Aubrey Jones

Aubrey Jones PC (born November 20, 1911 in Merthyr Tydfil , Wales , † April 10, 2003 ) was a British Conservative Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons between 1950 and 1965 , and between 1955 and 1957 Minister for Fuel and Energy and between 1957 and 1959 Minister of Supply. He later acted as chairman of the PIB Price and Wage Committee.

Life

Studies, journalist and World War II

Jones was the son of Evan Jones, a Welsh miner who worked at a GKN steel mill after being diagnosed with silicosis , and Margaret Aubrey Jones, a teacher. After attending Cyfartha Castle Secondary School , he began studying economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). His professors included Lionel Robbins , Hugh Dalton, and especially Harold Laski . In 1933 he graduated with honors and won a Gerstenberg scholarship as well as the Gladstone Prize. He then started working for the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva before working as a correspondent for the daily newspaper The Times in Rome , Paris and Berlin .

Because of this professional experience, Jones began his military service in the Military Intelligence Service at the outbreak of World War II , and found employment in the Eighth Army in the Mediterranean . During this time, his political affection for the Conservative Party was shaped when he wrote a highly regarded memorandum in Sicily entitled Right and Left . In it he concluded that "writers on the left would spoil the minds and hearts of England". Most recently he was promoted to captain .

Member of the House of Commons

In the elections of July 5, 1945 Jones ran for the Conservative Tories in the constituency of South-East Essex unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Commons. In a by -election on February 21, 1946 in the constituency of Heywood and Radcliffe, he was defeated by only 452 votes difference to the candidate of the Labor Party , Anthony Greenwood . While Greenwood received 22,238 votes (50.5 percent), he received 21,786 votes (49.5 percent).

After retiring from military service, Jones initially returned to The Times before moving to the steel industry business association BISF (British Iron and Steel Federation) in 1949 , where he became an assistant to its director Andrew Rae Duncan . During this time, the Attlee cabinet came up with the first draft laws to nationalize the steel industry , against which the British Iron and Steel Federation fought back .

In the general election of February 23, 1950 Jones was elected for the first time for the Conservative Party as a member of the House of Commons, in which he represented the constituency of Birmingham Hall Green until March 19, 1965 . In his first election he was able to prevail with a clear majority of 3,853 votes against his opponent from the Labor Party. Despite his election as MP, he also remained a full-time employee with the BISF.

Junior minister

After Winston Churchill was again prime minister after the general election of February 25, 1951 and forms his third cabinet , Jones was initially passed over in the allocation of government offices and initially remained an employee of the BISF. Some time later, however, he became the private parliamentary secretary of the then Economics Minister Arthur Salter . He was also an active member of his party's backbencher committee for fuels and energy and was a constant critic of the Minister for Fuels and Energy, Geoffrey Lloyd , who had also promoted him. However, he lost the post of Parliamentary Private Secretary to Minister Salter after the post was abolished on November 24, 1952.

Minister for Fuel and Energy and Minister for Procurement

After the general election of May 26, 1955 , Jones was passed over by the new Prime Minister Anthony Eden in the formation of his cabinet . Therefore, he took on the role of General Director of the British Iron and Steel Federation. However, in the extensive government reshuffle of December 20, 1955, he succeeded Geoffrey Lloyd, who has now come under more criticism, himself as Minister of Fuel and Power . He did not become cabinet minister, but at least a member of the Privy Council . He was responsible for the three major nationalized industries coal, electricity and gas. The revival of energy management that he initiated was undisputed. Within eleven months he agreed to a public inquiry into the location of a nuclear power plant in Bradwell , Essex . After personally checking the inspection report, he promoted the construction of the nuclear power plant, which began on January 1, 1957. On the other hand, his tenure as minister was marked by the Suez crisis. Due to the shortage of oil deliveries by a third due to the nationalization of the Suez Canal , he first introduced a voluntary and from December 17, 1957 a mandatory rationing of gasoline.

After Harold Macmillan took office on January 9, 1957, Jones was appointed Minister of Supply . In this role, he was responsible for overseeing national defense companies, the UK hydrogen bomb test program and the controversial chemical warfare test station of the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down on Salisbury Plain . He also assumed responsibility for the UK aviation industry after it was discovered that there was no worldwide interest in their products. Due to the decline in military orders, he advocated a leaner industry with fewer products, which, however, led to criticism in the lower and upper houses of parliament . He also foresaw that many of the industry's favorite projects, such as the BAC TSR.2 aircraft, would eventually end.

On October 23, 1957, he narrowly escaped a plane crash. A Vickers Viscount from British European Airways (BEA) was supposed to pick him up after visiting a factory extension at RAF Nutts Corner Airport in Belfast . In the process, however, the machine crashed and all seven crew members were killed.

