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William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford

William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford, PC, PC (NI), DL (23 June 1865 – 8 June 1932), known as Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Bt, from 1919 to 1929 and popularly known as Jix, was an English solicitor and Conservative Party politician.

The Viscount Brentford
Home Secretary
In office
7 November 1924 – 5 June 1929
Prime MinisterStanley Baldwin
Preceded byArthur Henderson
Succeeded byJ. R. Clynes
Minister of Health
In office
27 August 1923 – 22 January 1924
Prime MinisterStanley Baldwin
Preceded byNeville Chamberlain
Succeeded byJohn Wheatley
Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Office in Cabinet)
In office
25 May 1923 – 27 August 1923
Prime MinisterStanley Baldwin
Preceded byArchibald Boyd-Carpenter
Succeeded byWalter Guinness (from 5 October 1923)
Personal details
BornWilliam Hicks (1865-06-23)23 June 1865
Plaistow Hall, Kent
Died8 June 1932(1932-06-08) (aged 66)
London
NationalityEnglish
Political partyConservative
Spouse(s)Grace Lynn Joynson
(d. 1952)

He first attracted attention in 1908 when he defeated Winston Churchill, a Liberal Cabinet Minister at the time, in a by-election for the seat of North-West Manchester but is best known as a long-serving and controversial Home Secretary in Stanley Baldwin's Second Government from 1924 to 1929. He gained a reputation for strict authoritarianism, opposing Communism and clamping down on nightclubs and what he saw as indecent literature. He also played an important role in the fight against the introduction of the Church of England Revised Prayer Book, and in lowering the voting age for women from 30 to 21.

Early life and career

Background and early life

William Hicks, as he was initially called, was born in Canonbury, London on 23 June 1865.[1] He was the eldest of four sons and two daughters of Henry Hicks, of Plaistow Hall, Kent, and his wife Harriett, daughter of William Watts. Hicks was a prosperous merchant and senior evangelical Anglican layman[2] who demanded the very best from his children.[3]

William Hicks was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London (1875–81).[4][1] He "took the pledge" (to abstain from alcohol) at the age of 14 and kept it all his life.[1]

Marriage

In 1894 while on holiday, he met Grace Lynn Joynson, daughter of a silk manufacturer. Her father was also a Manchester evangelical Tory. They were married on 12 June 1895. In 1896 he added his wife's name "Joynson" to his surname.[5][1]

Joynson Hicks

After leaving school, Hicks was articled to a London solicitor between 1881 and 1887, before setting up his own practice in 1888. Initially he struggled to attract clients, but he was helped by his father's position as a leading member of the City Common Council and as Deputy Chairman of the London General Omnibus Company, for whom he did a great deal of claims work.[4][1] His law firm was still operating as late as 1989, when a guide to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 was published as Joynson-Hicks on UK Copyright.[1]

In 1989, Joynson-Hicks merged with Taylor Garrett to form Taylor Joynson Garrett which itself merged with German law firm Wessing & Berenberg-Gossler to form Taylor Wessing in 2002.

Early attempts to enter Parliament

He joined the Conservative Party (at that time part of the Unionist coalition, which name it retained until 1925) and was selected as a Conservative Parliamentary candidate in 1898. He unsuccessfully contested seats in Manchester in the general elections of 1900 and 1906, losing to Winston Churchill. On the latter occasion, he made anti-semitic speeches. At the time, there was an influx of Russian Jews fleeing from pogroms, which had caused Arthur Balfour's government to pass the Aliens Act 1905).[1]

Motoring expert

Joynson-Hicks was an early authority on transport law, particularly motoring law. In 1906 he published "The Law of Heavy and Light Mechanical Traction on Highways". He was beginning to acquire a reputation as an evangelical lawyer with a perhaps paradoxical interest in the latest technology: motor cars (of which he owned several), telephones and aircraft.[1]

In 1907 he became Chairman of the Motor Union, and presided over the merger with The Automobile Association in 1911, serving as chairman of the merged body until 1922.[4][1] One of his first actions was to assert the legality of AA patrols warning motorists of police speed traps.[1]

He was also President of the Lancashire Commercial Motor Users’ Association of the National Threshing Machine Owners’ Association, and of the National Traction Engine Association.[1]

He was also Treasurer of the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission and a member of the finance committee of the YMCA.[1]

1908 by-election

Joynson-Hicks was elected to Parliament in a by-election in 1908, when Winston Churchill was obliged to submit to re-election in Manchester North West after his appointment as President of the Board of Trade, as the Ministers of the Crown Act 1908 required newly appointed Cabinet ministers to re-contest their seats. Cabinet ministers were normally returned unopposed, but as Churchill had crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904, the Conservatives were disinclined to allow him an uncontested return.[1]

Ronald Blythe in "The Salutary Tale of Jix" in The Age of Illusion (1963) called it "the most brilliant, entertaining and hilarious electoral fight of the century". Joynson-Hicks' nickname "Jix" dates from this by-election.[1] The election was notable for both the attacks of the Suffragette movement on Churchill, over his refusal to support legislation that would give women the vote, and Jewish hostility to Joynson-Hicks over his support for the controversial Aliens Act which aimed to restrict Jewish immigration.[6]

Joynson-Hicks called Labour leader Keir Hardie "a leprous traitor" who wanted to sweep away the Ten Commandments. This prompted H G Wells to send an open letter to Labour sympathisers in Manchester,[7] saying Joynson-Hicks "represents absolutely the worst element in British political life … an entirely undistinguished man … and an obscure and ineffectual nobody."[1]

Joynson-Hicks defeated Churchill. This provoked a strong reaction across the country with The Daily Telegraph running the front-page headline "Winston Churchill is OUT! OUT! OUT!" (Churchill shortly returned to Parliament as MP for Dundee).[6]

Joynson-Hicks gained personal notoriety in the immediate aftermath of this election for an address to his Jewish hosts at a dinner given by the Maccabean Society, during which he said "he had beaten them all thoroughly and soundly and was no longer their servant."[8] Subsequent allegations that he was personally anti-Semitic formed an important strand of the authoritarian streak that many, including recent scholars David Cesarani and Geoffrey Alderman, detected in his speeches and behaviour. Cesarani cautioned that "although he may have been nicknamed "Mussolini Minor", Jix was no fascist."[9] Other work has disputed the notion that Joynson-Hicks was an anti-Semite, most notably a major article by W. D. Rubinstein which asserted that as Home Secretary Joynson-Hicks would later allow more Jews to be naturalised than any other holder of that office.[10] Whether or not it was justified, the notion that Joynson-Hicks was an anti-Semite played a large part in his portrayal as a narrow-minded and intolerant man, most obviously in the work of Ronald Blythe.[11]

Early Parliamentary career

Joynson-Hicks lost his seat in the January 1910 general election. He contested Sunderland in the second general election in December that year, but was again defeated. He was returned unopposed for Brentford at a by-election in March 1911.[1]

During the First World War, he formed a Pals battalion within the Middlesex Regiment, the "Football Battalion." He acquired a reputation as a well-informed backbencher, an expert on aircraft and motors, badgering ministers about matters of aircraft design and production and methods of attacking Zeppelins. On 12 May 1915, he presented a petition to the Commons demanding the internment of enemy aliens of military age and the withdrawal from coastal areas of all enemy aliens.[12] In 1916 he published a pamphlet The Command of the Air in which he advocated indiscriminate bombing of civilians in German cities, including Berlin. However, he was not offered a government post.[13]

