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Political Biography:

Keith Sinjohn Joseph

(b. London, 17 Jan. 1918; d. 10 Dec. 1994) British; Secretary of State for Social Services 1970 – 4, Industry 1979 – 81, Education 1981 – 6; Baron (life peer) 1987 Keith Joseph was that rare British animal, an intellectual in politics. His father was Sir Samuel Joseph, a self-made wealthy man who helped to build up Bovis, the building firm, and became lord mayor of London. He could afford to send Keith to Harrow and then Magdalen College, Oxford. After war service Keith gained a fellowship at All Souls College and passed for the bar but never practised. He became an MP in February 1956, winning the safe Conservative seat of Leeds-North-East at a by-election, a seat he held until his retirement from the Commons in 1987. In the 1970s and 1980s he was one of the few Conservatives to hold a seat in a northern city.

Sir Keith Joseph showed an early interest in social issues, a feature that made him unusual among Conservatives. He was also one of only two Jewish Conservative MPs at the time of his entry to parliament. He was a defender of entrepreneurial capitalism which he saw as a means of improving quality of life for the disadvantaged. But he was not a simple right winger, opposing capital punishment and, surprisingly for a Jew, regretting the Anglo-French invasion of Suez in 1956.

Sir Keith's political career was not advanced under Conservative leader Edward Heath. In spite of Joseph's interest in economic issues Heath kept him away from economic posts. As Secretary of State for Social Services in the 1970 Heath government, Joseph substantially increased his departmental budget. When the party was in opposition after 1974 he repented of his role in government, claiming in April 1974 that, at the age of 56, he had only just become a true Conservative. He regretted his participation in the Heath government's introduction of statutory controls on incomes and prices and other measures which weakened the market economy. He was influenced by the writings of Hayek and Milton Friedman and the ideas of the free market Institute of Economic Affairs.

Sir Keith was seen as the obvious right-wing challenger to Ted Heath for the leadership in late 1974. But after some ill-judged speeches he withdrew and threw his support behind Mrs Thatcher. He lacked the popular touch, and realized that he was not cut out for the position. At this time Joseph was an advocate of what came to be known as Thatcherism. He called for big cuts in taxes and public spending, a reduction in the power of the trade unions, firm control of money supply to combat inflation, and encouragement for the free market. In speeches, pamphlets, and press articles Joseph opposed the drift of post-war politics and is properly credited with doing much to change the climate of opinion and shift the political agenda to the right.

When she became party leader in 1975 Mrs Thatcher gave Joseph responsibility in the shadow Cabinet for policy. Some Conservative colleagues were aghast at his claims that government should abandon the goal of full employment — because it was beyond its power to deliver it. They could imagine the charges from political opponents: "Sir Keith calls for more unemployment."

In the Thatcher government in 1979 he was made Secretary of State for Industry. In spite of his philosophy he found himself providing large subsidies to troubled firms like British Leyland, British Steel and Rolls-Royce. He bore the brunt of much criticism as employment nearly doubled in the first two years of government. In 1981 he was happy to move to the Department of Education. He launched a number of ideas, many of which were to be embodied in the Education Reform Act (1988) of Kenneth Baker. Much of this period as a minister, however, was dogged by bad relations with the teachers, strikes, and long-running pay disputes. He left the Commons in 1987 and took a seat in the Lords.

Sir Keith was not given high marks as an administrator. His critics thought that he was indecisive — because he was open-minded — and listened to his civil servants too much. It was said that he was "a lion in opposition and a lamb in government". But he was creative and had the talent and courage to question and overturn much of the conventional wisdom of the day.

 
 
Wikipedia: Keith Joseph

Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph, CH , PC (17 January 1918–10 December 1994) was a British barrister, politician, and Conservative Cabinet Minister under three different Ministries. He is widely regarded as the "power behind the throne" in the creation of what came to be known as "Thatcherism". He was known for most of his political life as Sir Keith Joseph.

Rt. Hon. Sir Keith Joseph, Bt, MP
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Rt. Hon. Sir Keith Joseph, Bt, MP

Background

Joseph was the son of Sir Samuel Joseph, who had founded the construction company Bovis and served as Lord Mayor of London in 1942-1943. At the end of his term he had been created a baronet. On his death on October 4, 1944, his son inherited the baronetcy with the right to be called Sir Keith. He had attended Lockers Park Prep School, Harrow School and Magdalen College, Oxford where he studied Jurisprudence, obtaining first class honours. Shortly thereafter he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College.

During World War II, he served as a Captain in the Royal Artillery, was wounded in Italy, and mentioned in despatches. After the end of the war, he was called to the Bar (Middle Temple). Following his father he was elected as an Alderman of the City of London. He also served as a Director of Bovis, becoming Chairman in 1958, and became an underwriter at Lloyd's of London. Joseph, after losing the marginal seat of Baron's Court in West London by 125 votes in the 1955 election, was elected to parliament in a by-election for Leeds North East in February 1956. He was very swiftly appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary.

Housing

After 1959 Joseph had several junior posts in the Macmillan government at the Ministry of Housing and the Department for Trade. In the 'Night of the Long Knives' reshuffle of July 13, 1962 he was made Minister for Housing and Local Government, a cabinet position. Joseph introduced a massive programme to build council housing, which aimed at 400,000 new homes per year by 1965. He wished to increase the proportion of owner-occupied households by offering help with mortgage deposits. Housing was an important issue at the 1964 election and Joseph was felt to have done well on television in the campaign.