Due to the decreasing responsibility of the Ministry of Procurement, Jones stood for incorporation into a Ministry of Technology, but this was rejected by Secretary of Defense Duncan Sandys before the first Wilson administration created such a ministry in 1964. Criticism from the media and backbenchers of the UK's lackluster export campaigns clouded his relationship with Prime Minister Macmillan. This reprimanded Jones in June 1959 in a public meeting. After the success of the Conservative Party in the October 8, 1959 general election , Jones lost his ministerial office after Prime Minister Macmillan dissolved the Ministry of Procurement and appointed Duncan Sandys as Minister of Aviation.

Backbencher and business manager

Jones refused to move to another ministerial office and from then on sat as backbencher in the House of Commons, where he dealt with questions of European politics, the lack of economic planning and the redundancy of British nuclear deterrents. He abstained on the question of immigration reduction. In the meantime, after leaving the government, he had taken on functions in the economy and in 1960 became a board member of the textile and chemicals company Courtaulds and the metal industry company GKN .

In November 1962 he publicly called for Macmillan's resignation. After Prime Minister Macmillan actually resigned almost a year later on October 12, 1963 in the course of the Profumo affair , Jones hoped for a reappointment to a ministerial office through his successor Alec Douglas-Home . This did not happen because too many party friends refused. Shortly thereafter, he and Edward Boyle boycotted a Conservative party meeting in Birmingham , at which a tougher immigration policy for the general election on October 15, 1964 was decided. In 1964 he became CEO of Staveley Industries . Based on his experience, he was named by the Labor government in 1965 as a member of the committee named after Edwin Plowden, Baron Plowden , to study the future of the aviation industry.

Chairman of the PIB

In the spring of 1965 Jones was unexpectedly appointed by Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Economy Secretary George Brown to chair the PIB (Prices and Incomes Board) established by Wilson . He then resigned from his House of Commons and executive positions in the industry and received a salary of £ 15,000 instead . As chairman of the PIB, however, he was unable to limit wage and price increases. Ultimately, Wilson ordered a wage and price freeze within 18 months. On the other hand, the PIB survived the other government mechanisms of the Labor Party for the control and modernization of the economy, namely the national plan of Economics Minister Brown.

Its main task was to gauge the justification for wage increases. After decades of moderate adjustments, wages rose by 10 percent, which resulted in an impending price increase. He submitted the PIB's first report within 44 days. This led to a dispute with the road transport industry, as the question was raised whether an increase in the transport tariffs was fully justified. The unions were convinced that the Price and Wages Committee was against them. At the beginning of 1966, a strike on the railways was barely prevented after the PIB had demanded new work practices.

As the economic burden increased, Wilson ordered a six-month freeze on wages and prices in August 1966. This initially increased the power of the PIB. The unions, however, were irritated by Jones' attacks on overtime. After another six months of sensitive restraint, the government's influence was limited to suspending wage increases for a maximum of six months. In July 1968 a law was passed that punished illegal employment but strengthened the unions. Ultimately, the coercive system ran out in late 1969 and led to a series of strikes.

After the pound's devaluation in December 1967, Jones angered Ministers and the markets by calling for a second currency devaluation if the benefits hoped for from the first devaluation were not enough. The following summer, 1968, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley . He believed that he had to change requirements and that the PIB should continue to exist, despite the growing disputes with the Monopolies Commission. When the Labor Party intended to merge the Price and Wages Committee with the Monopoly Commission before the general election on June 18, 1970 , Jones agreed to chair the merged organization.

The general election on June 18, 1970, however, was won by the Conservative Party, which rejected such an apparatus for price control. Although Jones declared his willingness to work with the new government under Prime Minister Edward Heath , he was dismissed by the Prime Minister in November 1970.

Return to business and candidacy for the Liberal Party

Jones then returned to business and became chairman of the board of Laporte Industries . He was also a board member of the bus company Thomas Tilling , the tool manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker and the Allianz insurance company Cornhill Insurance , of which he was chairman for twelve years. He also worked as a consultant and arbitrator in investment disputes.

In 1973 Jones published The New Inflation . In it he pointed out that a constant price and wage policy is necessary for the survival of a democracy. After more than 35 years of membership, he resigned from the Conservative Party in 1980. Unlike his former neighbor in Birmingham, Roy Jenkins , who had left the Labor Party and founded the Social Democratic Party , he did not found a new party, but instead joined the Liberal Party .

In the general election of June 9, 1983 , Jones ran in the constituency of Sutton Coldfield for the Liberal Party for a seat in the House of Commons. However, he was clearly subject to the constituency owner of the Conservative Party, Norman Fowler . While 31,753 votes (65.4 percent) fell on this, he only achieved 12,769 votes (26.3 percent). He had the highest personal campaign expenditure of any candidate in the country at £ 1,072 in the election campaign.

His marriage to Joan Godfrey-Isaacs in 1948 resulted in two sons.

Web links

• Aubrey Jones at Hansard (English)
• Obituary. Aubrey Jones . In: The Daily Telegraph, April 15, 2003