Keith Joseph

For the football player, seeKeith Joseph (American football).For the Australian bishop, seeKeith Joseph (bishop).

The Right Honourable The Lord Joseph CHPC
Joseph in 1964
Secretary of State for Education and Science
In office 11 September 1981 – 21 May 1986
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Mark Carlisle
Succeeded by	Kenneth Baker
Secretary of State for Industry
In office 4 May 1979 – 11 September 1981
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Eric Varley
Succeeded by	Patrick Jenkin
Secretary of State for Social Services
In office 20 June 1970 – 4 March 1974
Prime Minister	Edward Heath
Preceded by	Richard Crossman
Succeeded by	Barbara Castle
Junior ministerial offices Minister for Housing and Local Government In office 13 July 1962 – 16 October 1964 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan Alec Douglas-Home Preceded by Charles Hill Succeeded by Richard Crossman
Shadow Cabinetoffices Shadow Home Secretary In office 13 June 1974 – 11 February 1975 Leader Edward Heath Preceded by Jim Prior Succeeded by Ian Gilmour
Parliamentary offices Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal In office 12 October 1987 – 10 December 1994 Life peerage Member of Parliament forLeeds North East In office 9 February 1956 – 18 May 1987 Preceded by Osbert Peake Succeeded by Timothy Kirkhope
Personal details
Born	Keith Sinjohn Joseph (1918-01-17)17 January 1918 London, England
Died	10 December 1994(1994-12-10)(aged 76) London, England
Political party	Conservative
Spouses	Hellen Guggenheimer ​ ​ (m.1951;div.1985)​ Yolanda Castro Sheriff ​ ​ (m.1990)​
Parent	Sir Samuel Joseph, 1st Baronet(father)
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford
Military service
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Branch/service	British Army
Rank	Captain
Unit	Royal Artillery
Battles/wars	World War II

Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph,Bt,CH,PC(17 January 1918 – 10 December 1994), known asSir Keith Joseph, 2nd Baronet,for most of his political life, was a British politician. A member of theConservative Party,he served as a minister under four prime ministers:Harold Macmillan,Alec Douglas-Home,Edward Heath,andMargaret Thatcher.He was a key influence in the creation of what came to be known asThatcherism.

Joseph introduced the concept of thesocial market economyinto Britain, an economic and social system inspired byChristian democracy.He also co-founded theCentre for Policy Studieswriting its first publication:Why Britain needs a Social Market Economy.

Early life

Joseph was born inWestminster,London,to a wealthy and influential family, the son of Edna Cicely (Phillips) andSamuel Joseph.His father headed the vast family construction and project-management company,Bovis,and wasLord Mayor of Londonin 1942–3. At the end of his term he was created abaronet.Joseph's family was Jewish.On the death of his father on 4 October 1944, 26-year-old Keith inherited thebaronetcy.

Education and academic career

Joseph was educated atLockers Park SchoolinHemel Hempsteadin Hertfordshire, followed byHarrow School,where, uncharacteristically, he did not do particularly well academically.He then attendedMagdalen College,Oxford, where he readjurisprudence,obtaining first class honours. He was elected a Prize Fellow ofAll Souls Collegein 1946.

Early career

DuringWorld War II,Joseph served as a captain in theRoyal Artillery,and suffered a minor wound during German shelling of his company's headquarters in Italy, as well as beingmentioned in dispatches.After the end of the war, he was called to the Bar (Middle Temple). Following his father, he was elected as anAldermanof the City of London. He was a Director of Bovis, becoming chairman in 1958, and became an underwriter atLloyd's of London.In 1945, Joseph joined the leadership of the Post-War Orphans’ Committee of the Central British Fund for German Jewry (nowWorld Jewish Relief).

Member of Parliament

Joseph failed to be elected to the marginal seat ofBarons Courtin West London by 125 votes in the1955 election.He was elected to parliament in a by-election forLeeds North Eastin February 1956. He was swiftly appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary.

In government

Following 1959, Joseph had several junior posts in theMacmillangovernment at theMinistry of Housingand theBoard of Trade.In the 'Night of the Long Knives' reshuffle of 13 July 1962 he was made Minister for Housing and Local Government. He introduced a massive programme to buildcouncil housing,which aimed at 400,000 new homes per year by 1965. He wished to increase the proportion of owner-occupied households, by offering help with mortgage deposits. Housing was an important issue at the1964 electionand Joseph was felt to have done well on television in the campaign.

