John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon

John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon

John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon , GCSI , GCVO , OBE , PC (born February 28, 1873 in Manchester , † January 11, 1954 in London ) was a British lawyer and politician.

Life

Simon received his education at Fettes College , Edinburgh and at Oxford University and was admitted to the Inner Temple as a barrister in 1899 .

In 1906 he was elected to parliament for the first time as a liberal . In 1910 he was appointed solicitor-general in the Asquith government and in 1913 promoted to Attorney General . In May 1915 he succeeded Reginald McKenna as Minister of the Interior in the newly formed coalition government under Asquith, but resigned after a year in protest against the introduction of conscription . To dispel doubts about his patriotism, he then served on the staff of the Royal Flying Corps under Hugh Trenchard .

After the end of the war, Simon worked as a barrister again after losing his parliamentary seat. From 1927 to 1931 he headed the Statute Commission for British India , which was supposed to work out recommendations for an Indian constitution. When the Liberal Party split in 1931, Simon became Chairman of the National Liberals and later Foreign Minister in the National Government of Ramsay MacDonald . Under MacDonald's successor Stanley Baldwin he became Minister of the Interior in 1935 and under Chamberlain in 1937 Chancellor of the Exchequer (until 1940). That year he was promoted to peer as Viscount Simon and appointed Lord Chancellor of the Churchill government. However, since he was together with Samuel Hoare as the main person responsible for the failed appeasement policy , he was not a member of the closer war cabinet. This also contributed to the fact that he was extremely unpopular with party friends and other politicians and was seen as an opportunist who was ingratiate himself everywhere.

After the Labor election victory in 1945, he withdrew from public life. When Churchill returned to government in 1951, he was not offered a ministerial post.

literature

• John Allsebrook Simon: Retrospect. The Memoirs of Viscount Simon. Hutchinson, London 1952.
• Simon, Sir John Allsebrook . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 32 : Pacific Ocean Islands - Zuloaga . London 1922, p. 498 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

• Newspaper article about John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Viscount Simon 1940-1954	John Gilbert Simon