Kingsley Wood

The Right HonourableSir Kingsley Wood MP
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 12 May 1940 – 21 September 1943
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	Sir John Simon
Succeeded by	Sir John Anderson
Lord Privy Seal
In office 3 April 1940 – 12 May 1940
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Samuel Hoare
Succeeded by	Clement Attlee
Secretary of State for Air
In office 16 May 1938 – 3 April 1940
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Philip Cunliffe-Lister
Succeeded by	Sir Samuel Hoare
Minister of Health
In office 7 June 1935 – 16 May 1938
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Hilton Young
Succeeded by	Walter Elliot
Postmaster General
In office 25 August 1931 – 7 June 1935
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	William Ormsby-Gore
Succeeded by	George Tryon
Member of Parliament forWoolwich West
In office 14 December 1918 – 21 September 1943
Preceded by	Office Created
Succeeded by	Francis Beech
Personal details
Born	Howard Kingsley Wood (1881-08-19)19 August 1881 Kingston-Upon-Hull,England
Died	21 September 1943(1943-09-21)(aged 62) London,England
Political party	Conservative
Spouse	Agnes Lilian ​ (m.1905)​
Children	1 daughter

Sir Howard Kingsley Wood(19 August 1881 – 21 September 1943) was a BritishConservativepolitician. The son of aWesleyan Methodistminister, he qualified as a solicitor, and successfully specialised in industrial insurance. He became a member of theLondon County Counciland then aMember of Parliament.

Wood served as junior minister toNeville Chamberlainat theMinistry of Health,establishing a close personal and political alliance. His first cabinet post wasPostmaster General,in which he transformed the BritishPost Officefrom a bureaucracy to a business. AsSecretary of State for Airin the months before the Second World War he oversaw a huge increase in the production of warplanes to bring Britain up to parity with Germany. WhenWinston Churchillbecame Prime Minister in 1940, Wood was madeChancellor of the Exchequer,in which post he adopted policies propounded byJohn Maynard Keynes,changing the role ofHM Treasuryfrom custodian of government income and expenditure to steering the entire British economy.

One of Wood's last innovations was the creation ofPay As You Earn,under which income tax is deducted from employees' current pay, rather than being collected retrospectively. This system remains in force in Britain. Wood died suddenly on the day on which the new system was to be announced to Parliament.

Early years

Wood was born inHull,eldest of three children of the Rev. Arthur Wood, aWesleyan Methodistminister, and his wife, Harriett Siddons,néeHoward.His father was appointed to be minister ofWesley's Chapelin London, where Wood grew up, attending nearbyCentral Foundation Boys' School.He wasarticledto asolicitor,qualifying in 1903 with honours in his law examinations.

In 1905 Wood married Agnes Lilian Fawcett (d. 1955); there were no biological children of the marriage, but the couple adopted a daughter.Wood established his own law firm in theCity of London,specialising in industrial insurance law. He represented the industrial insurance companies in their negotiations with theLiberalgovernment before the introduction ofLloyd George'sNational Insurance Billin 1911, gaining valuable concessions for his clients.

Wood was first elected to office as a member of theLondon County Council(LCC) at a by-election on 22 November 1911, representing theBorough of Woolwichfor theMunicipal Reform Party.His importance in the field of insurance grew over the next few years; his biographerRoy Jenkinshas called him "the legal panjandrum of industrial insurance".He chaired the London Old Age Pension Authority in 1915 and the London Insurance Committee from 1917 to 1918, was a member of the National Insurance Advisory Committee from 1911 to 1919, chairman of the Faculty of Insurance from 1916 to 1919 and president of the faculty in 1920, 1922 and 1923.At the LCC he was a member of the council committees oninsurance,pensionsandhousing.He wasknightedin 1918 at the unusually early age of 36. It was not then, as it later became, the practice to state in honours lists the reason for the conferring of an honour,but Jenkins writes that Wood's knighthood was essentially for his work in the insurance field.

Member of Parliament

Wood was elected toParliamentas aConservativein the "khaki election"of 1918. His constituency,Woolwich West,wasmarginal,but he represented it for the rest of his life.Before being elected, he had attracted notice by advocating the establishment of aMinistry of Health;after the election he was appointedParliamentary Private Secretary(an unpaid assistant to a minister, a traditional first rung on the political ladder) to the first Minister of Health,Christopher Addison.