In 1918, his old constituency having been abolished, he became MP for Twickenham, holding the seat until his retirement from the House of Commons in 1929.[1]

For his war work, he was created a Baronet, of Holmbury in the County of Surrey, in 1919.[14][13]

The Lloyd George Coalition

In 1919-20 he went on an extended visit to the Sudan and India, which changed his political fortunes. At the time, there was considerable unrest in India and a rapid growth in the Home Rule movement, something Joynson-Hicks opposed due to the great economic importance of the Indian Empire to Britain. He at one time had commented "I know it is frequently said at missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We hold it as the finest outlet for British goods in general, and for Lancashire cotton goods in particular."[15][13]

He emerged as a strong supporter of General Reginald Dyer over the Amritsar Massacre, and nearly forced the resignation of the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, over the motion of censure the government put down concerning Dyer's actions.[16] This episode established his reputation as one of the "die-hards" on the right-wing of the party, and he emerged as a strong critic of the party's participation in a coalition government with the Liberal David Lloyd George.

As part of this campaign, he led an abortive attempt to block Austen Chamberlain's nomination as leader of the Unionist party on Bonar Law's retirement, putting forward Lord Birkenhead instead with the express aim of "splitting the coalition".[17]

Entering government

Joynson-Hicks played a small role in the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition, which he had so disliked, in October 1922. The refusal of many leading Conservatives, who had been supporters of the Coalition, to serve in Bonar Law's new government opened up promotion prospects. Joynson-Hicks was appointed Secretary for Overseas Trade (a junior minister, effectively deputy to the President of the Board of Trade). In the fifteen-month Conservative administration of first Bonar Law and then Stanley Baldwin, Joynson-Hicks was rapidly promoted. In March 1923, he became Paymaster-General then Postmaster General, filling positions left vacant by the promotion of Neville Chamberlain.[13]

When Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister in May 1923, he initially also retained his previous position of Chancellor of the Exchequer while searching for a permanent successor. To relieve the burden of this position, he promoted Joynson-Hicks to Financial Secretary to the Treasury and included him in the Cabinet.[13]

In that role, Joynson-Hicks was responsible for making the Hansard statement, on 19 July 1923, that the Inland Revenue would not prosecute a defaulting taxpayer who made a full confession and paid the outstanding tax, interest and penalties. Joynson-Hicks had hopes of eventually becoming Chancellor himself, but instead Neville Chamberlain was appointed to the post in August 1923. Once more, Joynson-Hicks filled the gap left by Chamberlain's promotion, serving as Minister of Health. He became a Privy Counsellor in 1923.[18]

Following the hung parliament, amounting to a Unionist defeat in the general election of December 1923, Joynson-Hicks became a key figure in various intra-party attempts to oust Baldwin. At one time, the possibility of his becoming leader himself was discussed, but it seems to have been quickly discarded. He was involved in a plot to persuade Arthur Balfour that should the King seek his advice on whom to appoint Prime Minister, Balfour would advise him to appoint Austen Chamberlain or Lord Derby Prime Minister instead of Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald. The plot failed when Balfour refused to countenance such a move and the Liberals publicly announced they would support MacDonald, causing the government to fall in January 1924. MacDonald then became the first Labour Prime Minister.[19]

Home Secretary

 
Cigarette card, 1926.

The Conservatives returned to power in November 1924 and Joynson-Hicks was appointed as Home Secretary. Francis Thompson described him as "the most prudish, puritanical and protestant Home Secretary of the twentieth century".[13] Promotion appears to have gone to his head somewhat and he allowed himself to be touted as a prospective party leader, a possibility which Leo Amery dismissed as "amazing" (October 1925).[13] In his role as Home Secretary he was in attendance at the birth of Queen Elizabeth II in April 1926.[20]

Public morals

Joynson-Hicks was portrayed as a reactionary for his attempts to crack down on night clubs and other aspects of the "Roaring Twenties". He was also heavily implicated in the banning of Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness (1928), in which he took a personal interest.[21]

He wanted to stem what he called "the flood of filth coming across the Channel". He clamped down on the work of D. H. Lawrence (he helped to force the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in an expurgated version), as well as on books on birth control and the translation of The Decameron. He ordered the raiding of nightclubs, where a great deal of after-hours drinking took place, with many members of fashionable society being arrested. The nightclub owner Kate Meyrick, proprietor of The 43 Club amongst other venues, was in and out of prison five times, her release parties being causes for big champagne celebrations.[22][23] He instructed the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, William Horwood that ‘it is a place of the most intense mischief and immorality [with] doped women and drunken men. I want you to put this matter in the hands of your most experienced men and whatever the cost will be, find out the truth about this Club and if it is as bad as I am informed prosecute it with the utmost rigour of the law’.[24][25]

All of this was satirised in A.P. Herbert’s one act play The Two Gentlemen of Soho (1927).[13]

General Strike and subversion

In 1925, he ordered a show trial of Harry Pollitt and a dozen other leading communists, using the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797.[26][27] During the General Strike of 1926, he was a leading organiser of the systems that maintained supplies and law and order, although there is some evidence that left to himself he would have pursued a more hawkish policy – most notably, his repeated appeals for more volunteer constables and his attempt to close down the Daily Herald.[28]

Having been a hardliner during the General Strike he remained a staunch anti-communist thereafter, although the left appear to have warmed a little to him over the Prayer Book controversy. Against the wishes of Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain he ordered a police raid on the Soviet trade agency ARCOS in 1927, apparently actually hoping to rupture Anglo-Soviet relations. He was popular with the police and on his retirement a portrait of him was erected in Scotland Yard, paid for by police subscription.[27]

Revised Prayer Book

 
Plaque at St Andrew's parish church, Felixstowe, Suffolk, commemorating the defeat of the 1928 Prayer Book in the House of Commons

In 1927 Joynson-Hicks turned his fire on the proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer. The law required Parliament to approve such revisions, normally regarded as a formality.[29] Joynson-Hicks had been President of the evangelical National Church League since 1921, and he went against Baldwin’s wishes in opposing the Revised Prayer Book.[13]

When the Prayer Book came before the House of Commons Joynson-Hicks argued strongly against its adoption as he felt it strayed far from the Protestant principles of the Church of England. He likened the Revised Prayer Book to "papistry", as he believed that the reservation of sacrament implied a belief in transubstantiation. The debate on the Prayer Book is regarded as one of the most eloquent ever seen in the Commons, and resulted in the rejection of the revised Prayer Book in 1927.[29][13] His allies were an alliance of ultra-Protestant Tories and nonconformist Liberals and Labour, and some of them likened him to John Hampden or Oliver Cromwell. It was said that no such occasion had been seen since the anti-Catholic agitation of 1850-1 or, some said, since the late seventeenth century crises over Exclusion or Titus Oates.[13]

A further revised version (the "Deposited Book") was submitted in 1928 but rejected again.[30][29]

