William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford

Joynson-Hicks was elected to Parliament in a by-election in 1908, when Winston Churchill was obliged to submit to re-election in Manchester North West after his appointment as President of the Board of Trade, as the Ministers of the Crown Act 1908 required newly appointed Cabinet ministers to re-contest their seats. Cabinet ministers were normally returned unopposed, but as Churchill had crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904, the Conservatives were disinclined to allow him an uncontested return.[1]

Ronald Blythe in "The Salutary Tale of Jix" in The Age of Illusion (1963) called it "the most brilliant, entertaining and hilarious electoral fight of the century". Joynson-Hicks' nickname "Jix" dates from this by-election.[1] The election was notable for both the attacks of the Suffragette movement on Churchill, over his refusal to support legislation that would give women the vote, and Jewish hostility to Joynson-Hicks over his support for the controversial Aliens Act which aimed to restrict Jewish immigration.[6] Joynson-Hicks called Labour leader Keir Hardie "a leprous traitor" who wanted to sweep away the Ten Commandments. This prompted H G Wells to send an open letter to Labour sympathisers in Manchester,[7] saying that Joynson-Hicks "represents absolutely the worst element in British political life … an entirely undistinguished man … and an obscure and ineffectual nobody".[1]

Joynson-Hicks defeated Churchill. This provoked a strong reaction across the country with The Daily Telegraph running the front-page headline "Winston Churchill is OUT! OUT! OUT!" (Churchill shortly returned to Parliament as MP for Dundee).[6]

Joynson-Hicks gained personal notoriety in the immediate aftermath of this election for an address to his Jewish hosts at a dinner given by the Maccabean Society, during which he said "he had beaten them all thoroughly and soundly and was no longer their servant."[8] Subsequent allegations that he was personally anti-Semitic formed an important strand of the authoritarian streak that many, including recent scholars David Cesarani and Geoffrey Alderman, detected in his speeches and behaviour. Cesarani cautioned that "although he may have been nicknamed "Mussolini Minor", Jix was no fascist."[9] Other work has disputed the notion that Joynson-Hicks was an anti-Semite, most notably a major article by W. D. Rubinstein which asserted that as Home Secretary Joynson-Hicks would later allow more Jews to be naturalised than any other holder of that office.[10] Whether or not it was justified, the notion that Joynson-Hicks was an anti-Semite played a large part in his portrayal as a narrow-minded and intolerant man, most obviously in the work of Ronald Blythe.[11]

Joynson-Hicks lost his seat in the January 1910 general election. He contested Sunderland in the second general election in December that year, but was again defeated. He was returned unopposed for Brentford at a by-election in March 1911.[1]

During the First World War, he formed a Pals battalion within the Middlesex Regiment, the "Football Battalion." He acquired a reputation as a well-informed backbencher, an expert on aircraft and motors, badgering ministers about matters of aircraft design and production and methods of attacking Zeppelins. On 12 May 1915, he presented a petition to the Commons demanding the internment of enemy aliens of military age and the withdrawal from coastal areas of all enemy aliens.[12] In 1916 he published a pamphlet The Command of the Air in which he advocated indiscriminate bombing of civilians in German cities, including Berlin. However, he was not offered a government post.[13]

In 1918, his old constituency having been abolished, he became MP for Twickenham, holding the seat until his retirement from the House of Commons in 1929.[1]

For his war work, he was created a Baronet, of Holmbury in the County of Surrey, in 1919.[14][13]

In 1919-20 he went on an extended visit to the Sudan and India, which changed his political fortunes. At the time, there was considerable unrest in India and a rapid growth in the Home Rule movement, something Joynson-Hicks opposed due to the great economic importance of the Indian Empire to Britain. He at one time had commented "I know it is frequently said at missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We hold it as the finest outlet for British goods in general, and for Lancashire cotton goods in particular."[15][13]

He emerged as a strong supporter of General Reginald Dyer over the Amritsar Massacre, and nearly forced the resignation of the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, over the motion of censure the government put down concerning Dyer's actions.[16] This episode established his reputation as one of the "die-hards" on the right-wing of the party, and he emerged as a strong critic of the party's participation in a coalition government with the Liberal David Lloyd George.

