Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, was a British statesman of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1963 to October 1964. He is notable for being the most recent Prime Minister to hold office while being a member of the House of Lords, before renouncing his peerage and taking up a seat in the House of Commons for the remainder of his premiership. His reputation, however, rests more on his two spells as Britain's foreign secretary than on his brief premiership.
The eldest child of Charles Douglas-Home, the then Lord Dunglass, who was himself the eldest son of the 12th Earl of Home, Alec Douglas-Home was educated at Ludgrove School and Eton College, then receiving a Bachelor of Arts in modern history from Christ Church, Oxford in 1925. A talented cricketer, he played first-class cricket at school, club and county level and began serving in the Territorial Army from 1924. Within six years of first entering the House of Commons in 1931, Douglas-Home became parliamentary aide to Neville Chamberlain, witnessing at first hand Chamberlain's efforts as Prime Minister to preserve peace through appeasement in the two years before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1940, he was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis and was immobilised for two years. By the later stages of the war he had recovered enough to resume his political career, but lost his seat in the general election of 1945. He regained it in 1950, but the following year he left the Commons when, on the death of his father, he inherited the earldom of Home and thereby became a member of the House of Lords as the 14th Earl of Home. Under the premierships of Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan he was appointed to a series of increasingly senior posts, including Leader of the House of Lords and Foreign Secretary. In the latter post, which he held from 1960 to 1963, he supported United States resolve in the Cuban Missile Crisis and was the United Kingdom's signatory of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August 1963.
In October 1963, Macmillan was taken ill and resigned as Prime Minister. Lord Home was chosen to succeed him. By the 1960s it was unacceptable for a Prime Minister to sit in the House of Lords, and Home renounced his earldom and successfully stood for election to the House of Commons as Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The manner of his appointment was controversial, and two of Macmillan's cabinet ministers refused to take office under him. He was criticised by the Labour Party as an aristocrat, out of touch with the problems of ordinary families, and he came over stiffly in television interviews, by contrast with the Labour leader, Harold Wilson. As Prime Minister, Douglas-Home's demeanour and appearance remained aristocratic and old-fashioned. His understanding of economics was primitive, and he gave his Chancellor, Reginald Maudling, free rein to handle financial affairs. Douglas-Home enjoyed dealing with foreign policy and his Foreign Secretary, Rab Butler, was not especially energetic, but there were no major crises or issues to resolve. Britain's application to join the European Economic Community had already been vetoed by Charles De Gaulle, the Cuban Missile Crisis had been resolved, and Berlin was again on the back burner. Decolonisation issues were largely routine, and the Rhodesia and South African crises lay in the future. The Conservative Party, in office since 1951, had lost standing as a result of the Profumo affair, a sexual scandal involving a defence minister in 1963, and at the time of Lord Home's appointment as Prime Minister seemed headed for heavy electoral defeat. Home's premiership was the second briefest of the twentieth century, lasting two days short of a year. Among the legislation passed under his government was the abolition of resale price maintenance, bringing costs down for the consumer against the interests of producers of food and other commodities.
After narrow defeat in the general election of 1964, Douglas-Home resigned the leadership of his party in July 1965, having instituted a new and less secretive method of electing the party leader. From 1970 to 1974, he served in the cabinet of Edward Heath as Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, an expanded version of the post of Foreign Secretary, which he had held earlier. After the defeat of the Heath government in February 1974, he stood down at the October 1974 election and returned to the House of Lords as a life peer, Lord Home of the Hirsel. He gradually retired from front-line politics and died in 1995, aged 92.
“I suppose, when you come to think of it, he is the fourteenth Mr Wilson.”
David Butler and Gareth Butler, "Twentieth Century British Political Facts", p. 292.
Television interview with Kenneth Harris, 21 October 1963, responding to Wilson (see below).
Prime Minister
“No, because I do my sums with matchsticks.”
Explore Parliament website, accessed 6 September 2006 http://www.explore-parliament.net/nssMovies/03/0378/0378_.htm
Asked whether he could become Prime Minister in an interview with The Observer in 1962. The comment was taken to refer to his lack of economic ability.
Foreign Secretary
"Labour would reject move to postpone M.P.s' return", The Times, 21 October 1963, p. 6.
Harold Wilson speaking at Manchester, 19 October 1963, shortly after Douglas-Home's appointment as Prime Minister.
About
Michael Cockerell, "Live from Number 10", p. 105.
A story told by Douglas-Home about going on television in the 1964 election.
Attributed
“Now you can see me in the flesh, and I don't really look as I'm made to look on television.”
D.E. Butler and Anthony King, "The British General Election of 1964", p. 147.
Remark frequently made during the 1964 general election campaign.
Prime Minister
Speech in Hampstead (3 February 1965), quoted in The Times (4 February 1965), p. 12
Leader of the Opposition
Preface to the Conservative Party manifesto Prosperity with a Purpose (17 September 1964), quoted in The Times (18 September 1964), p. 16
Prime Minister
Speech to the Lord Mayor's Banquet at Guildhall (11 November 1963), quoted in The Times (12 November 1963), p. 12
Prime Minister
Press conference at Conservative Central Office (20 March 1978), quoted in The Times (21 March 1978), p. 2
Later life
'Foreword' (June 1977), Patrick Hutber (ed.), What's Wrong with Britain? (Sphere, 1978), p. 7
Later life
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1975/apr/21/european-community-membership#S5LV0359P0_19750421_HOL_73 in the House of Lords (21 April 1975)
Later life
Speech in Bradford (6 October 1964), quoted in The Times (7 October 1964), p. 12
Prime Minister
Speech in Grantham (29 November 1963), quoted in The Times (30 November 1963), p. 8
Prime Minister
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