Many leading Church of England figures came to feel that disestablishment would become necessary to guard the Church against this sort of political interference. Joynson-Hicks' book The Prayer Book Crisis, published in May 1928, correctly forecast that the bishops would back off from demanding disestablishment, for fear of losing their state-provided salaries and endowments.[30] However, the National Assembly of the Church of England then declared an emergency, and this was argued as a pretext for the use of the 1928 Prayer Book in many churches for decades afterwards, an act of questionable legality.[30][29]

Votes for young women

Off the cuff and without Cabinet discussion, in a debate on a private member's bill on 20 February 1925, Joynson-Hicks pledged equal voting rights for women (clarifying a pronouncement of Baldwin's in the 1924 General Election).[27]

Joynson-Hicks' 1933 biographer wrote that the claim that Joynson-Hicks' parliamentary pledge to Lady Astor in 1925 had committed the party to giving votes to young women was an invention of Winston Churchill that has entered popular mythology but has no basis in fact.[31] However, Francis Thompson (2004) wrote that the Baldwin Government would probably not have taken action without Joynson-Hicks' pledge.[27]

Joynson-Hicks personally moved the Second Reading of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 and was also responsible for piloting it through Parliament. He made a strong speech in support of the Bill, which lowered the voting age for women from 30 to 21 (the same age as men at the time), and which was blamed in part for the Conservatives' unexpected electoral defeat the following year, which the right of the party attributed to newly enfranchised young women (referred to derogatorily as "flappers") voting for the opposition Labour party.[31][27]

Reforms

Throughout his tenure at the Home Office, Joynson-Hicks was involved in the reform of the penal system – in particular, the Borstals and the introduction of a legal requirement for all courts to have a probation officer. He made a point of visiting all the prisons in the country, and was often dismayed by what he found there.[32] He made a concerted effort to improve the conditions of the prisons under his jurisdiction, and earned a compliment from persistent offender and night-club owner Kate Meyrick, who noted in her memoirs that prisons had improved considerably thanks to his efforts.[33]

Joynson-Hicks sided with Churchill over the General Strike and India, but parted company with him on the topic of greyhound racing, which Joynson-Hicks believed served a useful social function in getting poor people out of the pubs. He also thought that Churchill's view that totalisers were permissible for horse-racing but not for greyhounds smacked of one law for the rich and another for the poor.[27]

He became something of a hero to shop workers because of the Shops (Hours of Closing) Act 1928, which banned working after 8pm and required employers to grant a half day holiday each week. He also repealed a regulation to allow chocolates to be sold in the first interval of theatre performances as well as the second.[27]

In August 1928, Lord Beaverbrook thought Joynson-Hicks the only possible successor to Baldwin. However, he was a figure of fun to many of the public and most of his colleagues thought the idea of him as Prime Minister, in FML Thompson's view, "ridiculous".[13] He was praised in the popular press and ridiculed in the upmarket weeklies. He insisted that he did not favour full censorship, and in his 1929 pamphlet Do We Need A Censor? he recorded that he had ordered the police to stamp out indecency in Hyde Park so that it would be safe for "a man to take his daughter for a walk" there.[13]

Later life

As the time for a new general election loomed, Baldwin contemplated reshuffling his Cabinet to move Churchill from the Exchequer to the India Office, and asking all ministers older than himself (Baldwin was born in 1867) to step down, with the exception of Sir Austen Chamberlain. Joynson-Hicks would have been one of those asked to retire from the Cabinet if the Conservatives had been re-elected.[34]

The Conservatives unexpectedly lost power at the general election in May 1929. A month after the election Joynson-Hicks was raised to the peerage as the Viscount Brentford, of Newick in the County of Sussex in the Dissolution Honours (necessitating a by-election at which the Conservatives narrowly held his old seat).[35][27]

Lord Brentford remained a senior figure in the Conservative Party, but due to his declining health he was not invited to join the National Government at its formation in August 1931. As late as October 1931 Lord Beaverbrook urged him to set up a Conservative Shadow Cabinet, as an alternative to the National Government. The National Government was reconstructed in November 1931, but again he was not offered a return to office.[13]

Family

Lord Brentford married Grace Lynn, only daughter of Richard Hampson Joynson, JP, of Bowdon Cheshire, on 12 June 1895 in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. They had two sons and one daughter.[36]

Joynson-Hicks died at Newick Park, Sussex, on 8 June 1932, aged 66.[27] His wealth at death was £67,661 5s 7d (around £4m at 2016 prices).[37][38]

His widow the Viscountess Brentford died in January 1952.[1] He was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard. His youngest son, the Hon. Lancelot (who succeeded in the viscountcy in 1958), was also a Conservative politician.

Reputation

Joynson-Hicks' Victorian top hat and frock coat made him seem an old-fashioned figure, but he came to be regarded with a certain affection by the public. William Bridgeman, his predecessor as Home Secretary, wrote of him "There is something of the comedian in him, which is not intentional but inevitably apparent, which makes it hard to take him as seriously as one might". Churchill wrote of him "The worst that can be said about him is that he runs the risk of being most humorous when he wishes to be most serious". After his death Leo Amery wrote that "he was a very likeable fellow" whilst Stanley Baldwin observed "he may have said many foolish things but he rarely did one".[27]

Although Joynson-Hicks was Home Secretary, a notoriously difficult office to hold, for some four and a half years, he is frequently overlooked by both historians and politicians. His length of tenure was exceeded in the twentieth century only by Chuter Ede, R. A. Butler and Herbert Morrison,[39] yet he was not included in a list of long-serving Home Secretaries presented to Jack Straw in 2001 on his departure from the Home Office.[40] He is also virtually the only major politician of the 1920s not to have been accorded a recent biography.

For many years detailed discussion of Joynson-Hicks' life and career was hampered by the inaccessibility of his papers, which were kept by the Brentford family. This meant the discourse on his life was shaped by the official biography of 1933 by H. A. Taylor, and by material published by his contemporaries – much of it published by people who hated him. As a result, public discourse has been shaped by material that portrayed him in an unflattering light, such as Ronald Blythe's biographical chapter in The Age of Illusion.[41]

In the 1990s the current Viscount lent his grandfather's papers to an MPhil student at the University of Westminster, Jonathon Hopkins,[42] who prepared a catalogue of them and wrote a short biography of Joynson-Hicks as part of his thesis.[43] In 2007, a number of these papers were deposited with the East Sussex Record Office in Lewes (which transferred to The Keep in Brighton in 2013) where they are available to the public.[44] Huw Clayton, whose PhD thesis concerned Joynson-Hicks' moral policies at the Home Office, has announced that he plans to write a new biography of Joynson-Hicks with the aid of these sources.[43] An article on Joynson-Hicks, written by Clayton, has since appeared in the Journal of Historical Biography.[45]

