Dalton Was Pioneer Of Welfare State

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29748, 15 February 1962, Page 15

Dalton Was Pioneer Of Welfare State

(N.Z. Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, February 14. Lord Dalton, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who died in London yesterday at the age of 74, was one of the leaders of the British Labour Party for many years and a key figure in the welfare state programme of the Labour Government after the Second World War.

His family background and schooling would suggest a career other than that of a Labour politician—he was the son of the canon of St. George’s, Windsor, educated at Eton and King's College. Cambridge, a lawyer and an economist—but political sympathies formed at Cambridge remained with him all his life.

From 1911 to 1913, Lord Dalton—he was better known as Dr. Hugh Dalton before becoming a life peer in 1960 —worked as a research student at the London School of Economics, and he returned there as a lecturer after service on the French and Italian fronts in the First World War. From 1920 to 1925 he was Reader in Com-

merce and for 10 years from 1925 Reader in Economics at the University of London. He entered the House of Commons as member for Peckham in 1924: and during the Labour Administration of 1929-31 was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He lost his seat in the 1931 election, and in his four years cut of Parliament visited the Soviet Union and the United States, and wrote a book outLn.ng the aims of the Labour Party. At the 1935 election he regained his seat and was not defeated again.

For the year 1936-37, ie was chairman of the national executive of his party and tn the same year was chairman of the Distressed Areas Commission appointed by the party to inquire into conditions of poverty and unemployment Churchill Coalition

Early in the Second World War he was appointed Minister of Economic Warfare m Sir Winston Churchill’s National Coalition Government; and in 1942 became

president of the Board of Trade, a position he held until the Coalition Government came to an end. The functions of his department were greatly increased by the war, and his many responsibilities included the administration of numerous wartime controls. As the end of the war came in sight, he was concerned with the arrangements for a change to peace-time production and with the development of exports for the postwar drive. When Labour came into power in July, 1945. one of the first appointments made by Mr Attlee was that of Lord Dalton as Chancellor of the Exchequer. As head of the Treasury, he had the task of guiding the nation’s finances through the difficulties of the immediate post-war period. In his two years in office he carried the strain of the sterling convertibility crisis.

He consolidated and extended financial controls, especially through the nationalisation of the Bank of England, and was responsible for the financial operations connected with the nationalisation of the coal industry, cable and wireless, transport and electricity. Budget “Leak” He resigned from the Cabinet in 1947 when there was a Budget “leak.” A chance encounter with a political journalist just before his Budget speech was followed by a disclosure of the contents of the Budget in a London newspaper. Within a day. Lord Dalton handed his resignation to Mr Attlee, faced the House of Commons and took the blame. He was not out of the Cabinet for long. He rejoined it in 1948 as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and became a “member of the Cabinet free of departmental responsibilities, to be available for special duties at the discretion of the Prime Minister.” In 1950 he was Minister of Town and Country Planning, and he took over the responsibility for housing and local government which had previously belonged to the Ministry of Health when the portfolio was changed to that of Local Government and Planning After his party went out of office he was a member of the “shadow cabinet” He represented the Labour Party at various international conferences. led its delegation at the meeting of the council of the Socialist International in London in 1952. and was one of the delegation which visited Paris and Bonn to confer with the French socialists and the German Social Democratic Party-