Robert Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson

Robert Spear Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson, (15 August 1886 – 2 February 1957) was a British Conservative Party politician who held a number of ministerial posts during World War II.

Diplomatic career

He was the eldest son of Robert William Hudson who had inherited the substantial family soap business and sold it, and Gerda Frances Marion Bushell. Hudson was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He entered the Diplomatic Service in 1911, becoming an attaché and First Secretary at the British embassy in Washington. Hudson afterwards served as a diplomat in Russia.

He had a particular interest in farming and was a member of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society.

Political career

Hudson was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Whitehaven in 1924 and served there until losing in 1929. In 1931 he was returned for Southport. He served in several ministerial posts, becoming a Privy Counsellor in 1938. From 1937 to 1940, Hudson served as Secretary for Overseas Trade.

The Danzig crisis

In March 1939, Hudson was scheduled to visit Germany to discuss improving Anglo-German trade, but in protest against the German violation of the Munich Agreement by occupying the Czech of Czecho-Slovakia on 15 March 1939, the visit was cancelled. Hudson was an appeaser who believed that improving Anglo-German economic relations was the key to saving the peace had very much looking forward to his visit to the ''Reich''.

On 23 March 1939, Hudson arrived in Moscow, ostensibly to negotiate an Anglo-Soviet trade treaty, but in fact to seek to improve Anglo-Soviet relations in light of the Danzig crisis. As was usually the case with foreign visitors, Hudson was not allowed to see Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin, and instead negotiated with Maxim Litvinov, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Hudson was one of the few ministers in the cabinet who spoke fluent Russian. After meeting him, Litvinov wrote to Stalin: "In view of the rejection of all our previous offers, we have no intention of making any new offers and it is up to others to take the initiative...In particular, we are ready now as we always have been, to co-operate with Britain. We are prepared to look at concrete suggestions". Hudson's insistence that he was in Moscow to only discuss economic matters and his refusal to discuss Litvinov's suggestions of a military alliance doomed his visit to failure. Upon his return to London, Hudson offered a bleak assessment of the Soviet Union in a memo dated 4 April 1939 to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. Hudson wrote that "except where those ovietinterests happen to coincide with ours, that are likely a Government to prove an unreliable ally". Through not an expert in military matters, Hudson stated that he talked at length with the British military, air and naval attaches at the embassy in Moscow whose unanimous opinion was that the Soviet Union had an abysmally weak military and that "the Russians would be unable to wage an offensive without the regime breaking down". Hudson criticised the plans for better Anglo-Soviet relations to create a counterweight to Germany as unfeasible, which led him to argue that appeasement of the ''Reich'' was the only realistic solution to the present problems in Europe..

On 17 July 1939, Helmuth Wohlthat, Hermann Göring's right-hand man in the Four Year Plan organisation, visited London to attend the meeting of the International Whaling Conference as part of the German delegation The next day, he and the German ambassador Herbert von Dirksen met Sir Horace Wilson, the Chief Industrial Adviser to the Government and one of the closest friends of Neville Chamberlain to discuss the Danzig crisis. Hudson attended the meetings as an aide to Wilson. On 20 July 1939, Hudson visited the German embassy to meet Dirksen and Wohlthat, acting on his own. Hudson, an extremely ambitious man who loved intrigue, was hoping to score a great success that would help his otherwise stalled career. Hudson kept detailed notes of his meeting at the German embassy with Wohlthat and Dirksen, where accordingly to him, he proposed a solution to the Danzig crisis. Hudson's notes have him saying that in exchange for a German promise not to invade Poland and ending the Anglo-German arms race, there would be a plan for the industrialists running the heavy industry of Germany, Britain and the United States to work together in the economic development of China, Eastern Europe and Africa; of a loan in sum of hundreds of millions for Germany to be floated in the City and on Wall Street; and some sort of plan for the "international governance" of Africa, by which he meant that Germany would given a role in the ruling of the African colonies of the European nations. At the time, it was widely accepted that colonies in Africa were necessary to allow the economies of European nations to function, and a major theme of Nazi propaganda was that it was "unjust" on the Treaty of Versailles to deprive the ''Reich'' of its African colonies. The repeated German demands for the return of the former German African colonies were a major issue in Anglo-German relations as the British government had no intention of returning the former German colonies. Hudson ended his account by saying that if only Hitler would just learn to think in economic terms that much was possible.