Arms

Coat of arms of William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford
 
Crest
A stag’s head Proper gorged with a collar Or thereon five roses Gules and charged in the neck with a fleur-de-lis Gold.
Escutcheon
Gules on a fess wavy between three fleurs-de-lis Or a portcullis Sable all within a bordure of the second.
Supporters
On either side a stag Proper gorged with a collar Or thereon five roses Gules and charged on the neck with a fleur-de-lis Gold.
Motto
Cassis Tutissima Virtus [46]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Matthew 2004, p38
  2. ^ Paul Zahl (1997). The Protestant Face of Anglicanism. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-8028-4597-9.
  3. ^ Taylor, pp. 14–15
  4. ^ a b c Taylor, pp. 29–30
  5. ^ Blythe, p. 23
  6. ^ a b Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front 1900–1955 (2nd ed., London 1993) p. 64
  7. ^ although an SDF candidate obtained a modest vote at the by-election, there was no official Labour Party candidate at this or any previous election for the seat; Labour supporters were therefore encouraged to vote Liberal in accordance with the Gladstone-MacDonald pact
  8. ^ W. D. Rubinstein (1993). "Recent Anglo-Jewish Historiography and the Myth of Jix's Anti-Semitism, Part Two". Australian Journal of Jewish Studies. 7 (2): 24–45, 35.
  9. ^ David Cesarani, "Joynson-Hicks and the Radical Right in England after the First World War" in Tony Kushner and Kenneth Lunn (eds.) Traditions of Intolerance: Historical Perspectives on Fascism and Race Discourse in Britain (Manchester 1989) pp. 118–139, p. 134
  10. ^ Rubinstein "Recent Anglo-Jewish Historiography", Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 7 (1993) part one in 7:1 pp. 41–70, part two in 7:2 pp. 24–45
  11. ^ Blythe, p. 27
  12. ^ Meeting the Enemy by Richard van Emden
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Matthew 2004, p39
  14. ^ "No. 31587". The London Gazette. 7 October 1919. p. 12418.
  15. ^ Quoted in Blythe, pp. 27–28
  16. ^ Cesarani p. 123 (he wrongly credits this campaign with toppling Montagu, who in fact stayed in office until the Lloyd George coalition fell in 1922)
  17. ^ Max Aitken, Decline and Fall of Lloyd George: and great was the fall thereof (London 1963) p. 21
  18. ^ "No. 32809". The London Gazette. 27 March 1923. p. 2303.
  19. ^ Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour 1920–1924: The Beginning of Modern British Politics (Cambridge 1971) pp. 332–333, 384
  20. ^ Davies, Caroline (26 April 2016). "The Queen at 90". Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  21. ^ Diana Souhami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (London 1999) pp. 180–181: a more recent but unfortunately not widely available account of these actions may be found in Huw Clayton, "A Frisky, Tiresome Colt?" Sir William Joynson-Hicks, the Home Office and the "Roaring Twenties" in London, 1924–1929" Aberystwyth University PhD thesis (2009)
  22. ^ Archives, The National (20 April 2022). "The National Archives - Jix's 'war on night club evils'". The National Archives blog. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  23. ^ B, Lizzie (24 June 2021). "Kate Meyrick (1875-1933)". Women Who Meant Business. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  24. ^ Archives, The National. "The National Archives - The 43 Club in pictures". Portals. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  25. ^ Archives, The National. "The National Archives - Kate Meyrick - 20 People of the 20s - 20sPeople". Portals. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  26. ^ The ODNB article for his Cabinet colleague Douglas Hogg, Attorney-General at the time, by John Ramsden, states that Hogg was the real driving force behind this action. See Hogg's biography for details.
  27. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Matthew 2004, p40
  28. ^ Anne Perkins, A Very British Strike: 3–12 May 1926 (London 2006) pp. 160, 180, 138–9
  29. ^ a b c d Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford 1998) pp. 277–278
  30. ^ a b c Matthew 2004, pp39-40
  31. ^ a b Taylor, pp. 282–285
  32. ^ Taylor, pp. 186–189
  33. ^ Kate Meyrick, Secrets of the 43 (2nd ed., Dublin 1994) p. 80
  34. ^ Jenkins 1987, p89
  35. ^ "No. 33515". The London Gazette. 9 July 1926. p. 4539.
  36. ^ Matthew 2004, pp38-40
  37. ^ Compute the Relative Value of a U.K. Pound
  38. ^ Matthew 2004, pp37-40
  39. ^ List available in David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts 1900–2000 (revised eighth edition Basingstoke 2005) p. 56
  40. ^ Matthew d'Ancona, "Mr Blair is now, at best, a politician in remission," Sunday Telegraph (Opinion Section) 26 March 2006: article on Telegraph website
  41. ^ Blythe, p. 35
  42. ^ Cameron Hazlehurst et al. (eds) A Guide to the Papers of British Cabinet Ministers 1900–1964 (London 1997) p. 185
  43. ^ a b "William Joynson-Hicks « Doctor Huw". Doctorhuw.wordpress.com. 3 February 2010. Retrieved 16 April 2010.
  44. ^ National Register of Archives: Accessions to Repositories 2007: East Sussex Record Office. nationalarchives.gov.uk
  45. ^ Huw Clayton (2010). "The Life and Career of William Joynson-Hicks 1865–1932: A Reassessment" (PDF). The Journal of Historical Biography. 8: 1–32.
  46. ^ Burke's Peerage. 1939.

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Alderman, Geoffrey, "Recent Anglo-Jewish Historiography and the Myth of Jix's Anti-Semitism: A Response" Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 8:1 (1994)
  • – "The Anti-Jewish Career of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Cabinet Minister,' Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989) pp. 461–482
  • Joynson-Hicks, William, The Prayer Book Crisis. London: Putnam, 1928
  • Perkins, Anne, A Very British Strike: 3–12 May 1926 London 2006
  • - "Professor Alderman and Jix: A Response" Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 8:2 (1994) pp. 192–201
  • Sydney Robinson, W., The Last Victorians: a daring reassessment of four twentieth century eccentrics: Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Dean Inge, Lord Reith and Sir Arthur Bryant London 2014
  • Thompson, F. M. L. (January 2008). "Hicks, William Joynson-, first Viscount Brentford (1865–1932)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33858. Retrieved 11 December 2008. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Other sources on Joynson-Hicks:

  • Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by William Joynson-Hicks
  • Hopkins, Jonathon M., "Paradoxes Personified: Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Viscount Brentford and the conflict between change and stability in British Society in the 1920s" University of Westminster MPhil thesis (1996): copy available at the East Sussex Record Office.
  • National Register of Archives: Accessions to Repositories 2007: East Sussex Record Office: "Search other Archives | Accessions to Repositories | Major Accessions to East Sussex Record Office, 2007". The National Archives. Retrieved 16 April 2010. link to ESRO website: "East Sussex Record Office". Eastsussex.gov.uk. Retrieved 16 April 2010.