Social Services

In opposition, Joseph was spokesman on Social Services, and then on Labour underEdward Heath.He was one of twelve founder members of theNational Council for the Single Woman and Her Dependantson 15 December 1965. According to Tim Cook'sThe History of the Carers' Movement,Joseph andSally Oppenheimwere critical in raising funds from theCarnegie Trustand other organisations, which enabled the carers movement to succeed and thrive through its formative years.

Trade spokesman

Despite Joseph's reputation as a right-winger, Heath promoted him to Trade spokesman in 1967, where he had an important role in policy development. In the run-up to the1970 electionJoseph made a series of speeches under the title "civilised capitalism", in which he outlined his political philosophy and hinted of cuts in public spending. At theSelsdon Park Hotelmeeting, the Conservative Party largely adopted this approach.

After the Conservatives won the election, Joseph was madeSecretary of State for Social Services,which put him in charge of the largest bureaucracy of any government department but kept him out of control of economics. Despite his speeches against bureaucracy, Joseph found himself compelled to add to it as he increased and improved services in theNational Health Service.However, he grew increasingly opposed to the Heath government's economic strategy, which had seen a 'U-turn' in favour of intervention in industry in 1972.

1974

Following theelection defeat of February 1974,Joseph worked withMargaret Thatcherto set up theCentre for Policy Studies,a think-tank to develop policies for the new free-market Conservatism that they both favoured. Joseph became interested in the economic theory ofmonetarismas formulated byMilton Friedmanand persuaded Thatcher to support it.Despite still being a member of Heath's Shadow Cabinet, Joseph was openly critical of his government's record. In 1976, Joseph delivered his famous Stockton lecture on the economyMonetarism Is Not Enoughin which he sought to discredit previously dominant Keynesian economic strategies and contrasted wealth-producing sectors in an economy, such as manufacturing, with the service sector and government, which tend to be wealth-consuming. He contended that an economy begins to decline as its wealth-producing sector shrinks.

Many on the right wing of the Conservative Party looked to Joseph to challenge Heath for the leadership, but his chances declined following a controversial speech on 19 October 1974. It covered a variety ofsocially-conservativetopics and drew on an article that had been written byArthur Wynnand his wife and published by theChild Poverty Action Group.The notion of the "cycle of deprivation" holding down poor people was the basis of his speech.He linked it to current theories of the culture of poverty, especially to the chaotic lifestyle of the poorest people. However, he suggested that poor people should stop having so many children. In his highly publicised speech atEdgbaston,he reflected on the moral and spiritual state of Britain:

A high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world... Some are of low intelligence, most of low educational attainment. They are unlikely to be able to give children the stable emotional background, the consistent combination of love and firmness... They are producing problem children... The balance of our human stock, is threatened.

The outrage, despite his repeated apologies, in reaction to his speech sharply undercut Joseph's campaign to replace Heath as party leader. The speech was not largely written byJonathan Sumption,who went on to become a Supreme Court judge in United Kingdom, though it has been erroneously suggested.

Margaret Thatcher

Joseph withdrew from the contest against Heath and informed Margaret Thatcher, who responded "if you're not going to stand, I will, because someone who represents our viewpoint has to stand."He now became a major advisor. Thatcher later referred to Joseph as her closest political friend, and they both moved sharply to the right. His overnight conversion to free-market, small-government policies "had the force of a religious conversion".In 1975, he said:

It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. (I had thought I was a Conservative but I now see that I was not really one at all.)

This remark expressed Joseph's sense of failure during multiple Conservative governments that had automatically followed thepost-war consensusof a welfare state with strong labour unions. Their policies to stabilise the economy retained government control on industries and created an intricate system to control wages and dividends. In the eyes of Thatcher and Joseph, that pragmatic approach was contrary to the true "Conservative" ideology. As he had done a great deal to promote Thatcher, when she won the leadership in1975,she determined to put him in a position that would facilitate a profound influence on Conservative Party policy.

In Thatcher'sShadow cabinet,Joseph wanted to beShadow Chancellor of the Exchequer,but that was impossible since his notorious 1974 speech. Instead, he was given overall responsibility for Policy and Research. He had a large impact on the Conservative manifesto for the1979 election,but frequently, a compromise had to be reached with Heath's more moderate supporters, such asJim Prior.Thatcher named JosephSecretary of State for Industry.He began to prepare the many nationalised industries for privatisation by bringing in private sector managers such asIan MacGregorbut was still forced to give large subsidies to those industries making losses.