After his meeting at the German embassy, Hudson was by all accounts in a state of euphoria, and he asked a group of journalists to come to his house to tell them "off-the-record" about what he had done. A preening Hudson-who believed that he had more or less single-handedly saved the world from the threat of another world war with his visit to the German Embassy-showed his notes of his visit to the embassy to the journalists, telling them it was he who just ended the Danzig crisis with his bold proposals for Anglo-German economic co-operation as Wohlthat was definitely interested in what he had to say. Hudson asked the journalists not to publish this story yet, saying more time was needed for his plan to work as Wohlthat had to return to Germany to report on his offer to Göring, who presumably would convince Hitler to accept it. Two of the journalists present took the view that this was not "off-the-record" and decided to publish the story. Hudson who was described by another Conservative MP as "looks as through he just inherited a fortune and has been celebrating in a hot bath" boasted much about what he just done at a dinner party, speaking very loudly about his "peace-saving" plan.

On 22 July 1939, ''The Daily Telegraph'' and the ''News Chronicle'' both broke the story on their front-pages that Britain just had offered Germany a loan worth hundreds of millions of pound sterling in exchange for not attacking Poland. The public reaction to this story was highly negative with much of the press calling Hudson's proposed loan "Danegeld". In order to stop raids of the Vikings, the kings of England had paid the "Danegeld" ("Dane money") to bribe the Danes not to attack. The term "paying the Danegeld" in England implies weakness and cowardice, that someone would rather bribe an enemy rather than stand up for himself. Much to Hudson's humiliation, Chamberlain told the House of Commons that no such loan was being considered and that Hudson was speaking for himself. Despite the humiliation, Hudson remained convinced that "another Munich" to save the peace was still possible under which the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk) would "go home to the ''Reich''" in exchange for Germany not invading Poland. Hudson kept saying that all he needed was "a little more time" to save the peace..

Minister

In April 1940, Hudson was briefly appointed the Minister of Shipping, before on 14 May becoming Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, in the Churchill war ministry, a post he would hold until the 1945 election. In the opinion of Edward Turnour, 6th Earl Winterton, Hudson "was by far the best of Ministers of Agriculture in either war...he was determined to see that farmers and landowners alike utilised every acre of soil to help keep the nation from starvation".The Rt. Hon. Earl Winterton P.C., ''Orders of the Day'' (London: Cassell, 1953), p. 272. Churchill was dissatisfied with the current agriculture minister, Reginald Dorman-Smith, who was very close to the farmers' lobby, and replaced him with Hudson, who was an advocate of a "scientific" approach to agriculture. Hudson favored using the latest scientific methods to improve agricultural productivity with no regard for traditional farming methods, an approach that Dorman-Smith was opposed to. Hudson, besides for his advocacy of a "scientific" approach, also favored a "nutritional" approach under enough food would be produced to supply essential nutritionals, a plan that Dorman-Smith was opposed. Dorman-Smith had once been the president of the National Farmers Union, and in common with many British farmers resented the idea of university-educated experts telling farmers how to best manage their farms. Dorman-Smith disliked the "nutritional" approach, saying "once we fall into the nutritional trap, we are trapped". In the winter of 1939-1940, Dorman-Smith had "different conclusions" with Winston Churchill, who was serving as the First Lord of Admiralty, and upon becoming prime minister on 10 May 1940, Churchill sacked Dorman-Smith on 14 May. Hudson's career had benefitted from his friendship with Robert Boothby who had once served as Churchill's parliamentary secretary and who recommended him as Agriculture minister to Churchill.