External links

  • Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Brentford
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Manchester North West
1908January 1910
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Brentford
19111918
Constituency abolished
New constituency Member of Parliament for Twickenham
19181929
Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Financial Secretary to the Treasury
1923
Succeeded by
Preceded by Paymaster General
1923
Succeeded by
Postmaster General
1923
Succeeded by
Minister of Health
1923–1924
Succeeded by
Preceded by Home Secretary
1924–1929
Succeeded by
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Viscount Brentford
1929–1932
Succeeded by
Richard Cecil Joynson-Hicks
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baronet
(of Holmbury) 
1919–1932
Succeeded by
Richard Cecil Joynson-Hicks

william, joynson, hicks, viscount, brentford, june, 1865, june, 1932, known, william, joynson, hicks, from, 1919, 1929, popularly, known, english, solicitor, conservative, party, politician, right, honourablethe, viscount, brentfordbt, dlhome, secretaryin, off. William Joynson Hicks 1st Viscount Brentford PC PC NI DL 23 June 1865 8 June 1932 known as Sir William Joynson Hicks Bt from 1919 to 1929 and popularly known as Jix was an English solicitor and Conservative Party politician The Right HonourableThe Viscount BrentfordBt PC PC NI DLHome SecretaryIn office 7 November 1924 5 June 1929Prime MinisterStanley BaldwinPreceded byArthur HendersonSucceeded byJ R ClynesMinister of HealthIn office 27 August 1923 22 January 1924Prime MinisterStanley BaldwinPreceded byNeville ChamberlainSucceeded byJohn WheatleyFinancial Secretary to the Treasury Office in Cabinet In office 25 May 1923 27 August 1923Prime MinisterStanley BaldwinPreceded byArchibald Boyd CarpenterSucceeded byWalter Guinness from 5 October 1923 Personal detailsBornWilliam Hicks 1865 06 23 23 June 1865Plaistow Hall KentDied8 June 1932 1932 06 08 aged 66 LondonNationalityEnglishPolitical partyConservativeSpouse s Grace Lynn Joynson d 1952 He first attracted attention in 1908 when he defeated Winston Churchill a Liberal Cabinet Minister at the time in a by election for the seat of North West Manchester but is best known as a long serving and controversial Home Secretary in Stanley Baldwin s Second Government from 1924 to 1929 He gained a reputation for strict authoritarianism opposing Communism and clamping down on nightclubs and what he saw as indecent literature He also played an important role in the fight against the introduction of the Church of England Revised Prayer Book and in lowering the voting age for women from 30 to 21 Contents 1 Early life and career 1 1 Background and early life 1 1 1 Marriage 1 1 2 Joynson Hicks 1 2 Early attempts to enter Parliament 1 3 Motoring expert 2 1908 by election 3 Early Parliamentary career 4 The Lloyd George Coalition 5 Entering government 6 Home Secretary 6 1 Public morals 6 2 General Strike and subversion 6 3 Revised Prayer Book 6 4 Votes for young women 6 5 Reforms 7 Later life 8 Family 9 Reputation 10 Arms 11 References 12 Bibliography 13 Further reading 14 External linksEarly life and career EditBackground and early life Edit William Hicks as he was initially called was born in Canonbury London on 23 June 1865 1 He was the eldest of four sons and two daughters of Henry Hicks of Plaistow Hall Kent and his wife Harriett daughter of William Watts Hicks was a prosperous merchant and senior evangelical Anglican layman 2 who demanded the very best from his children 3 William Hicks was educated at Merchant Taylors School London 1875 81 4 1 He took the pledge to abstain from alcohol at the age of 14 and kept it all his life 1 Marriage Edit In 1894 while on holiday he met Grace Lynn Joynson daughter of a silk manufacturer Her father was also a Manchester evangelical Tory They were married on 12 June 1895 In 1896 he added his wife s name Joynson to his surname 5 1 Joynson Hicks Edit After leaving school Hicks was articled to a London solicitor between 1881 and 1887 before setting up his own practice in 1888 Initially he struggled to attract clients but he was helped by his father s position as a leading member of the City Common Council and as Deputy Chairman of the London General Omnibus Company for whom he did a great deal of claims work 4 1 His law firm was still operating as late as 1989 when a guide to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 was published as Joynson Hicks on UK Copyright 1 In 1989 Joynson Hicks merged with Taylor Garrett to form Taylor Joynson Garrett which itself merged with German law firm Wessing amp Berenberg Gossler to form Taylor Wessing in 2002 Early attempts to enter Parliament Edit He joined the Conservative Party at that time part of the Unionist coalition which name it retained until 1925 and was selected as a Conservative Parliamentary candidate in 1898 He unsuccessfully contested seats in Manchester in the general elections of 1900 and 1906 losing to Winston Churchill On the latter occasion he made anti semitic speeches At the time there was an influx of Russian Jews fleeing from pogroms which had caused Arthur Balfour s government to pass the Aliens Act 1905 1 Motoring expert Edit Joynson Hicks was an early authority on transport law particularly motoring law In 1906 he published The Law of Heavy and Light Mechanical Traction on Highways He was beginning to acquire a reputation as an evangelical lawyer with a perhaps paradoxical interest in the latest technology motor cars of which he owned several telephones and aircraft 1 In 1907 he became Chairman of the Motor Union and presided over the merger with The Automobile Association in 1911 serving as chairman of the merged body until 1922 4 1 One of his first actions was to assert the legality of AA patrols warning motorists of police speed traps 1 He was also President of the Lancashire Commercial Motor Users Association of the National Threshing Machine Owners Association and of the National Traction Engine Association 1 He was also Treasurer of the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission and a member of the finance committee of the YMCA 1 1908 by election EditMain article 1908 Manchester North West by election Joynson Hicks was elected to Parliament in a by election in 1908 when Winston Churchill was obliged to submit to re election in Manchester North West after his appointment as President of the Board of Trade as the Ministers of the Crown Act 1908 required newly appointed Cabinet ministers to re contest their seats Cabinet ministers were normally returned unopposed but as Churchill had crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904 the Conservatives were disinclined to allow him an uncontested return 1 Ronald Blythe in The Salutary Tale of Jix in The Age of Illusion 1963 called it the most brilliant entertaining and hilarious electoral fight of the century Joynson Hicks nickname Jix dates from this by election 1 The election was notable for both the attacks of the Suffragette movement on Churchill over his refusal to support legislation that would give women the vote and Jewish hostility to Joynson Hicks over his support for the controversial Aliens Act which aimed to restrict Jewish immigration 6 Joynson Hicks called Labour leader Keir Hardie a leprous traitor who wanted to sweep away the Ten Commandments This prompted H G Wells to send an open letter to Labour sympathisers in Manchester 7 saying Joynson Hicks represents absolutely the worst element in British political life an entirely undistinguished man and an obscure and ineffectual nobody 1 Joynson Hicks defeated Churchill This provoked a strong reaction across the country with The Daily Telegraph running the front page headline Winston Churchill is OUT OUT OUT Churchill shortly returned to Parliament as MP for Dundee 6 Joynson Hicks gained personal notoriety in the immediate aftermath of this election for an address to his Jewish hosts at a dinner given by the Maccabean Society during which he said he had beaten them all thoroughly and soundly and was no longer their servant 8 Subsequent allegations that he was personally anti Semitic formed an important strand of the authoritarian streak that many including recent scholars David Cesarani and Geoffrey Alderman detected in his speeches and behaviour Cesarani cautioned that although he may have been nicknamed Mussolini Minor Jix was no fascist 9 Other work has disputed the notion that Joynson Hicks was an anti