Richard Burdon 1st Viscount Haldane of Cloane

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(b. Edinburgh, 30 July 1856; d. 19 Aug. 1928) British; Lord Chancellor 1912 – 15 and 1924; Viscount 1911 Richard Haldane was accomplished as a politician, philosopher, and lawyer. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, Göttingen, and then Edinburgh again. His family (strongly evangelical) had religious objections to him attending Oxford. He read for the bar in London and built himself a successful practice. In 1885 he became Liberal MP for East Lothian and held the seat until 1911, when he was raised to the peerage. For most of his years as a backbencher he practised at the bar.

Haldane had a particular talent for administration. From 1905 to 1911 he was Secretary of State for War and put in hand a number of army reforms, including the creation of what is now the Territorial Army. In 1911 he entered the House of Lords and the following year was made Lord Chancellor. His fluent German and sympathy for that country made it understandable that Asquith should authorize him to visit Germany in 1912 with a view to easing tensions between the two countries. It failed and when war broke out he was attacked by a jingoistic press and unionist opposition as pro-German. It was no surprise that Asquith left him out of his first coalition government in 1915.

In 1917 he chaired a committee which reviewed the machinery of government. The following year it produced the Report of the Committee on the Machinery of Government, known as the Haldane Report. It proposed that government should be reorganized according to the service provided rather than clients served. This was largely followed. Haldane joined the Labour Party in 1918, and in 1924 he was made Lord Chancellor in the first Labour government. In later years he was showered with honours and wrote a number of well-regarded works on philosophy.

Haldane, Richard Burdon, Viscount of Cloan (1856-1928), philosopher, lawyer, and army reformer who served as Secretary of State for War from 1905 to 1912. After the experience of the Second Boer War, the British army required extensive reform but many of the measures introduced during or immediately after the war had proved costly, ineffective, incomplete, or politically contentious. Once in office, Haldane completed the institutionalization of a general staff, appointed some key military advisers (Sir William Nicholson as CGS and Haig as director of military training), and began his reforms.

He insisted that his advisers should formulate plans within the constraints of voluntary recruiting and a financial ceiling of £28 million, while sustaining the annual provision of drafts and reliefs for the overseas garrisons. He ensured thereby that the proposed creation of a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of six large divisions and one cavalry division (160, 000 men) would be accepted as a realistic and acceptable peacetime proposition. Using the requirements of a continental strategy (which were not made public), he organized the BEF into wartime formations, supported by drafts and ancillary services, and recognized that it would have to be ready for immediate despatch.

To provide the requisite support for the BEF, Haldane reorganized the auxiliary forces, the Militia and Volunteers, to form a second line (the special reserve), a broad base of expansion in the Territorial Force, and a potential supply of officers from school and university cadet corps, together forming the reserve forces. Although he skilfully secured cabinet and parliamentary support for these measures, he found it more difficult to arouse popular enthusiasm for them. Despite immense recruiting efforts, propaganda campaigns, and speaking tours, the Territorials remained about a quarter short of their establishment (312, 000 men), and, by September 1913, only 1, 090 officers and 17, 788 NCOs and men had volunteered to serve abroad on mobilization. One outstanding exception was the VAD, the first ever military organization for women in peacetime, which built up a core of volunteers that handled a huge WW I expansion admirably.

Haldane became Lord Chancellor in 1912 and was optimistic that he had laid the foundations for mass mobilization. While he had concentrated on promoting the Territorial Force, he left his military advisers to reform matters of doctrine and tactics, to oversee the training and regular manoeuvres of the home army, and, under Director of Military Operations Sir Henry Wilson, to ensure that the BEF could mobilize quickly, cross the Channel, and deploy in northern France. When the BEF entered WW I in August 1914, it was widely regarded as the best-organized and trained expeditionary force to leave British shores. However, Lord Kitchener, as the incoming Secretary of State for War, preferred to raise his own army rather than rely on the Territorial Force. Haldane no longer had any influence over military matters: indeed, he would lose cabinet office in May 1915 because of allegedly pro-German sympathies.

Bibliography

• Beckett, Ian, and Gooch, John (eds.), Politicians and Defence (Manchester, 1981).
• Spiers, Edward, Haldane: An Army Reformer (Edinburgh, 1980)

— Edward M. Spiers

Haldane, Richard Burdon, 1st Viscount Haldane (1856-1928). The son of a Perthshire landowner, Haldane became a successful Chancery barrister in London. In 1885 he was elected to Parliament for East Lothian and remained an MP until he left the Commons for the Lords in 1911. Haldane took office in Asquith's 1905 Liberal government as secretary for war. His reforms of the army earned him considerable respect. In 1911 he was created viscount and he became lord chancellor in 1912. In 1914 he returned to the War Office but his affection for Germany caused public suspicion and he was dismissed by Asquith in 1915. He served briefly as lord chancellor in the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald.