Leslie Hore-Belisha was a British politician. Hore-Belisha constantly advocated the need to harness the country’s resources for the military forces. In 1945 he was appointed minister of national insurance in Churchill’s short-lived caretaker government.
He introduced legislation on family allowances and workman’s compensation for industrial injuries. In 1947 he was elected to the Westminster City Council and was raised to the peerage in 1954.
Background
Of Spanish origin, the Belisha family had resided in England for 150 years when Leslie’s father, a Royal Fusilier, died suddenly while preparing to go on parade. Leslie was then only nine months old. His mother subsequently married Adair Hore, a distinguished non-Jewish civil servant, whose surname he added to his own.
Education
Hore-Belisha took up law and at Oxford exercised a passion for oratory by walking up and down the corridors of his house declaiming Burke’s speeches, which he had learnt by heart. Prior to World War I, he studied at the Sorbonne, Heidelberg, and Oxford. During the war he served in the army in France and Greece, went on missions to Cyprus and Egypt, and was mentioned in dispatches, but was later sent home because of malaria. He then resumed his studies at Oxford where he was elected president of the student union.
Career
Shortly after Hore-Belisha was called to the bar in 1922, he fought the election to Parliament on the Liberal ticket for the district of Devonport. He hired an old stage coach, harnessed fourbay horses to it, and drove through the constituency, stopping at corners to address the crowds who came out at the sound of the coaching horn. He lost to the incumbent Conservative candidate, but defeated him in the 1923 general election. In addition to politics he wrote the “Londoner’s Diary” column for the Evening Standard and later wrote tor the Daily Express and the Sunday Express. He also wrote as “The Man with the Lamp” in the Saturday Review and regularly contributed to the Spectator as well as to other magazines and journals in Britain and America.
In 1931 Hore-Belisha was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Board ot Trade, and a year later became financial secretary in the Treasury, as assistant to Neville Chamberlain, upon whose recommendation he was made minister of transport in 1934.
He was made privy councillor in 1935, given a seat in the Cabinet in 1936, and appointed by Neville Chamberlain as secretary of state for war in 1937. During the two years and seven months he held this office, Hore-Belisha introduced sweeping reforms in the conditions under which soldiers served and extended the period of service, enabling soldiers to qualify for a pension.
When World War II broke out, Hore-Belisha had already prepared the territorial army and had introduced partial conscription. Many of the senior officers who had been by-passed through the promotion of younger men were given positions of responsibility and were now able to settle the score. The hostile atmosphere at army headquarters and complaints of civil interference in military matters, led Chamberlain to propose to Hore-Belisha a transfer to the Board of Trade. He refused and resigned from the government in January 1940.
Achievements
Religion
For many years he was an elder of London’s Spanish and Portuguese synagogue.
Connections
In 1944, at 51, in northeastern Surrey, he married Cynthia Elliot, daughter of Gilbert Compton Elliot. They had no children.
While leading a British parliamentary delegation to France in February 1957, he collapsed while making a speech at Rheims town hall, and died a few minutes later. The cause of death was given as a cerebral haemorrhage. The barony died with him as he had no children. Lady Hore-Belisha died in July 1991, aged 75.