Samuel John Gurney Hoare, 1st Viscount Templewood (24 February 1880 – 7 May 1959), more commonly known as Sir Samuel Hoare, was a senior British Conservative politician who served in various Cabinet posts in the Conservative and National governments of the 1920s and 1930s. He was ambitious and his expedience and flexibility gave him a reputation for being unprincipled and two-faced, being nicknamed "Slippery Sam" or "Soapy Sam".

Hoare was Secretary of State for Air during most of the 1920s. As Secretary of State for India in the early 1930s, he authored the Government of India Act 1935, which granted self-government at a provincial level to India. He was most famous for serving as Foreign Secretary in 1935, when he authored the Hoare–Laval Pact with French Prime Minister Pierre Laval. This partially recognised the Italian conquest of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) and Hoare was forced to resign by the ensuing public outcry. In 1936 he returned to the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty, then served as Home Secretary from 1937 to 1939 and was again briefly Secretary of State for Air in 1940. He was seen as a leading "appeaser" and his removal from office (along with that of Sir John Simon and of Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister) was a condition of Labour's agreement to serve in a coalition government in May 1940. on 24 February 1880, the eldest son of Sir Samuel Hoare, 1st Baronet, who was a Conservative MP from a by-election in 1886 until 1906, and to whose baronetcy he succeeded in 1915. His family were the Anglo-Irish branch of an old Quaker family, with a long history of involvement in banking. He was a descendant of Samuel Hoare, but the family had abandoned Quakerism in the mid-18th century and Hoare was brought up an Anglo-Catholic.

Hoare was educated at Harrow School, where he was a classical scholar, and New College, Oxford. As an undergraduate he was awarded a blue in racquets and was a member of the Gridiron and Bullingdon Clubs. Initially he studied classics, taking a first in Mods in 1901, before switching to Modern History, graduating with a first class B.A. in 1903. He was awarded his M.A. in 1910. He later became an Honorary Fellow of New College.

Michael Bloch comments that Hoare was "indubitably homosexual", but being highly ambitious and discreet (his nickname amongst colleagues was 'Slippery Sam'), may not have acted much upon it. On 17 October 1909, he married Lady Maud Lygon (1882–1962), youngest daughter of The 6th Earl Beauchamp. Their marriage was childless. It was, in the words of R. J. Q. Adams, "not at first a love match" but in time became "a devoted partnership". His biographer has stated, "it would probably be more appropriate to describe it as a mariage de convenance". Hoare inherited Sidestrand Hall in 1915. His London home was 18 Cadogan Gardens. He was hard-working but cold. Hoare stood unsuccessfully in the 1906 General Election for Parliament at Ipswich,

Hoare entered local politics in March 1907, when he was elected to the London County Council as a member of the Municipal Reform Party, the local government wing of the Conservative Party, representing Brixton. He served as Chairman of the London Fire Brigade Committee. He served on the LCC until 1910.

During the Conservative Party leadership contest of November 1911, Hoare wrote pledging support to both leading candidates, Austen Chamberlain and Walter Long. There is no evidence that he made such an offer to Bonar Law, who became leader after the two front-runners withdrew to avoid a potential party split. Hoare showed little interest in the two largest issues of the day: House of Lords reform and Irish Home Rule. He supported tariff reform, female suffrage and public education. He opposed Welsh disestablishment quite strongly. He encouraged colleagues to call him "Sam" at the time to soften his hard and detached image. To his disappointment, he was initially only a recruiting officer

While acting as a recruiting officer, he learnt Russian. In 1916, he was recruited by Mansfield Cumming to be the future MI6's liaison officer with the Russian Intelligence service in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg). He soon became head of the British Intelligence Mission to the Russian General Staff with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was accompanied by Lady Maud and Winifred Spink. In his post, he reported to the British government the death of Rasputin and apologised, because of the sensational nature of the event, for having written it in the style of the Daily Mail.

In March 1917 he was posted to Rome, where he remained until the end of the war. His duties included helping to dissuade Italy from dropping out of the war.

For his services in the war, Hoare was twice mentioned in despatches, appointed Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1917, and awarded the Orders of St Anne and St Stanislas of Russia, and of St Maurice and St Lazarus of Italy.

In opposition

Hoare was treasurer of the Conservative Party in opposition in 1929–1931. A Select Committee of Both Houses began to meet for over a year and half in April 1933 to consider the government's plans. At his meeting with Ivan Maisky, the new Soviet ambassador, in 1932, Hoare told him: "It would be extremely difficult to persuade the Conservatives in this country [to adopt] a pro-Russian policy if the Soviet government failed to eliminate the source of the trouble which has often poisoned relations in the past", by which he meant the Comintern support for the British Communist Party.