Semite most notably a major article by W D Rubinstein which asserted that as Home Secretary Joynson Hicks would later allow more Jews to be naturalised than any other holder of that office 10 Whether or not it was justified the notion that Joynson Hicks was an anti Semite played a large part in his portrayal as a narrow minded and intolerant man most obviously in the work of Ronald Blythe 11 Early Parliamentary career EditJoynson Hicks lost his seat in the January 1910 general election He contested Sunderland in the second general election in December that year but was again defeated He was returned unopposed for Brentford at a by election in March 1911 1 During the First World War he formed a Pals battalion within the Middlesex Regiment the Football Battalion He acquired a reputation as a well informed backbencher an expert on aircraft and motors badgering ministers about matters of aircraft design and production and methods of attacking Zeppelins On 12 May 1915 he presented a petition to the Commons demanding the internment of enemy aliens of military age and the withdrawal from coastal areas of all enemy aliens 12 In 1916 he published a pamphlet The Command of the Air in which he advocated indiscriminate bombing of civilians in German cities including Berlin However he was not offered a government post 13 In 1918 his old constituency having been abolished he became MP for Twickenham holding the seat until his retirement from the House of Commons in 1929 1 For his war work he was created a Baronet of Holmbury in the County of Surrey in 1919 14 13 The Lloyd George Coalition EditIn 1919 20 he went on an extended visit to the Sudan and India which changed his political fortunes At the time there was considerable unrest in India and a rapid growth in the Home Rule movement something Joynson Hicks opposed due to the great economic importance of the Indian Empire to Britain He at one time had commented I know it is frequently said at missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians That is cant We hold it as the finest outlet for British goods in general and for Lancashire cotton goods in particular 15 13 He emerged as a strong supporter of General Reginald Dyer over the Amritsar Massacre and nearly forced the resignation of the Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu over the motion of censure the government put down concerning Dyer s actions 16 This episode established his reputation as one of the die hards on the right wing of the party and he emerged as a strong critic of the party s participation in a coalition government with the Liberal David Lloyd George As part of this campaign he led an abortive attempt to block Austen Chamberlain s nomination as leader of the Unionist party on Bonar Law s retirement putting forward Lord Birkenhead instead with the express aim of splitting the coalition 17 Entering government EditJoynson Hicks played a small role in the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition which he had so disliked in October 1922 The refusal of many leading Conservatives who had been supporters of the Coalition to serve in Bonar Law s new government opened up promotion prospects Joynson Hicks was appointed Secretary for Overseas Trade a junior minister effectively deputy to the President of the Board of Trade In the fifteen month Conservative administration of first Bonar Law and then Stanley Baldwin Joynson Hicks was rapidly promoted In March 1923 he became Paymaster General then Postmaster General filling positions left vacant by the promotion of Neville Chamberlain 13 When Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister in May 1923 he initially also retained his previous position of Chancellor of the Exchequer while searching for a permanent successor To relieve the burden of this position he promoted Joynson Hicks to Financial Secretary to the Treasury and included him in the Cabinet 13 In that role Joynson Hicks was responsible for making the Hansard statement on 19 July 1923 that the Inland Revenue would not prosecute a defaulting taxpayer who made a full confession and paid the outstanding tax interest and penalties Joynson Hicks had hopes of eventually becoming Chancellor himself but instead Neville Chamberlain was appointed to the post in August 1923 Once more Joynson Hicks filled the gap left by Chamberlain s promotion serving as Minister of Health He became a Privy Counsellor in 1923 18 Following the hung parliament amounting to a Unionist defeat in the general election of December 1923 Joynson Hicks became a key figure in various intra party attempts to oust Baldwin At one time the possibility of his becoming leader himself was discussed but it seems to have been quickly discarded He was involved in a plot to persuade Arthur Balfour that should the King seek his advice on whom to appoint Prime Minister Balfour would advise him to appoint Austen Chamberlain or Lord Derby Prime Minister instead of Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald The plot failed when Balfour refused to countenance such a move and the Liberals publicly announced they would support MacDonald causing the government to fall in January 1924 MacDonald then became the first Labour Prime Minister 19 Home Secretary Edit Cigarette card 1926 The Conservatives returned to power in November 1924 and Joynson Hicks was appointed as Home Secretary Francis Thompson described him as the most prudish puritanical and protestant Home Secretary of the twentieth century 13 Promotion appears to have gone to his head somewhat and he allowed himself to be touted as a prospective party leader a possibility which Leo Amery dismissed as amazing October 1925 13 In his role as Home Secretary he was in attendance at the birth of Queen Elizabeth II in April 1926 20 Public morals Edit Joynson Hicks was portrayed as a reactionary for his attempts to crack down on night clubs and other aspects of the Roaring Twenties He was also heavily implicated in the banning of Radclyffe Hall s lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness 1928 in which he took a personal interest 21 He wanted to stem what he called the flood of filth coming across the Channel He clamped down on the work of D H Lawrence he helped to force the publication of Lady Chatterley s Lover in an expurgated version as well as on books on birth control and the translation of The Decameron He ordered the raiding of nightclubs where a great deal of after hours drinking took place with many members of fashionable society being arrested The nightclub owner Kate Meyrick proprietor of The 43 Club amongst other venues was in and out of prison five times her release parties being causes for big champagne celebrations 22 23 He instructed the head of London s Metropolitan Police William Horwood that it is a place of the most intense mischief and immorality with doped women and drunken men I want you to put this matter in the hands of your most experienced men and whatever the cost will be find out the truth about this Club and if it is as bad as I am informed prosecute it with the utmost rigour of the law 24 25 All of this was satirised in A P Herbert s one act play The Two Gentlemen of Soho 1927 13 General Strike and subversion Edit In 1925 he ordered a show trial of Harry Pollitt and a dozen other leading communists using the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797 26 27 During the General Strike of 1926 he was a leading organiser of the systems that maintained supplies and law and order although there is some evidence that left to himself he would have pursued a more hawkish policy most notably his repeated appeals for more volunteer constables and his attempt to close down the Daily Herald 28 Having been a hardliner during the General Strike he remained a staunch anti communist thereafter although the left appear to have warmed a little to him over the Prayer Book controversy Against the wishes of Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain he ordered a police raid on the Soviet trade agency ARCOS in 1927 apparently actually hoping to rupture Anglo Soviet relations He was popular with the police and on his retirement a portrait of him was erected in Scotland Yard paid for by police subscription 27 Revised Prayer Book Edit Plaque at St Andrew s parish church Felixstowe Suffolk commemorating the defeat of the 1928 Prayer Book in the House of Commons In 1927 Joynson Hicks turned his fire on the proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer The law required