.Howard 1987, pp. 300–2
Macmillan's sudden illness and announcement of his resignation in October 1963 came at a time when Maudling's support had fallen. He was also poorly received at the Conservative Party conference (which had become a launching-pad for the party leadership), despite having received coaching from Iain Macleod, in how to deliver his speech. When he was back in London the following week, a process of 'consultation', by Lord Chancellor Dilhorne and by Redmayne, determined that Foreign Secretary Lord Home, rather than Maudling or Butler, would be the best choice for compromise candidate. Enoch Powell, Macleod, Hailsham and Maudling (known as 'the Quad' in some accounts of the following days) sought to persuade Butler to refuse to serve under Home, in the hope of ensuring that Butler rather than Home would have to become prime minister. Macleod and Maudling demanded that Dilhorne lay the results of his consultations before the Cabinet, but he refused.Howard 1987, p. 316-21