As part of this campaign, he led an abortive attempt to block Austen Chamberlain's nomination as leader of the Unionist party on Bonar Law's retirement, putting forward Lord Birkenhead instead with the express aim of "splitting the coalition".[17]

Joynson-Hicks played a small role in the fall of Lloyd George Coalition, which he had so disliked, in October 1922. The refusal of many leading Conservatives, who had been supporters of the Coalition, to serve in Bonar Law's new government opened up promotion prospects. Joynson-Hicks was appointed Secretary for Overseas Trade (a junior minister, effectively deputy to the President of the Board of Trade). In the fifteen-month Conservative administration of first Bonar Law and then Stanley Baldwin, Joynson-Hicks was rapidly promoted. In March 1923, he became Paymaster-General then Postmaster General, filling positions left vacant by the promotion of Neville Chamberlain.[13]

When Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister in May 1923, he initially also retained his previous position of Chancellor of the Exchequer whilst searching for a permanent successor. To relieve the burden of this position, he promoted Joynson-Hicks to Financial Secretary to the Treasury and included him in the Cabinet.[13]

In that role, Joynson-Hicks was responsible for making the Hansard statement, on 19 July 1923, that the Inland Revenue would not prosecute a defaulting taxpayer who made a full confession and paid the outstanding tax, interest and penalties. Joynson-Hicks had hopes of eventually becoming Chancellor himself, but instead Neville Chamberlain was appointed to the post in August 1923. Once more, Joynson-Hicks filled the gap left by Chamberlain's promotion, serving as Minister of Health. He became a Privy Counsellor in 1923.[18]

Following the hung parliament, amounting to a Unionist defeat in the general election of December 1923, Joynson-Hicks became a key figure in various intra-party attempts to oust Baldwin. At one time, the possibility of his becoming leader himself was discussed, but it seems to have been quickly discarded. He was involved in a plot to persuade Arthur Balfour that should the King seek his advice on whom to appoint Prime Minister, Balfour would advise him to appoint Austen Chamberlain or Lord Derby Prime Minister instead of Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald. The plot failed when Balfour refused to countenance such a move and the Liberals publicly announced they would support MacDonald, causing the government to fall in January 1924.[19]

Cigarette card, 1926.

The Conservatives returned to power in November 1924 and Joynson-Hicks was appointed as Home Secretary. Francis Thompson described him as "the most prudish, puritanical and protestant Home Secretary of the twentieth century".[13] Promotion appears to have gone to his head somewhat and he allowed himself to be touted as a prospective party leader, a possibility which Leo Amery dismissed as "amazing" (October 1925).[13]

Revised Prayer Book

Plaque at St Andrew's parish church, Felixstowe, Suffolk, commemorating the defeat of the 1928 Prayer Book in the House of Commons

In 1927 Joynson-Hicks turned his fire on the proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer. The law required Parliament to approve such revisions, normally regarded as a formality.[24] Joynson-Hicks had been President of the evangelical National Church League since 1921, and he went against Baldwin’s wishes in opposing the Revised Prayer Book.[13]

When the Prayer Book came before the House of Commons Joynson-Hicks argued strongly against its adoption as he felt it strayed far from the Protestant principles of the Church of England. He likened the Revised Prayer Book to "papistry", as he believed that the reservation of sacrament implied a belief in transubstantiation. The debate on the Prayer Book is regarded as one of the most eloquent ever seen in the Commons, and resulted in the rejection of the revised Prayer Book in 1927.[24][13] His allies were an alliance of ultra-Protestant Tories and nonconformist Liberals and Labour, and some of them likened him to John Hampden or Oliver Cromwell. It was said that no such occasion had been seen since the anti-Catholic agitation of 1850-1 or, some said, since the late seventeenth century crises over Exclusion or Titus Oates.[13]

A further revised version (the "Deposited Book") was submitted in 1928 but rejected again.[25][24]

Many leading Church of England figures came to feel that disestablishment would become necessary to guard the Church against this sort of political interference. Joynson-Hicks' booklet The Prayer Book Crisis correctly forecast that the bishops would back off from demanding disestablishment, for fear of losing their state-provided salaries and endowments.[25] However, the National Assembly of the Church of England then declared an emergency, and this was argued as a pretext for the use of the 1928 Prayer Book in many churches for decades afterwards, an act of questionable legality.[25][24]

As the time for a new general election loomed, Baldwin contemplated reshuffling his Cabinet to move Churchill from the Exchequer to the India Office, and asking all ministers older than himself (Baldwin was born in 1867) to step down, with the exception of Sir Austen Chamberlain. Joynson-Hicks would have been one of those asked to retire from the Cabinet if the Conservatives had been re-elected.[29]

The Conservatives unexpectedly lost power at the general election in May 1929. A month after the election Joynson-Hicks was raised to the peerage as the Viscount Brentford, of Newick in the County of Sussex in the Dissolution Honours (necessitating a by-election at which the Conservatives narrowly held his old seat).[30][22]

Lord Brentford remained a senior figure in the Conservative Party, but due to his declining health he was not invited to join the National Government at its formation in August 1931. As late as October 1931 Lord Beaverbrook urged him to set up a Conservative Shadow Cabinet, as an alternative to the National Government. The National Government was reconstructed in November 1931, but again he was not offered a return to office.[13]

Lord Brentford married Grace Lynn, only daughter of Richard Hampson Joynson, JP, of Bowdon Cheshire, on 12 June 1895 in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. They had two sons and one daughter.[31]

Joynson-Hicks died at Newick Park, Sussex, on 8 June 1932, aged 66.[22] His wealth at death was £67,661 5s 7d (around £4m at 2016 prices).[32][33]

His widow the Viscountess Brentford died in January 1952.[1] He was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard. His youngest son, the Hon. Lancelot (who succeeded in the viscountcy in 1958), was also a Conservative politician.