Secretary of State for Education and Science

As Thatcher'sSecretary of State for Educationfrom 1981 he started the ball rolling forGCSEs,and the establishment of a national curriculum in England and Wales.Mark Carlisle,his predecessor in the Conservative government in 1979, had cancelled the plans ofShirley Williams,his second-last predecessor, to mergeO LevelsandCSEs,but he achieved that policy. Although that was not normally the responsibility of central government, he insisted on personally approving the individual subject syllabuses before the GCSE system was introduced. His attempts to reform teachers' pay and bring in new contracts were opposed by the trade unions and led to a series of one-day strikes.

In 1984, his public spending negotiations with his Treasury colleagues resulted in a proposed plan for extra research funding for universities financed through the curtailment of financial support to students who were dependent children of more affluent parents. That plan provoked heated opposition from fellow members of the Cabinet (particularly,Cecil Parkinson) and a compromise plan was found necessary to secure consensus. The compromise involved the abandonment of Joseph's plan to levytuition feesbut preserved his aspiration to abolish the minimum grant. The resulting loss to research funding was halved by a concession of further revenue by the Treasury team.

Joseph emerged unscathed from theBrighton hotel bombingduring the Conservative Party Conference in 1984. In 1985, he published a White Paper on the university sector,The Development of Higher Education into the 1990s.It advocated an appraisal system to assess the relative quality of research and foresaw a retrenchment in the size of the higher education sector. Both proposals were controversial. Joseph was the primary influence on theEducation (No. 2) Act 1986,enacted soon after his resignation as secretary, which abolishedcorporal punishmentin most schools, established regularparents' meetings,and increased parents' influence in school governance.

Backbenches, retirement and peerage

Joseph stepped down from the Cabinet in 1986, and retired from Parliament at the1987 election.He was appointed to theOrder of the Companions of Honourin 1986.He received alife peeragein the dissolution honours, being createdBaron Joseph,ofPortsokenin theCity of Londonon 12 October 1987.Joseph died on 10 December 1994.

30-year rule and official documents

At the end of 2011, the release of confidential documents under the UK Government's30-year rulerevealed Joseph's thoughts regarding theLiverpool riots.In response toMichael Heseltine's regeneration proposal, Joseph suggested that there should be a "managed rundown" of Merseyside instead.Later, his private secretary asked for minutes of a meeting to be amended to remove reference to explicit economic regeneration as Joseph believed "it is by no means clear that any such strategy could lead to a viable economic entity".

Legacy

Joseph's 1976 speech "Monetarism Is Not Enough" was described byMargaret Thatcheras "one of the very few speeches which have fundamentally affected a political generation's way of thinking".Joseph's political achievement was in pioneering the application of monetarist economics to British political economics, and in developing what would later become known asThatcherism.He knew his own limitations, remarking of the prospect of his becoming Leader of the Conservative Party that "it would have been a disaster for the party, country, and me", and he rated himself a failure in office.The Sir Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture is held annually by the Centre for Policy Studies.

Personal life

Joseph was married twice: firstly, in 1951 to Hellen Guggenheimer, with whom he had four children. They separated in 1978,finally divorcing in 1985.In 1990 he married Yolanda Sheriff (née Castro), whom he had known since the 1940s.

Coat of arms of Keith Joseph

Crest In front of an Annulet Azure encircling a Tower Gules two Sprigs of Honesty leaved and slipped saltirewise proper Escutcheon Per chevron Gules and barry wavy of ten Azure and Or a Fess embattled of the last masoned Sable in chief a Sun in Splendour Gold Motto Incepta perficiam (I will do to perfection what I have started)

References

Sources

• Denham, Andrew and Mark Garnett.Keith Joseph(Acumen, 2002)
• Halcrow, Morrison.Keith Joseph: A Single Mind(Macmillan, 1989)
• Harrison, Brian. "Mrs. Thatcher and the Intellectuals,"Twentieth Century British History(1994) 5#2 pp 206–245.
• Harrison, Brian. "Joseph, Keith Sinjohn, Baron Joseph (1918–1994)",Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011accessed 6 June 2013
• Moore, Charles.Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands(2013)
• O'Connell, Jeffrey and Thomas E. O'Connell. "Global Raising and Razing of Statism: The Mirror Roles of Two Law-Trained Englishmen – William Beveridge and Keith Joseph,"Journal of Law & Politics(2000) 16#3 pp 639–662.

External links

• Hansard1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by Sir Keith Joseph
• Joseph's speech at Edgbaston, 1974
• Excerpt from Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
• Sir Keith Joseph papers in the Conservative Party Archive
• Works by or about Keith Josephat theInternet Archive