A major problem for Britain in World War Two was the number of British people vastly exceeded the agricultural capacity of British farms, which thus required Britain to import food to prevent a famine. In 1938, 70% of all the food consumed in Britain came from abroad while only 30% of the food came from British farms. A major aim for Germany in the Second World just as in the First World War was to have the U-boats sink enough shipping to cut off Britain and induce a famine that would force the British to sue for peace. On 28 June 1940, a Scientific Committee appointed by Hudson recommended "a basal diet" as the "foundation of food policy" in view of the possibility of an U-boat-caused famine. The Committee advised that a diet of 2, 000 calories per day for every British person would be sufficient to keep the population alive and allow war production to continue. The "basal diet" advised was a mixture of vegetables (especially potatoes), bread, fats (butter and cooking fats), milk and oatmeal.

As Agriculture minister, Hudson strove to make British farming more productive to make up for the food shortages caused by the U-boat campaign. In April 1939, Britain had imposed peacetime conscription for the first time ever in British history, and to make up for the farmers conscripted the Women's Land Army had been created in June 1939. Upon becoming Agriculture Minister, Hudson played a major role in expanding the Women's Land Army to send thousands of "Land Girls" to the countryside to work the farms. Many of the "Land Girls" as women serving in the Women's Land Army were called complained that their efforts were not being taken seriously and that the male civil servants of the Ministry of Agriculture treated them in a very patronising fashion. The stories of the contempt that the "Land Girls" were being were driving down the number of women willing to join the Women's Land Army. Hudson argued that with many British farmers and farmhands serving in the military that the "Land Girls" were essential to provide the necessary workers to expand the productivity of British agriculture and ordered his civil servants to be more respectful of the "Land Girls".

Besides for the "Land Girls", Hudson had German and Italian POWs; Jewish refugees; serviceman on furlough who had been farmers before the war; conscientious objectors; and volunteers from the cities all put to work on British farms. Hudson especially favored the use of Italian POWs as rural laborers because many of the many Italian servicemen taken prisoner came from the rural areas of Italy and were experienced farmers. Owning to the disclination of many Italians to fight for the Fascist regime and serious morale problems in the Italian military, by 1943 British forces had captured over half million Italians, making the Italians easily the largest group of Axis POWs in British custody, vastly outnumbering the German and Japanese POWs. Starting in 1941, Italians captured in the campaigns in North Africa and East Africa were shipped to the United Kingdom to serve as rural labor and by 1944, there were 150, 000 Italian POWs working on British farms. Besides for the fact that many of the Italian POWs came from rural areas, it was believed by British officials that the Italian POWs were less likely to cause problems with the British rural communities than the German POWs.

In 1943, Hudson's work together with Lord Woolton and Lord Leathers was lauded by the Canadian journalist Robert Thurlow as a "success story". Thurlow wrote: "This is the story of three men who supply, and operate, what is probably the world's biggest store". From 1939 to 1943, the amount of arable acreage in Britain increased from 12 million acres to 18 million acres. More importantly, by 1943, 60% of the food consumed in the United Kingdom came from British farms, which lessened the dependence of imported food while freeing up shipping to bring in other supplies.

Hudson was created Viscount Hudson in 1952.

Books

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

References

External links

*
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hudson, Robert 1st Viscount Hudson
Hudson, Robert Spear, 1st Viscount
Hudson, Robert Spear, 1st Viscount
Agriculture ministers of the United Kingdom
Hudson, Robert Spear, 1st Viscount
British diplomats
Hudson, Robert Hudson, 1st Viscount
Conservative Party (UK) hereditary peers
Hudson, Robert Spear, 1st Viscount
Hudson, Robert Spear, 1st Viscount
Ministers in the Chamberlain peacetime government, 1937–1939
Ministers in the Chamberlain wartime government, 1939–1940
Ministers in the Churchill caretaker government, 1945
Ministers in the Churchill wartime government, 1940–1945
Viscounts created by George VI
Hudson, Robert Spear, 1st Viscount
UK MPs 1924–1929
UK MPs 1931–1935
UK MPs 1935–1945
UK MPs 1945–1950
UK MPs 1950–1951
UK MPs 1951–1955
UK MPs who were granted peerages