After the collapse of thecoalition governmentin 1922, Wood was offered no post in theConservative governmentformed byBonar Law.As a backbencher, Wood successfully introduced the Summer Time Bill of 1924. This measure, passed in the teeth of opposition from the agricultural lobby, provided for a permanent annualsummer timeperiod of six months from the first Sunday in April to the first Sunday in October.

WhenBaldwinsucceeded Law in 1924, Wood was appointedParliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health,as junior minister toNeville Chamberlain.The two served at theMinistry of Healthfrom 11 November 1924 to 4 June 1929, becoming friends and firm political allies.They worked closely together on local government reform, including a radical updating of local taxation, the "rates",based on property values.Wood's political standing was marked by his appointment as a civil commissioner during thegeneral strikeof 1926,and, unusually for a junior minister, as aprivy councillorin 1928.In 1930 he was elected as the first chairman of the executive committee of theNational Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations.

When theNational Governmentwas formed byRamsay MacDonaldin 1931, Wood was madeParliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education.After the general election of November 1931 he was promoted to the office ofPostmaster General.The position did not entail automatic membership of the cabinet, but Wood was made a cabinet member in 1933.

Ministerial service

Wood served as a minister under (top)Ramsay MacDonald,Stanley Baldwin,(bottom)Neville ChamberlainandWinston Churchill

As minister in charge of theGeneral Post Office(GPO), Wood inherited an old-fashioned organisation, not equipped to meet the needs of the 1930s. In particular its management of the national telephone system, a GPO monopoly, was widely criticised.Wood considered reconstituting the whole of the GPO, changing it from a government department to what would later be called aquango,and he set up an independent committee to advise him on this. The committee recommended that the GPO should remain a department of state, but adopt a more commercial approach.

Under Wood the GPO introducedreply paidarrangements for businesses,and set up a nationalteleprinterservice.For the telephone service, still mostly dependent on manual operators, the GPO introduced a programme of building new automated exchanges.For the postal service, the GPO built up a large fleet of motor vehicles to speed delivery, with 3,000 vans and 1,200 motor-cycles.Wood was a strong believer in publicity; he set up an advertising campaign for the telephone system which dramatically increased the number of subscribers, and he established theGPO Film Unitwhich gained a high aesthetic reputation as well as raising the GPO's profile.Most importantly, Wood transformed the senior management of the GPO and negotiated a practical financial deal withHM Treasury.The civil service post of Secretary to the Post Office was replaced by a director general with an expert board of management. The old financial rules, by which all the GPO's surplus revenue was surrendered to the Treasury had long prevented reinvestment in the business; Wood negotiated a new arrangement under which the GPO would pay an agreed annual sum to the Treasury and keep the remainder of its revenue for investment.

When MacDonald was succeeded asPrime Minister of the United Kingdomby Baldwin in 1935, Wood was appointedMinister of Health.Despite its title, the Ministry was at that time at least as concerned with housing as with health. Under Wood, his biographerG. C. Pedenwrites, "theslum clearanceprogramme was pursued with energy, and overcrowding was greatly reduced. There was also a marked improvement in maternal mortality, mainly due to the discovery ofantibioticsable to counteractsepticaemia,but also because a full-time, salaried midwifery service was created under the Midwives Act of 1936. "Jenkins comments that the housing boom of the 1930s was one of the two main contributors to such economic recovery as there was after theGreat Depression.

Kingsley Wood, as Secretary of State for Air, accompanied by Air MarshalPatrick Playfairvisit an RAF unit in France, c.1939-1940

WhenAnthony Edenresigned from Chamberlain's government in March 1938, Wood moved to beSecretary of State for Airin the ensuing reshuffle. The UK was then producing 80 new warplanes a month. Within two years under Wood the figure had risen to 546 a month.By the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain was producing as many new warplanes as Germany.Wood's tenure as Secretary of State for Air coincided with thePhoney War,and during this time he limited RAF activity todropping propaganda leafletsrather thanstrategic bombing.WhenLeo Ameryurged him to destroy theBlack Forestwith incendiary bombs in reaction to theinvasion of Poland,he is said to have replied "Are you aware it isprivate property?... Why, you will be asking me bombEssennext! "By early 1940, Wood was worn out by his efforts, and Chamberlain moved him to the non-departmental office ofLord Privy Seal,switching the incumbent,Sir Samuel Hoare,to the Air Ministry in Wood's place. Wood's job was to chair both the Home Policy Committee of the cabinet, which considered "all social service and other domestic questions and reviews proposals for legislation" and the Food Policy Committee, overseeing "the problems offood policyand home agriculture ".He held this position for only a few weeks; the downfall of Chamberlain affected Wood in an unexpected way.