Parliament to approve such revisions normally regarded as a formality 29 Joynson Hicks had been President of the evangelical National Church League since 1921 and he went against Baldwin s wishes in opposing the Revised Prayer Book 13 When the Prayer Book came before the House of Commons Joynson Hicks argued strongly against its adoption as he felt it strayed far from the Protestant principles of the Church of England He likened the Revised Prayer Book to papistry as he believed that the reservation of sacrament implied a belief in transubstantiation The debate on the Prayer Book is regarded as one of the most eloquent ever seen in the Commons and resulted in the rejection of the revised Prayer Book in 1927 29 13 His allies were an alliance of ultra Protestant Tories and nonconformist Liberals and Labour and some of them likened him to John Hampden or Oliver Cromwell It was said that no such occasion had been seen since the anti Catholic agitation of 1850 1 or some said since the late seventeenth century crises over Exclusion or Titus Oates 13 A further revised version the Deposited Book was submitted in 1928 but rejected again 30 29 Many leading Church of England figures came to feel that disestablishment would become necessary to guard the Church against this sort of political interference Joynson Hicks book The Prayer Book Crisis published in May 1928 correctly forecast that the bishops would back off from demanding disestablishment for fear of losing their state provided salaries and endowments 30 However the National Assembly of the Church of England then declared an emergency and this was argued as a pretext for the use of the 1928 Prayer Book in many churches for decades afterwards an act of questionable legality 30 29 Votes for young women Edit Off the cuff and without Cabinet discussion in a debate on a private member s bill on 20 February 1925 Joynson Hicks pledged equal voting rights for women clarifying a pronouncement of Baldwin s in the 1924 General Election 27 Joynson Hicks 1933 biographer wrote that the claim that Joynson Hicks parliamentary pledge to Lady Astor in 1925 had committed the party to giving votes to young women was an invention of Winston Churchill that has entered popular mythology but has no basis in fact 31 However Francis Thompson 2004 wrote that the Baldwin Government would probably not have taken action without Joynson Hicks pledge 27 Joynson Hicks personally moved the Second Reading of the Representation of the People Equal Franchise Act 1928 and was also responsible for piloting it through Parliament He made a strong speech in support of the Bill which lowered the voting age for women from 30 to 21 the same age as men at the time and which was blamed in part for the Conservatives unexpected electoral defeat the following year which the right of the party attributed to newly enfranchised young women referred to derogatorily as flappers voting for the opposition Labour party 31 27 Reforms Edit Throughout his tenure at the Home Office Joynson Hicks was involved in the reform of the penal system in particular the Borstals and the introduction of a legal requirement for all courts to have a probation officer He made a point of visiting all the prisons in the country and was often dismayed by what he found there 32 He made a concerted effort to improve the conditions of the prisons under his jurisdiction and earned a compliment from persistent offender and night club owner Kate Meyrick who noted in her memoirs that prisons had improved considerably thanks to his efforts 33 Joynson Hicks sided with Churchill over the General Strike and India but parted company with him on the topic of greyhound racing which Joynson Hicks believed served a useful social function in getting poor people out of the pubs He also thought that Churchill s view that totalisers were permissible for horse racing but not for greyhounds smacked of one law for the rich and another for the poor 27 He became something of a hero to shop workers because of the Shops Hours of Closing Act 1928 which banned working after 8pm and required employers to grant a half day holiday each week He also repealed a regulation to allow chocolates to be sold in the first interval of theatre performances as well as the second 27 In August 1928 Lord Beaverbrook thought Joynson Hicks the only possible successor to Baldwin However he was a figure of fun to many of the public and most of his colleagues thought the idea of him as Prime Minister in FML Thompson s view ridiculous 13 He was praised in the popular press and ridiculed in the upmarket weeklies He insisted that he did not favour full censorship and in his 1929 pamphlet Do We Need A Censor he recorded that he had ordered the police to stamp out indecency in Hyde Park so that it would be safe for a man to take his daughter for a walk there 13 Later life EditAs the time for a new general election loomed Baldwin contemplated reshuffling his Cabinet to move Churchill from the Exchequer to the India Office and asking all ministers older than himself Baldwin was born in 1867 to step down with the exception of Sir Austen Chamberlain Joynson Hicks would have been one of those asked to retire from the Cabinet if the Conservatives had been re elected 34 The Conservatives unexpectedly lost power at the general election in May 1929 A month after the election Joynson Hicks was raised to the peerage as the Viscount Brentford of Newick in the County of Sussex in the Dissolution Honours necessitating a by election at which the Conservatives narrowly held his old seat 35 27 Lord Brentford remained a senior figure in the Conservative Party but due to his declining health he was not invited to join the National Government at its formation in August 1931 As late as October 1931 Lord Beaverbrook urged him to set up a Conservative Shadow Cabinet as an alternative to the National Government The National Government was reconstructed in November 1931 but again he was not offered a return to office 13 Family EditLord Brentford married Grace Lynn only daughter of Richard Hampson Joynson JP of Bowdon Cheshire on 12 June 1895 in St Margaret s Church Westminster They had two sons and one daughter 36 Joynson Hicks died at Newick Park Sussex on 8 June 1932 aged 66 27 His wealth at death was 67 661 5s 7d around 4m at 2016 prices 37 38 His widow the Viscountess Brentford died in January 1952 1 He was succeeded by his eldest son Richard His youngest son the Hon Lancelot who succeeded in the viscountcy in 1958 was also a Conservative politician Reputation EditJoynson Hicks Victorian top hat and frock coat made him seem an old fashioned figure but he came to be regarded with a certain affection by the public William Bridgeman his predecessor as Home Secretary wrote of him There is something of the comedian in him which is not intentional but inevitably apparent which makes it hard to take him as seriously as one might Churchill wrote of him The worst that can be said about him is that he runs the risk of being most humorous when he wishes to be most serious After his death Leo Amery wrote that he was a very likeable fellow whilst Stanley Baldwin observed he may have said many foolish things but he rarely did one 27 Although Joynson Hicks was Home Secretary a notoriously difficult office to hold for some four and a half years he is frequently overlooked by both historians and politicians His length of tenure was exceeded in the twentieth century only by Chuter Ede R A Butler and Herbert Morrison 39 yet he was not included in a list of long serving Home Secretaries presented to Jack Straw in 2001 on his departure from the Home Office 40 He is also virtually the only major politician of the 1920s not to have been accorded a recent biography For many years detailed discussion of Joynson Hicks life and career was hampered by the inaccessibility of his papers which were kept by the Brentford family This meant the discourse on his life was shaped by the official biography of 1933 by H A Taylor and by material published by his contemporaries much of it published by people who hated him As a result public discourse has been shaped by material that portrayed him in an unflattering light such as Ronald Blythe s biographical chapter in The Age of Illusion 41 In the 1990s the current Viscount lent his grandfather s papers to an MPhil student at the University of Westminster Jonathon Hopkins 42 who prepared a catalogue of them and wrote a short biography of Joynson Hicks as part of his thesis 43 In 2007 a number