Hoare's Indian policy faced much opposition from the "die hard" right-wing of the Conservative Party, with whom Winston Churchill allied himself. Ill feeling between Hoare and Churchill reached its peak in April 1934. The British government proposed for the Indian government to retain the power to impose tariffs on British textiles. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce, representing the Lancashire cotton trade, initially opposed that since it wanted Lancashire goods to be exported freely to India. Churchill accused Hoare of having, with the aid of the Earl of Derby, breached parliamentary privilege by improperly influencing the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to drop its opposition. After Hoare's exoneration by the Committee on Privileges, Churchill gave a powerful speech in the Commons Chamber that attacked the committee's findings. On 13 June 1934, Leo Amery spoke, arguing that Churchill's true aim was to bring down the government under the cover of the doctrine fiat justicia ruat caelum ("may justice be done, though the heavens fall"). Churchill, who was neither a lawyer nor a classicist, growled "translate it!" Amery replied that it meant "If I can trip up Sam, the Government's bust". The ensuing laughter made Churchill look ridiculous.

The Select Committee of Both Houses finished its deliberations in November 1934. The result was one of the most complicated pieces of legislation in British parliamentary history, a bill that spent the first half of 1935 passing through Parliament before becoming the Government of India Act 1935. Alec Douglas-Home, later to be Prime Minister, commented in his autobiography, "The most noteworthy performance of that Parliament was without question the piloting of the India Independence Bill through the House of Commons by the Secretary of State, Sir Samuel Hoare, ably assisted by Mr. R. A. Butler (later Lord Butler)". Butler, who, as Under-Secretary, had helped to steer the bill through the Commons, later wrote of Hoare that he saw life as "a chapter in a great Napoleonic biography" and added "I was amazed by his ambition; I admired his imagination; I shared his ideals; I stood in awe of his intellectual capacity. But I was never touched by his humanity. He was the coldest fish with whom I ever had to deal". In particular, Vansittart stressed that deployment of naval forces to deter Japan (the Singapore strategy) depended upon a friendly Italy not challenging Britain in the Mediterranean. Finally, Vansittart argued that Italy was the chief supporter of Austria against German ambitions for an Anschluss (e.g. in 1934 when Italy had deployed troops to the Brenner Pass to deter Germany) and that a friendly Italy would allow France to concentrate its forces on the Rhineland. For all reasons, Vansittart argued that Ethiopia would have to be sacrificed to win the friendship of Italy. The historian John Charmley argued it was no accident that Hoare along with other "appeasers" such as Lord Halifax and Sir John Simon had devoted significant parts of their careers to India, which he stated influenced their conduct of foreign affairs, writing: "In both case, nationalists were to be negotiated with until their lowest demands could be discovered and provided they were low enough granted. Nehru, Gandhi, and Hitler, however much the contemporary mind rejects the equation, had much in common to British ministers between the wars".

Hoare took office against a backdrop of what R.J.Q. Adams described as "much idle talk" of "mutual security". In March 1935, MacDonald's White Paper had committed Britain to limited rearmament.

It was leaked to the French and then to the British press, causing a public outcry, not least because of memories of Hoare's recent Geneva speech. Hoare, who had been injured in a skating accident, returned to Britain on 16 December. The French ambassador Charles Corbin stated in his reports to Paris that British politics in the late 1930s were dominated by a "big four" that consisted of Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Sir John Simon and Hoare, whom he described as being the most powerful men in the cabinet and all of whom he clearly disliked. Hoare was widely viewed as being too ambitious to be prime minister one day and as a sycophant to Chamberlain. The future prime minister Harold Macmillan, then a rebellious backbencher, called Hoare "one of the worst and most sycophantic of Neville Chamberlain's advisers". Despite his position as Home Secretary, Chamberlain used Hoare as a minister for "general policy" as he served as of Chamberlain's most closest and trusted advisers. Much of Chamberlain's "personal diplomacy" towards Adolf Hitler was due to advice from Hoare that the Foreign Office was too "anti-German" to properly execute the prime minister's policies, and that Chamberlain should by-pass the Foreign Office as much as possible. Hoare later stated about Chamberlain's leadership: "If nines times out of ten he had his way, it was because it also the Cabinet's way". The "big four" of the Chamberlain cabinet were a part of a wider "inner group" in the Chamberlain government that also included Sir Horace Wilson, the Chief Industrial Adviser to the government and one of Chamberlain's closest friends; Rab Butler, the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Sir Joseph Ball who ran the prime minister's press office; and Sir Warren Fisher, the Permanent Undersecretary of the Treasury.

