(Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor of the Exchequer (1979-1983)...)
Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor of the Exchequer (1979-1983), Foreign Secretary (1983-1989) and Deputy Prime Minister (1989-1990), serving all but the last three weeks of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power. This text presents his memoirs which provide an account of 20 years of Conservatism.
Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon, known from 1970 to 1992 as Sir Geoffrey Howe, was a British Conservative politician.
Background
Geoffrey Howe was born in Port Talbot, Glamorgan, Wales, on December 20, 1926, the son of B. Edward Howe and E. F. (Thomson) Howe. His father was a solicitor who served as a court clerk and coroner and his mother was a justice for community affairs. Although his parents were of English ancestry, Howe often talked of his identification with his native Wales.
Education
He received his early schooling at local schools and in England before attending the prestigious Winchester College from 1939 to 1945. Then, with World War II just ending, he joined the army and was sent to East Africa as a lieutenant in the Royal Signals. After he was discharged in 1948 he entered Cambridge University on a scholarship. At Cambridge he was active in political affairs and in 1951 became chairman of the university Conservative Association.
Career
He decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a lawyer and was admitted to the bar, Middle Temple, in 1952.
Howe pursued an active career in the law in the 1950s and 1960s and in 1965 was appointed queen's counsel. His hopes of winning election to parliament were frustrated at first, with two defeats in Aberavon at the hands of Labour Party candidates in 1955 and 1959. He finally won election to the House of Commons in 1964 from Bebington, but lost his seat two years later. He returned to the House of Commons in 1970 from Reigate and, representing first this district and then after 1974 East Surrey, was a member into the mid-1980s.
Within the Conservative Party, Howe joined with other younger intellectuals to start the Bow Group, which he chaired in 1955. Here, and in the group's journal Crossbow, which he edited from 1960 to 1962, he worked to revive the party and provide it with new policies which fit the times. As reformers, this group was often described as on the left wing of the party, but their proposals were in fact quite moderate. Occasionally, Howe did emerge as an outspoken critic of the establishment. In 1969, for instance, when he chaired a committee investigating the abuse of mental patients at a hospital near Cardiff, he had to overcome official opposition to release his report.
In the Conservative government of Edward Heath, which took office in 1970, Howe became solicitor general and played an important role in drafting the controversial Industrial Relations Act of 1971. The grandson of a trade union leader, Howe nevertheless shared the Conservative conviction that excessive trade union power and lack of labor discipline had weakened Britain's economy, and the act, which was eventually rejected, was designed to help correct the situation. Howe went on to become Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs from 1972 until the Heath government fell in 1974.
Howe was one of those in the running for head of the Conservative Party when Heath was ousted from leadership in 1975. He quickly allied himself with Margaret Thatcher, who became the party leader, and became the opposition spokesman on the economy, the shadow chancellor. Like Thatcher, Howe advocated a sharply conservative course in industrial and economic policy which stressed encouraging initiative in the private sector and a sharp reduction in public sector spending. Conservative victory in the 1979 general elections elevated Margaret Thatcher to prime minister and gave Howe the chance to put his ideas into practice. Within weeks of the election, Howe produced his first budget as chancellor, a bold document which set the course for Thatcherism.
This course, which in broad outline resembled that which the Reagan administration introduced in the United States a year later, involved sharp cuts in government spending, especially in the field of social welfare; lowering income taxes in favor of indirect taxes; and strong efforts to curb inflation. In the face of sharply rising unemployment and bitter opposition to his policies even from within his own party, Howe refused to modify his monetarism. His next budget continued to stress cuts in government spending and increased incentives for businessmen.
Thatcher led the Conservatives to victory again in the 1983 general elections over a divided opposition following Britain's victory in the Falklands war with Argentina. Howe was rewarded for this loyalty with the position of foreign secretary. In that post, he was generally supportive of the United States and assertive with Britain's partners in the European Economic Community (EEC). On issues such as price supports for agricultural products and the contributions which Britain is obligated to make to the EEC budget, Howe took a tough line.
During a major Cabinet reshuffle in 1989, Howe was moved from the foreign office to lead the House of Commons. However, he insisted on keeping an official country residence, with the title of deputy Prime Minister.
While Howe was not a charismatic leader, he was thought to be well placed to succeed Margaret Thatcher at the head of his party if she were to leave office. Instead, John Major took the helm; Major was replaced by Labour Party head Tony Blair in 1997.
He retired from the House of Lords on 19 May 2015.
Following his retirement from the Commons, Howe took on a number of non-executive directorships in business and advisory posts in law and academia, including as international political adviser to the US law firm Jones Day, a director of Glaxo and J. P. Morgan, and visitor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Howe's dramatic resignation speech in the House of Commons formed the basis of Jonathan Maitland's 2015 play Dead Sheep. Howe was interviewed in 2012 as part of The History of Parliament's oral history project.
Howe died at the age of 88 on 9 October 2015 following a suspected heart attack.
(Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor of the Exchequer (1979-1983)...)
Politics
Howe’s policies included deficit reduction and closer relations with the U. S. and with the European Community. He clashed with Thatcher, however, over her increasingly dictatorial style and her opposition to Britain’s joining the European exchange-rate mechanism, among other policies. After leaving office he examined his political career in the memoir Conflict of Loyalty (1994).
Views
Quotations:
"It's one of the reasons (professional politicians) why people's confidence in the electoral system has declined so much. They have all become shadowy political creatures"
"There was no question of generation change or saying goodbye to the past or modernizing sloganising. "
"I personally feel very undecided whether it is better for a woman to stay and look after the home or go out to a job. "
"Margaret Thatcher was beyond argument a great Prime Minister. Her tragedy is that she may be remembered less for the brilliance of her many achievements than for the recklessness with which she later sought to impose her own increasingly uncompromising views. "
"The well-being of the British people and the health of our economy are far more important than any government's commitment to a particular strategy, but to change course now would be fatal to the whole counter-inflation strategy. "
Membership
Lord Howe was a patron of the UK Metric Association and the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council. He was an honorary fellow of SOAS. From 1996 to 2006 he was president of the Academy of Experts and in November 2014 was made an honorary fellow of the organisation in recognition of his contribution to the development of methods of dispute resolution.
Connections
In August 1953 Geoffrey Howe married Elspeth, daughter of P. Morton Shand. They had a son and two daughters.