Geoffrey Howe: Biography and Much More from Answers.com
- ️Wed Jul 01 2015
(b. Glamorgan, 20 Dec. 1926) British; Chancellor of the Exchequer 1979 – 83, Foreign Secretary 1983 – 9; Kt. 1970, Baron (life peer) 1992 Howe was born in Port Talbot in south Wales. His father was a solicitor who could afford to send his son to Winchester. Howe then went to Cambridge to read law. He was an early member of the Bow Group, which consisted of members of university Conservative associations, and was chairman in 1955. He was a successful barrister before entering politics.
Howe entered the House of Commons in 1964 as Conservative MP for Bebington, which he held until his defeat in 1966. He then re-entered in 1970 as MP for Reigate and then Surrey East after the reorganization of constituencies in 1974, and held it until his retirement in 1992. Howe was made Solicitor-General (with a knighthood) in Edward Heath's 1970 government. In this post he played a key part in framing the legislation for the controversial Industrial Relations Act — which embittered relations with the trade unions — as well as the European Communities Act. The latter was a formidable operation because it involved the merger of much British law with the Treaty of Rome. In 1972 he was made Secretary of State for Trade and Consumer Affairs, with a seat in the Cabinet, and was responsible for overseeing the statutory controls on prices and incomes.
When Heath was defeated in the first round of the party's leadership contest in 1975, Howe entered the second ballot. He finished a distant third behind the eventual winner, Margaret Thatcher. But he had made a mark and she appointed him shadow Chancellor. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first Thatcher government (1979 – 83) he ended exchange controls, cut income tax, and doubled VAT in his first budget. Howe took monetarist ideas seriously and his 1981 budget shocked Cabinet colleagues and Keynesian economists by deflating the economy at a time of severe recession. Sir Geoffrey signalled a decisive break with the incomes policies and corporatism of the 1970s.
Between 1983 and 1989 Howe was Foreign Secretary, the longest tenure of any Foreign Secretary since Grey (1905 – 16). He had to cope with Mrs Thatcher's suspicions of the Foreign Office — she regarded it as too compliant to foreigners, particularly to the European Community (EC). Compared to her, Sir Geoffrey was more pro-EC and less Atlanticist, favoured British membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System, and was more willing to encourage British contacts with the African National Congress. The agreement to transfer Hong Kong to China in 1997 was largely his policy.
As a minister he joined a capacity for hard work to patience and an interest in working for long-term solutions. He was an effective debater but not an inspiring public speaker. His mumbling monotone style earned him the title "Mogadon Man". Europe was to be the cause of his (and Mrs Thatcher's) downfall. Like her he had no time for the bolder schemes of federalism but he did believe in pooling national sovereignty where it would produce more benefits than action by a single government. On the eve of an important summit of European leaders in June 1989, Nigel Lawson (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Sir Geoffrey jointly threatened resignation unless Mrs Thatcher moderated her opposition to Britain's entry to the ERM. She compromised but determined to move Sir Geoffrey at her earliest opportunity.
The next month Howe was demoted to the post of leader of the House of Commons with the title of Deputy Prime Minister. The last was only a gesture. He was not successful in either post, because he had no close relationship with the Prime Minister, and grew increasingly disillusioned. She made it clear that she would not listen to him, and he thought that on Europe she was not only destabilizing the Cabinet but harming the national interest. After more belligerent speeches from Mrs Thatcher on Europe he resigned on 1 November 1990. He judged that only by leaving might he be able to effect a change. His nineteen-minute resignation speech in the House of Commons on 13 November was devastating in its criticism of Mrs Thatcher's handling of Cabinet and her attitude to Europe. It greatly weakened her position, opening the way for the leadership challenge from Michael Heseltine and her eventual downfall.
Howe played a major role in preparing and delivering many of the economic and foreign policies of the 1980s. Perhaps only Mrs Thatcher herself deserves more credit as an architect of what was known as Thatcherism. He retired from the House of Commons in 1992 and entered the Lords as Lord Howe of Aberavon.
Biography: Sir Geoffrey Howe
British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe (born 1926) was one of Britain's most important political leaders through the 1980s.
Sir (Richard Edward) Geoffrey Howe was the chancellor of the Exchequer, entrusted with the key job of directing economic policy, in the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher which took office in 1979. In 1983, after Thatcher won re-election, Howe became foreign secretary. Called the "patient Fabian of Thatcherism" by one writer, Howe was less outspoken than the prime minister, but he was closely identified with her vigorously right-wing policies, especially in economics.
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. 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. 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 service was rewarded with a knighthood in 1970. 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. Married (in 1953 to Elspeth Rosamund Morton Shand), Howe was the father of three children.