Hoare had a long family interest in judicial and penal reform.

In 1938, Hoare was instrumental in obtaining approval for the British rescue effort on behalf of endangered Jewish children in Europe, which was known as the Kindertransport.

In September 1938, Hoare was part of the informal inner Cabinet, along with Simon and Halifax, and was one of the few consulted by Chamberlain about "Plan Z" to fly to meet Hitler for a summit meeting about Czechoslovakia, a decision that was then popular. In retirement, he stood strongly by Chamberlain's essential judgements but regretted Chamberlain's lack of sensitivity in foreign affairs and his tendency for personal intervention that led to his failure to retain Eden and to override his Foreign Office advisers. However, Hoare repeatedly pointed out that public opinion was vociferously pacifist and that Chamberlain's actions were widely endorsed at the time, not least by US President Franklin Roosevelt. Also, the Labour opposition strongly opposed rearmament and the introduction of conscription, even after Munich.

In late October 1938, Hoare made an extended trip to the English countryside with Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador, for informal talks about an Anglo-German settlement. Hoare told Dirksen that he wanted an end to the arms race between Germany and Britain; another treaty to "humanise" aerial war that would ban the bombing of cities and the use of chemical weapons; a deal under which Britain would return the former German colonies in Africa in exchanges for promises of no war in Europe; and a British "guarantee" to protect Germany from the Soviet Union. The British historian D.C. Watt wrote: "This last is often cited by Soviet historians as proof of their thesis that the Cabinet was obsessed with the urge to provoke a German-Soviet war. Taken in its proper context, Hoare's ill-chosen remarks make it clear that the offer of a guarantee was intended to disarm any German arguments that Soviet strength in the air necessitated the maintenance of a large German Luftwaffe". The fact that Hoare's offer to Dirksen made no impression in Germany was to disillusion him, and led to Hoare taking a stronger line against Germany in 1939. In January 1939, Hoare urged an increase in defence spending and during the "Dutch War Scare" (a rumoured German attack on the Netherlands, possibly concocted by anti-Nazi elements in German intelligence) that same month advocated closer ties to France.

In spring 1939, Hoare aligned himself very firmly with Chamberlain's upbeat belief that war was now unlikely, rather than with Halifax's increasing focus on shoring up alliances and rearming for a conflict that to seemed imminent to Halifax.

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<small>Samuel Hoare speaking of a possible future disarmament conference between Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Edouard Daladier, Joseph Stalin and Neville Chamberlain, March 1939</small></div>

In a speech given on 10 March 1939 to his local Conservative constituency association in his seat in Chelsea, Hoare predicated a coming "golden age" as he foresaw a bright future full of peace and prosperity for all about to dawn. In the speech Hoare denounced those who called for greater rearmament as “jitterbugs”, commenting that “these timid panic-mongers are doing the greatest harm”. Just days after the "golden age" speech, Germany violated the Munich Agreement on 15 March 1939 by occupying the Czech half of Czecho-Slovakia, which became the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. Hoare's "golden age" speech gave him the reputation as a someone with a blindly, almost Panglossian naïve faith in an optimistic future, and Dutton noted that next to Chamberlain's "peace in our time" speech of 1938, the "golden age" speech is one of the most mocked speeches in British history. Hoare had not actually wanted to deliver the "golden age" speech, which had been imposed on him by Chamberlain who complained that several of his ministers seemed reluctant to talk about foreign affairs.

In 1939, Hoare almost carried the most comprehensive Criminal Justice Reform Bill in British history: he had intended to abolish corporal punishment in prisons and had been keen to work towards the abolition of the death penalty of whose risks he was very aware. The Bill was cancelled because of the outbreak of war.