Joynson-Hicks' Victorian top hat and frock coat made him seem an old-fashioned figure, but he came to be regarded with a certain affection by the public. William Bridgeman, his predecessor as Home Secretary, wrote of him "There is something of the comedian in him, which is not intentional but inevitably apparent, which makes it hard to take him as seriously as one might". Churchill wrote of him "The worst that can be said about him is that he runs the risk of being most humorous when he wishes to be most serious". After his death Leo Amery wrote that "he was a very likeable fellow" whilst Stanley Baldwin observed "he may have said many foolish things but he rarely did one".[22]

Although Joynson-Hicks was Home Secretary, a notoriously difficult office to hold, for some four and a half years, he is frequently overlooked by both historians and politicians. His length of tenure was exceeded in the twentieth century only by Chuter Ede, R. A. Butler and Herbert Morrison,[34] yet he was not included in a list of long-serving Home Secretaries presented to Jack Straw in 2001 on his departure from the Home Office.[35] He is also virtually the only major politician of the 1920s not to have been accorded a recent biography.

For many years detailed discussion of Joynson-Hicks' life and career was hampered by the inaccessibility of his papers, which were kept by the Brentford family. This meant the discourse on his life was shaped by the official biography of 1933 by H. A. Taylor, and by material published by his contemporaries – much of it published by people who hated him. As a result, public discourse has been shaped by material that portrayed him in an unflattering light, such as Ronald Blythe's biographical chapter in The Age of Illusion.[36]

In the 1990s the current Viscount lent his grandfather's papers to an MPhil student at the University of Westminster, Jonathon Hopkins,[37] who prepared a catalogue of them and wrote a short biography of Joynson-Hicks as part of his thesis.[38] In 2007, a number of these papers were deposited with the East Sussex Record Office in Lewes (which transferred to The Keep in Brighton in 2013) where they are available to the public.[39] Huw Clayton, whose PhD thesis concerned Joynson-Hicks' moral policies at the Home Office, has announced that he plans to write a new biography of Joynson-Hicks with the aid of these sources.[38] An article on Joynson-Hicks, written by Clayton, has since appeared in the Journal of Historical Biography.[40]

• Blythe, Ronald (1963). "Ch. 2 "The Salutary Tale of Jix"". The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties 1919–1940. London.
• Jenkins, Roy (1987). Baldwin. Bloomsbury Press: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0002175869.
• Matthew (editor), Colin (2004). Dictionary of National Biography. 27. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198614111.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link), essay on Joynson-Hicks written by FML Thompson
• Taylor, H. A. (1933). Jix, Viscount Brentford: being the authoritative and official biography of the Rt. Hon. William Joynson-Hicks, First Viscount Brentford of Newick. London.

• Alderman, Geoffrey, "Recent Anglo-Jewish Historiography and the Myth of Jix's Anti-Semitism: A Response" Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 8:1 (1994)
• – "The Anti-Jewish Career of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Cabinet Minister,' Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989) pp. 461–482
• Perkins, Anne, A Very British Strike: 3–12 May 1926 London 2006
• - "Professor Alderman and Jix: A Response" Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 8:2 (1994) pp. 192–201
• Sydney Robinson, W., The Last Victorians: a daring reassessment of four twentieth century eccentrics: Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Dean Inge, Lord Reith and Sir Arthur Bryant London 2014
• Thompson, F. M. L. (January 2008). "Hicks, William Joynson-, first Viscount Brentford (1865–1932)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 December 2008.

Other sources on Joynson-Hicks:

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by William Joynson-Hicks
• Hopkins, Jonathon M., "Paradoxes Personified: Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Viscount Brentford and the conflict between change and stability in British Society in the 1920s" University of Westminster MPhil thesis (1996): copy available at the East Sussex Record Office.
• National Register of Archives: Accessions to Repositories 2007: East Sussex Record Office: "Search other Archives | Accessions to Repositories | Major Accessions to East Sussex Record Office, 2007". The National Archives. Retrieved 16 April 2010. link to ESRO website: "East Sussex Record Office". Eastsussex.gov.uk. Retrieved 16 April 2010.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Brentford