Further Reading
In 1994, Howe published his insightful Conflict of Loyalty. While there is no biography of Howe available, he figures prominently in general works such as Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Government (1983) and Alan Sked and Chris Cook, Post-War Britain, A Political History (1984).
| The Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Howe | |
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| In office 24 July 1989 – 1 November 1990 |
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| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
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| Preceded by | William Whitelaw |
| Succeeded by | Michael Heseltine |
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| In office 24 July 1989 – 1 November 1990 |
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| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | John Wakeham |
| Succeeded by | John MacGregor |
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| In office 11 June 1983 – 24 July 1989 |
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| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | Francis Pym |
| Succeeded by | John Major |
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| In office 4 May 1979 – 11 June 1983 |
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| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | Denis Healey |
| Succeeded by | Nigel Lawson |
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| Born | 20 December 1926 (age 80) Port
Talbot, Wales, UK |
| Political party | Conservative |
Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon, CH, PC, QC (born 20 December 1926), known until 1992 as Sir Geoffrey Howe, is a senior British Conservative politician. He was Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister, successively holding the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and finally Leader of the House of Commons and Deputy Prime Minister.
His resignation on 1 November 1990 is widely thought to have hastened Thatcher's own downfall three weeks later, in perhaps the most dramatic period of British Conservative politics in recent times.
Early Life
Geoffrey Howe was born in 1926 at Port Talbot in Wales.A pupil of the Bridgend Preparatory School, Bryntirion, he then attended Abberley Hall School, Worcestershire and Winchester College. He then did National Service as a Second Lieutenant in East Africa, by his own account giving political lectures in Swahili about how Africans should avoid communism and remain loyal to "Bwana Kingy George". Having declined an offer to remain in the army as a captain, he went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read Law and was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, and on the committee of the Cambridge Union Society. He was called to the Bar in 1952 and was made a QC in 1965. He became chairman of the Bow Group, an internal Tory think tank of 'young modernisers' in the 1960s, and edited its magazine Crossbow.
Political Life
Howe represented Bebington in the House of Commons from 1964 to 1966, Reigate from 1970 to 1974, and East Surrey from 1974 to 1992. In 1970 he was knighted and appointed Solicitor General in Edward Heath's government, and in 1972 became Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, with a seat in the Cabinet, a post he held until Labour took power in March 1974.
In Opposition and Government (1974-1990)
In Opposition between 1974 and 1979, Howe contested the second ballot of the 1975 Conservative leadership election, in which Margaret Thatcher was elected, and then was appointed by Thatcher as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. He masterminded the development of new economic policies embodied in an Opposition mini-manifesto The Right Approach to the Economy. Labour Chancellor Denis Healey described being attacked by Howe (at the time his Conservative shadow Chancellor) as "like being savaged by a dead sheep".
With Conservative victory in the 1979 general election, Howe became Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. His tenure was characterised by radical policies to correct the public finances, reduce inflation and liberalise the economy. The shift from direct to indirect taxation, the development of a Medium-Term Financial Strategy, the abolition of exchange controls and the creation of tax-free enterprise zones were among important decisions of his Chancellorship. Howe's famous 1981 Budget defied conventional economic wisdom at the time by deflating the economy at a time of recession. His macro-economic policy emphasised the need to narrow the budget deficit rather than engage in unilateral tax cuts of the kind subsequently pioneered in 'Reaganomics'. His micro-economic policy was designed to liberalise the economy and promote supply-side reform. This combination of policies became one of the defining features of Thatcherism in power. Some commentators regard Howe as the most successful Chancellor of his era. [citation needed]
After the 1983 general election Thatcher appointed Howe Foreign Secretary, a post he held for six years. He became in effect the ambassador for a Britain whose international stature had been revived by the growing success of the 'Thatcher revolution'. He played an important part in reasserting the role of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and developed a strong working relationship with US Secretary of State George Schultz, paralleling the bond of Reagan and Thatcher. His tenure was made difficult, however, by growing behind-the-scenes tensions with the Prime Minister on a number of issues, first on South Africa and then on Britain's relations with the European Community. In June 1989, Howe, and his successor as Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, secretly threatened to both resign over Thatcher's opposition to British membership in the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System.