During the Danzig crisis, Hoare spoke several times in the cabinet about the advantages of having the Soviet Union join a "peace front" meant to deter Germany from invading Poland. In cabinet debates Hoare along with Halifax, Chatfield (now serving as minister for the co-ordination of defence) and the War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha favoured broadening the "peace front" to include the Soviet Union as all expressed serious doubts about the ability of Poland to stand alone against Germany in opposition to Chamberlain and Simon. His change in stance from being opposed to any sort of co-operation with the Soviet Union to being an advocate of an alliance with the Soviet Union surprised many. Hoare's change in views was dictated by strategical considerations as the Chiefs of Staff stated that the Soviet Union was the only nation that could send forces directly to Romania and Poland (the two nations in Eastern Europe that most concerned British decision-makers in the Danzig crisis) and supply them with arms. In addition, the Chiefs of Staff stated that the submarines of the Soviet Baltic fleet could cut the shipping lanes that linked Sweden to Germany and in this way supplied the Reich with the high-grade iron used to make steel in the blast furnaces of the Ruhr. The Chiefs of Staff argued that having the Soviet Union as an ally would deny Germany the use of its immense natural resources as the Soviet Union was self-sufficient in virtually all of the raw materials needed to sustain a modern industrial economy. Finally, the Chiefs of Staff predicated that the Soviet Union as an ally might deter Japan from aggression. The Chiefs of Staff predicated if war broke out in Europe, it was almost certain that Japan would try to take advantage of the conflict to seize Britain's Asian colonies and the Japanese would almost certainly invade Australia if they took Singapore. The Chiefs of Staff stated that Hong Kong was too exposed and was certain to be taken by the Japanese in the event of war, and furthermore predicated the Singapore strategy might be rendered inoperative by the Japanese capturing Singapore first before the British fleet could arrive. For all these reasons, the Chiefs of Staff argued that the Soviet Union would be an "invaluable" ally in helping to achieve the aims of British deterrence diplomacy in both Europe and Asia. Hoare seems to have been impressed by this argument that the Soviet Union would be a most helpful ally in both Europe and Asia, which inspired his volte-face. In March 1939, Hoare told the cabinet that he "held no predilections" in the favor of the Soviet Union, but he argued that argued that the current policy of reaching out to the Soviets in a half-hearted manner was self-defeating as it was bound to excite the suspicions of Joseph Stalin. He stated on the basis of information from the British embassy in Moscow that Stalin was moody, sullen and paranoid and was bound to see British policy in the worse possible light. He argued that the main concern at present should be to prevent "Stalin from throwing the weight of Russian power onto the enemy's side". Hoare pumped energy into the Air Raid Precautions Department and the Women's Voluntary Service Organisation. Of the "big four" of the Chamberlain government, Hoare was the only one excluded from the government that Churchill formed on 10 May 1940 as Chamberlain became the Lord Privy Seal, Halifax continued as Foreign Secretary and Simon became the Lord Chancellor.

Alexander Cadogan saw Hoare as a potential quisling in 1940, but Leo Amery and Lord Beaverbrook thought highly of him. Another Foreign Office mandarin, Robert Vansittart, thought him prim and precise but not a resilient figure in political struggle. Guilty Men inflicted another blow on Hoare's reputation, which still lasts to this day.

After a brief period of unemployment Hoare was sent as Ambassador to Spain, with his wife, Lady Maud Hoare. In that demanding and critical role he helped to arrange the return of thousands of Allied prisoners from Spanish gaols and successfully helped to dissuade Francisco Franco from formally joining the Axis.

Hoare also helped to prevent Spanish interference with Operation Torch in November 1942. He gave energetic support to penal reform, the Criminal Justice Act 1948 and the abolition of capital punishment. Templewood was the only Conservative peer who advocated the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s. He took up many company directorships. His residence, Templewood House, in Frogshall, Northrepps, Norfolk, was inherited by his nephew, the architect Paul Edward Paget.

Hoare's widow Viscountess Templewood died in 1962.

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|motto = Venit Hora

|supporters = (After viscountcy) On either side a stag Or charged on the neck with a cross couped Sable.

In media

In the 1981 TV serial Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, Hoare is portrayed by Edward Woodward.

Hoare, in his later role as Ambassador to Spain, appears in C.J. Sansom's WWII spy thriller Winter in Madrid.

The Apple TV streaming miniseries The New Look also depicts Hoare's time in Spain, featuring him meeting Coco Chanel during the latter's attempt to serve as an intermediary between Germany and the United Kingdom.

References

Bibliography

  • Braddick, H. B. (1962) "The Hoare-Laval Plan: A Study in International Politics" Review of Politics 24#3 (1962), pp.&nbsp;342–364. in JSTOR
  • Coutts, Matthew Dean. (2011). "The Political Career of Sir Samuel Hoare during the National Government 1931–40" (PhD dissertation University of Leicester, 2011). online bibliography on pp 271–92.
  • Holt, Andrew. "'No more Hoares to Paris': British foreign policymaking and the Abyssinian Crisis, 1935." Review of International Studies 37.3 (2011): 1383–1401.
  • Jago, Michael Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had?, Biteback Publishing 2015
  • (essay on Simon, pp365–92)
  • (pp.&nbsp;364–8), essay on Hoare written by R. J. Q. Adams.
  • Roberts, Andrew, The Holy Fox The Life of Lord Halifax. London, 1991.
  • Robertson, J. C. (1975) "The Hoare-Laval Plan", Journal of Contemporary History 10#3 (1975), pp.&nbsp;433–464. in JSTOR

Primary sources