In May 1940, as a trusted friend, Wood told Chamberlain "affectionately but firmly" that after the debacle of the Britishdefeat in Norwayand the ensuingCommons debate,his position as Prime Minister was impossible and he must resign.He also advisedWinston Churchillto ignore pressure from those who wantedLord Halifax,not Churchill, as Chamberlain's successor.Chamberlain agreed to resign on 9 May, but considered going back on his decision the next day as the German attack on theWestern Fronthad begun; Wood told him that he had to go through with his resignation.Both men acted on Wood's advice. Churchill became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940; Wood was appointedChancellor of the Exchequeron 12 May.

Chancellorship of the Exchequer and death

One of the reasons for Wood's appointment to the Treasury seems to have been Churchill's urgent desire to be rid of the incumbentChancellor of the Exchequer,Sir John Simon,whom Churchill detested.Another may have been Wood's record of working well with politicians from other parties.In peacetime, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is often the most important member of the cabinet after the Prime Minister,but the exigencies of the war reduced the Chancellor's precedence. The Treasury temporarily ceased to be the core department of government. In Peden's words, "Non-military aspects of policy, includingeconomic policy,were co-ordinated by a cabinet committee… The Treasury's main jobs were to finance the war with as littleinflationas possible, to conduct external financial policy so as to secure overseas supplies on the best possible terms, and to take part in planning for the post-war period. "

Wood was Chancellor, as Jenkins notes, "for the forty key months of the Second World War".He presented four budgets toParliament.His first, in July 1940, passed with little notice, and brought into effect some minor changes planned by his predecessor. Of more long-lasting impact was his creation in the same month of a council of economic advisers, the most notable of whom,John Maynard Keynes,was quickly recruited as a full-time adviser at the Treasury. Jenkins detects Keynes's influence in Wood's second budget, in April 1941.It brought in a top income tax rate of 19s 6d (97½ pence indecimal currency) and added two million to the number of income tax payers; for the first time in Britain's history the majority of the population was liable toincome tax.Keynes convinced Wood that he should abandon the orthodox Treasury doctrine that Chancellors' budgets were purely to regulate governmental revenue and expenditure; Wood, despite some misgivings on Churchill's part, adopted Keynes's conception of using national income accounting to control the economy.

With the hugely increased public expenditure necessitated by the war – it increased sixfold between 1938 and 1943 – inflation was always a danger.Wood sought to head off inflationary wage claims by subsidising essentialrationed goods,while imposing heavy taxes on goods classed as non-essential.The last change he pioneered as Chancellor was the system ofPay As You Earn(PAYE), by which income tax is deducted from current pay rather than paid retrospectively on past years' earnings.He did not live to see it come into effect; he died suddenly at his London home on the morning of the day on which he was due to announce PAYE in the House of Commons.He was 62.

Wood was referred to in the bookGuilty MenbyMichael Foot,Frank OwenandPeter Howard(writing under the pseudonym "Cato" ), published in 1940 as an attack on public figures for their failure to re-arm and theirappeasementofNazi Germany.

References

• Jenkins, Roy (1998).The Chancellors.London: Macmillan.ISBN0-333-73057-7.
• Gault, Hugh (2014).Making the Heavens Hum Part 1: Kingsley Wood and the Art of the Possible 1881-1924.Cambridge: Gretton Books.ISBN978-0-9562041-7-2.
• Gault, Hugh (2017).Making the Heavens Hum Part 2: Scenes from a Political Life: Kingsley Wood 1925-1943.Cambridge: Gretton Books.ISBN978-0-9562041-9-6.

External links

• Hansard1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by Kingsley Wood
• Newspaper clippings about Kingsley Woodin the20th Century Press Archivesof theZBW