In the following month of July 1989, the little-known John Major was unexpectedly appointed to replace Howe as Foreign Secretary, and the latter became Leader of the House of Commons, Lord President of the Council and Deputy Prime Minister. In the reshuffle, Howe was also offered, but turned down, the post of Home Secretary. Although attempts were made to present it positively, Howe's move back to domestic politics was generally seen as a demotion, especially after Thatcher's press secretary Bernard Ingham belittled the significance of the Deputy Prime Minister appointment at his morning lobby briefing the following day. The personal insult to Howe was compounded by having to give up the Foreign Secretary's country residence Chevening. The sceptical attitude towards Howe in Number 10 weakened him politically — even if it may have been driven to some degree by fear of him as a possible successor — a problem compounded by the resignation from the Treasury of his principal ally Nigel Lawson later in the same year. During his time as Deputy Prime Minister, Howe made a series of coded calls on Thatcher to re-position her administration, which was suffering rising unpopularity because of opposition to the Poll Tax, as a 'listening government'.
Resignation
With pressures mounting on Thatcher, Howe resigned from the Cabinet on November 1, 1990 — in the aftermath of the Prime Minister's position at the Rome European Council meeting the previous weekend, at which she had declared for the first time that Britain would never enter a single currency — writing a cautiously-worded letter of resignation in which he criticised Thatcher's overall handling of UK relations with the European Union. After largely successful attempts by Number 10 to claim that there were differences only of style, rather than substance, in Howe's disagreement with the Thatcher on Europe, Howe chose to send a powerful message of dissent. In the famous resignation speech in the Commons on November 13, he attacked Thatcher for running increasingly serious risks for the future of the country and chastised her for undermining the policies on EMU proposed by her own Chancellor and Governor of the Bank of England. He offered a striking cricket metaphor for British negotiations on EMU in Europe: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, as the first balls are being bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain". He called on others to "consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long". Although Howe said subsequently that his intention was only to constrain any shift in European policy by the Cabinet under the existing Prime Minister, his dramatic speech is widely seen as the key catalyst for the leadership challenge of Michael Heseltine a few days later, as well as Thatcher's subsequent resignation as Prime Minister and party leader on 22 November 1990, after failing to win an outright vote on the first ballot.
Retirement
Howe retired from the House of Commons in 1992 and was made a life peer as Baron Howe of Aberavon of Tandridge in the County of Surrey. He published his memoirs "Conflict of Loyalty" (Macmillan, 1994) soon after. In the Lords, Howe has continued to speak on a wide range of foreign-policy and European issues, and more recently led opposition to the Labour government's plan to convert the second chamber into a largely elected body.
In his early retirement, 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, University of London. His wife Elspeth Howe, a former Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, was made a life peer in 2001, as Baroness Howe of Idlicote. Lord Howe is a patron of the UK Metric Association.
Howe was a close personal friend of Ian Gow, the former MP, parliamentary private secretary, and personal confidant of Margaret Thatcher, who was assassinated by the IRA. He delivered the principal appreciation of Gow at the latter's memorial service.
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Offices held
| Parliament of the United Kingdom (1801–present) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Hendrie Oakshott |
Member of Parliament for
Bebington 1964–1966 |
Succeeded by Edwin Brooks |
| Preceded by John Vaughan-Morgan |
Member of Parliament for
Reigate 1970–1974 |
Succeeded by George Gardiner |
| Preceded by William Clark |
Member of Parliament for
East Surrey 1974–1992 |
Succeeded by Peter Ainsworth |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by Sir Arthur Irvine |
Solicitor
General for England and Wales 1970–1972 |
Succeeded by Sir Michael Havers |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Denis Healey |
Chancellor of the
Exchequer 1979–1983 |
Succeeded by Nigel Lawson |
| Preceded by Francis Pym |
Foreign Secretary 1983–1989 |
Succeeded by John Major |
| Preceded by William Whitelaw (1979-1988) |
Deputy
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1989–1990 |
Succeeded by Michael Heseltine (1995–1997) |
| Preceded by John Wakeham |
Lord President of the
Council 1989–1990 |
Succeeded by John MacGregor |
| Leader of the House
of Commons 1989–1990 |
| Deputy Prime Ministers and First Secretaries of State of the United Kingdom |
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Clement Attlee† · Herbert
Morrison† · Anthony Eden† · Rab
Butler · George Brown‡ ·
Michael
Stewart‡ · Barbara Castle‡ · William
Whitelaw† · Geoffrey Howe† · Michael Heseltine · John
Prescott |
| Chancellors of the Exchequer | |
|---|---|
| England | |
| Great Britain | |
| United Kingdom |
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| Foreign Secretary |
|---|
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Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs: Fox · Grantham · Fox ·
Temple · Leeds · Grenville · Hawkesbury · Harrowby · Mulgrave · Fox ·
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· Carrington
· Pym · Howe ·
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· Cook · Straw ·
Beckett · Miliband |
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