Background
Howard Kingsley Wood was born at Hull on 19 August 1881, the son of a Wesleyan minister, the Rev. Arthur Wood. Soon after Howards birth, the family moved to the Wesley Chapel, Finsbury Road, London.
politician statesman Chancellor of the Exchequer
Howard Kingsley Wood was born at Hull on 19 August 1881, the son of a Wesleyan minister, the Rev. Arthur Wood. Soon after Howards birth, the family moved to the Wesley Chapel, Finsbury Road, London.
Kingsley Wood was educated at the Central Federation Boys’ School, London, a Wesleyan school, and became an articled solicitor in 1903.
He set up his own City firm—Kingsley Wood, Williams, Murphy and Ross—which specialized in industrial insurance law. After the 1911 National Insurance Act was passed, he became involved in bringing companies into the plan and held numerous positions on industrial insurance bodies in London.
Woods political career began in 1911, when he was elected for Woolwich to the London county council. He remained a member of that body until 1919. Between 1919 and 1922 he was parliamentary private secretary (a voluntary post) to the minister of health in the coalition government of 1918 to 1922. He then became private secretary (a paid government post) to the minister of health (Neville Chamberlain) in the Conservative government of 1924 to 1929. During this period he also acted as civil commissioner of the northern district of Britain during the General Strike of 1926, the country having been divided into ten districts and London for the civil administration of the nation. He was also made a privy councillor in 1928—an unusual honor for a private secretary.
Ramsay MacDonald formed a Labour government in 1929, which lasted until 1931; during this hiatus, Wood was excluded from the administration. However, when MacDonald formed a National government in August 1931, Wood was appointed to a variety of government posts. At first, in 1931, he was appointed private secretary to the Board of Education; but almost immediately, he was promoted to the office of postmaster-general.
Wood’s work earned him a place in the cabinet in 1933 and eventually a promotion to minister of health (1935—1938). In this office he pushed for improvements in public health and for improved housing standards. In 1938 he was elected to succeed Stanley Baldwin as Grand Master of the Primrose League, an organization named after Disraeli’s favorite flower. The league was one of the most important, keeping the Conservative rank and file, particularly women, united. In the same year, he became secretary of state for air, presiding over a buildup of the air force. During his tenure in that post, Britain’s monthly production of front-line aircraft increased from 80 (in March 1938) to 546 (in April 1940). Having accomplished that task, he decided to accept an appointment as Lord Privy Seal, which came with a less exhausting workload. It was in this capacity, in May 1940, that he was largely responsible for informing his close friend, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, that he should resign in favor of Winston Churchill.
To accomplish its mandate, Churchill’s wartime coalition government of necessity included Labour, Liberals, and anti-appeasement Conservatives acting in ministerial roles. Despite Wood’s close association with Neville Chamberlain, he was given the post of chancellor of the exchequer. At first he was not given membership in the small wartime cabinet, but he did become a cabinet member in October 1940. He lost his cabinet status, however, in the ministerial reshuffle of February 1942.
Wood died, unexpectedly, while still in office, on 21 September 1943. Since his death, he has been largely forgotten. Yet although he was never a major player in British politics, he was more than the competent solicitor and stolid administrator that he has sometimes been presented as.
He attempted to make the Post Office more effective financially, negotiating a new financial arrangement with the Treasury that fixed the sum the Post Office contributed to national finances and allowed it to keep any profits above that figure for reinvestment. He also built up the telephone section of the Post Office.
Wood was a competent chancellor, and introduced four wartime budgets. The first, in July 1940, implemented the purchase tax that his predecessor, Sir John Simon, had announced, and introduced new measures to deduct income tax at the source. Around this time, he also set up a council of economic advisers, through which the ideas of John Maynard Keynes became central to Britain’s wartime and postwar economic policy making.
Woods 1941 budget was greatly influenced by Keynesian ideas, having been based on the principle that state spending should expand when demand is low and should contract when demand is high. In order to finance the war effort, Wood raised income tax to 10s (50p) in the pound; lowered tax exemptions; and included the majority of British citizens, for the first time, among income tax payers. These policies were made palatable, in the context of war, by the creation of postwar credits whereby people were being forced to save money for the government to borrow. The 1942 and 1943 budgets followed the same general lines. In 1943 the state spent more than £5.6 billion, half of it financed out of taxation. There was, of course, much wartime demand, with potential for inflation. However, a series of food-subsidy programs ensured that wartime prices did not rise more than 30 percent above the levels prevailing in the prewar years. Wood also introduced the pay-as- you-earn (PAYE) scheme, which taxed wage earners on their weekly or monthly income, which has since become the core of the tax system in Britain.
In 1918 he was elected Conservative M.R for Woolwich, which he represented, without interruption, until his death in 1943. As a talented Conservative M.P. in a period of Conservative political dominance, he rose quickly through the government ranks.
He married Agnes Lilian, daughter of Henry Frederick Fawcett, in 1905.