of these papers were deposited with the East Sussex Record Office in Lewes which transferred to The Keep in Brighton in 2013 where they are available to the public 44 Huw Clayton whose PhD thesis concerned Joynson Hicks moral policies at the Home Office has announced that he plans to write a new biography of Joynson Hicks with the aid of these sources 43 An article on Joynson Hicks written by Clayton has since appeared in the Journal of Historical Biography 45 Arms EditCoat of arms of William Joynson Hicks 1st Viscount Brentford Crest A stag s head Proper gorged with a collar Or thereon five roses Gules and charged in the neck with a fleur de lis Gold Escutcheon Gules on a fess wavy between three fleurs de lis Or a portcullis Sable all within a bordure of the second Supporters On either side a stag Proper gorged with a collar Or thereon five roses Gules and charged on the neck with a fleur de lis Gold Motto Cassis Tutissima Virtus 46 References Edit a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Matthew 2004 p38 Paul Zahl 1997 The Protestant Face of Anglicanism Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Company p 49 ISBN 978 0 8028 4597 9 Taylor pp 14 15 a b c Taylor pp 29 30 Blythe p 23 a b Paul Addison Churchill on the Home Front 1900 1955 2nd ed London 1993 p 64 although an SDF candidate obtained a modest vote at the by election there was no official Labour Party candidate at this or any previous election for the seat Labour supporters were therefore encouraged to vote Liberal in accordance with the Gladstone MacDonald pact W D Rubinstein 1993 Recent Anglo Jewish Historiography and the Myth of Jix s Anti Semitism Part Two Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 7 2 24 45 35 David Cesarani Joynson Hicks and the Radical Right in England after the First World War in Tony Kushner and Kenneth Lunn eds Traditions of Intolerance Historical Perspectives on Fascism and Race Discourse in Britain Manchester 1989 pp 118 139 p 134 Rubinstein Recent Anglo Jewish Historiography Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 7 1993 part one in 7 1 pp 41 70 part two in 7 2 pp 24 45 Blythe p 27 Meeting the Enemy by Richard van Emden a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Matthew 2004 p39 No 31587 The London Gazette 7 October 1919 p 12418 Quoted in Blythe pp 27 28 Cesarani p 123 he wrongly credits this campaign with toppling Montagu who in fact stayed in office until the Lloyd George coalition fell in 1922 Max Aitken Decline and Fall of Lloyd George and great was the fall thereof London 1963 p 21 No 32809 The London Gazette 27 March 1923 p 2303 Maurice Cowling The Impact of Labour 1920 1924 The Beginning of Modern British Politics Cambridge 1971 pp 332 333 384 Davies Caroline 26 April 2016 The Queen at 90 Retrieved 3 June 2022 Diana Souhami The Trials of Radclyffe Hall London 1999 pp 180 181 a more recent but unfortunately not widely available account of these actions may be found in Huw Clayton A Frisky Tiresome Colt Sir William Joynson Hicks the Home Office and the Roaring Twenties in London 1924 1929 Aberystwyth University PhD thesis 2009 Archives The National 20 April 2022 The National Archives Jix s war on night club evils The National Archives blog Retrieved 30 April 2022 B Lizzie 24 June 2021 Kate Meyrick 1875 1933 Women Who Meant Business Retrieved 30 April 2022 Archives The National The National Archives The 43 Club in pictures Portals Retrieved 30 April 2022 Archives The National The National Archives Kate Meyrick 20 People of the 20s 20sPeople Portals Retrieved 30 April 2022 The ODNB article for his Cabinet colleague Douglas Hogg Attorney General at the time by John Ramsden states that Hogg was the real driving force behind this action See Hogg s biography for details a b c d e f g h i j Matthew 2004 p40 Anne Perkins A Very British Strike 3 12 May 1926 London 2006 pp 160 180 138 9 a b c d Ross McKibbin Classes and Cultures England 1918 1951 Oxford 1998 pp 277 278 a b c Matthew 2004 pp39 40 a b Taylor pp 282 285 Taylor pp 186 189 Kate Meyrick Secrets of the 43 2nd ed Dublin 1994 p 80 Jenkins 1987 p89 No 33515 The London Gazette 9 July 1926 p 4539 Matthew 2004 pp38 40 Compute the Relative Value of a U K Pound Matthew 2004 pp37 40 List available in David Butler and Gareth Butler Twentieth Century British Political Facts 1900 2000 revised eighth edition Basingstoke 2005 p 56 Matthew d Ancona Mr Blair is now at best a politician in remission Sunday Telegraph Opinion Section 26 March 2006 article on Telegraph website Blythe p 35 Cameron Hazlehurst et al eds A Guide to the Papers of British Cabinet Ministers 1900 1964 London 1997 p 185 a b William Joynson Hicks Doctor Huw Doctorhuw wordpress com 3 February 2010 Retrieved 16 April 2010 National Register of Archives Accessions to Repositories 2007 East Sussex Record Office nationalarchives gov uk Huw Clayton 2010 The Life and Career of William Joynson Hicks 1865 1932 A Reassessment PDF The Journal of Historical Biography 8 1 32 Burke s Peerage 1939 Bibliography EditBlythe Ronald 1963 Ch 2 The Salutary Tale of Jix The Age of Illusion England in the Twenties and Thirties 1919 1940 London Jenkins Roy 1987 Baldwin Bloomsbury Press HarperCollins ISBN 978 0002175869 Colin Matthew ed 2004 Dictionary of National Biography Vol 27 Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0198614111 essay on Joynson Hicks written by FML Thompson Taylor H A 1933 Jix Viscount Brentford being the authoritative and official biography of the Rt Hon William Joynson Hicks First Viscount Brentford of Newick London Further reading EditAlderman Geoffrey Recent Anglo Jewish Historiography and the Myth of Jix s Anti Semitism A Response Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 8 1 1994 The Anti Jewish Career of Sir William Joynson Hicks Cabinet Minister Journal of Contemporary History 24 1989 pp 461 482 Joynson Hicks William The Prayer Book Crisis London Putnam 1928 Perkins Anne A Very British Strike 3 12 May 1926 London 2006 Professor Alderman and Jix A Response Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 8 2 1994 pp 192 201 Sydney Robinson W The Last Victorians a daring reassessment of four twentieth century eccentrics Sir William Joynson Hicks Dean Inge Lord Reith and Sir Arthur Bryant London 2014 Thompson F M L January 2008 Hicks William Joynson first Viscount Brentford 1865 1932 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 33858 Retrieved 11 December 2008 Subscription or UK public library membership required Other sources on Joynson Hicks Hansard 1803 2005 contributions in Parliament by William Joynson Hicks Hopkins Jonathon M Paradoxes Personified Sir William Joynson Hicks Viscount Brentford and the conflict between change and stability in British Society in the 1920s University of Westminster MPhil thesis 1996 copy available at the East Sussex Record Office National Register of Archives Accessions to Repositories 2007 East Sussex Record Office Search other Archives Accessions to Repositories Major Accessions to East Sussex Record Office 2007 The National Archives Retrieved 16 April 2010 link to ESRO website East Sussex Record Office Eastsussex gov uk Retrieved 16 April 2010 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Joynson Hicks 1st Viscount Brentford Hansard 1803 2005 contributions in Parliament by the Viscount BrentfordParliament of the United KingdomPreceded byWinston Churchill Member of Parliament for Manchester North West1908 January 1910 Succeeded byGeorge KempPreceded byLord Alwyne Compton Member of Parliament for Brentford1911 1918 Constituency abolishedNew constituency Member of Parliament for Twickenham1918 1929 Succeeded byJohn FergusonPolitical officesPreceded byArchibald Boyd Carpenter Financial Secretary to the Treasury1923 Succeeded byWalter GuinnessPreceded byNeville Chamberlain Paymaster General1923 Succeeded byArchibald Boyd CarpenterPostmaster General1923 Succeeded bySir Laming Worthington EvansMinister of Health1923 1924 Succeeded byJohn WheatleyPreceded byArthur Henderson Home Secretary1924 1929 Succeeded byJ R ClynesPeerage of the United KingdomNew creation Viscount Brentford1929 1932 Succeeded byRichard Cecil Joynson HicksBaronetage of the United KingdomNew creation Baronet of Holmbury 1919 1932 Succeeded byRichard Cecil Joynson Hicks Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title William Joynson Hicks 1st Viscount Brentford amp oldid 1130971927, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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