In opposition, Joseph acted as spokesman on Social Services, and then on Labour under Edward Heath. Despite Joseph's reputation as a right-winger, Heath promoted him to Trade spokesman in 1967 where he had an important role in policy development. In the run-up to the 1970 election Joseph made a series of speeches under the title "civilised capitalism" in which he outlined his political philosophy and hinted of cuts in public spending. At the Selsdon Park Hotel meeting, the Conservative Party largely adopted this approach.

Heath's government

When the Conservatives won the election, Joseph was made Secretary of State for Social Services, which put him in charge of the largest bureaucracy of any government department but kept him out of control of economics. Despite his speeches against bureaucracy, Joseph found himself compelled to add to it as he increased and improved services in the National Health Service. However, he grew increasingly opposed to the Heath government's economic strategy, which had seen a 'U-turn' in favour of intervention in industry in 1972.

Influence on Thatcher

Following the 1974 election defeat, Joseph worked with Margaret Thatcher to set up the Centre for Policy Studies as a think-tank to develop policies for the new free-market Conservatism which they both favoured. Joseph became interested in the economic theory of monetarism as formulated by Milton Friedman and persuaded Mrs Thatcher to support it. Despite still being a member of Heath's Shadow Cabinet, Joseph was openly critical of his government's record. Sir Keith Joseph delivered his famous Stockton lecure on the economy Monetarism IS Not Enough, where he contrasted wealth producing sectors in an economy such as manufacturing with the service sector and government which tend to be wealth consuming. He contended that an economy begins to decline as its wealth producing sector shrinks. [1] .[2]

Many on the right-wing of the Conservative Party looked to Joseph to challenge Heath for the leadership, but when Joseph made a misguided speech at Edgbaston on 19 October 1974 which sounded like an argument against lower-class families having children, he accepted that he had no chance of winning and urged Mrs Thatcher to stand. Joseph claimed he received 2,000 letters after this speech, with critics outnumbering supporters by fourteen to one. The day after the speech Mary Whitehouse said that she was "tremendously grateful" to Joseph and that "the people of Britain have been like sheep without a shepherd. But now they have found one."[3]

Thatcher was later to refer to Joseph as her closest political friend. In 1975 he claimed that "It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. (I had thought I was a Conservative but I now see that I was not really one at all.)"[4], a remark that expressed Joseph's feeling of failure during the Heath government. Heath and his cabinet took office believing they were Conservative, setting up policies strengthening government control on industries and creating an intricate system to control wages and dividends. All of this was contrary to the "Conservative" ideals. As he had done a great deal to promote Mrs Thatcher, when she won the leadership in 1975 she determined to put him in a position to have a profound influence on Conservative Party thinking.

In Mrs Thatcher's Shadow Cabinet, Joseph was given the overall responsibility for Policy and Research. He had a large impact on the eventual Conservative manifesto for the 1979 election although frequently a compromise had to be reached with the more moderate supporters of Edward Heath such as James Prior. In government, he was appointed Secretary of State for Industry. He began to prepare the many nationalised industries for privatisation by bringing in private sector managers such as Ian McGregor, but was still forced to give large subsidies to those industries making losses.

Education Secretary

As Secretary of State for Education and Science from 1981 he started the ball rolling for GCSEs, and the establishment of a national curriculum. His predecessor in the new conservative government of 1979 had cancelled the plans of Shirley Williams, his predecessor but one, to merge O Levels and CSEs, but this was achieved during his time. Although this was not normally the responsibility of central government, he insisted on personally approving the individual subject syllabuses before the GCSE system was introduced.

His attempts to reform teachers' pay and bring in new contracts were opposed by the trade unions, leading to a series of one-day strikes.

In 1984 his public spending negotiations with his Treasury colleagues resulted in a proposed plan for extra research funding for universities financed through the curtailment of financial support to students who were the dependent children of more affluent parents. This plan provoked heated opposition from fellow members of the Cabinet (in particular Cecil Parkinson) and a compromise plan was found necessary to secure consensus. This involved the abandonment of Joseph's plan to levy tuition fees while preserving his aspiration to abolish the minimum grant. The resulting loss to research funding was halved by a concession of further revenue by the Treasury team.

Keith Joseph was one of the Tory ministers to survive the blast at the Grand Hotel while attending the Conservative Party Conference at Brighton in 1984.

In 1985 he published a White Paper on the university sector, The Development of Higher Education into the 1990s, which advocated an appraisal system to assess the relative quality of research, and foresaw a retrenchment in the size of the higher education sector. Both proposals were highly controversial.

Joseph stepped down from the Cabinet in 1986, and retired from Parliament at the 1987 election. He received a life peerage as Baron Joseph, of Portsoken in the City of London, in the dissolution honours list.

Legacy

Joseph's political achievement was in pioneering the application of monetarist economics to British political economics, and in developing what would later become known as 'Thatcherism'. He knew his own limitations, remarking of the prospect of his becoming Leader of the Conservative Party that "it would have been a disaster for the party, country, and me", and he rated himself a failure in office. His political philosophy speeches, which led to him being nicknamed "The Mad Monk", were ridiculed at the time but they were profoundly influential within the Conservative Party and in practice did set the tone for politics in the 1980s.

Notes

  1. ^ Sir Keith Joseph, Center for Policy Studies (1976-04-05).Stockton Lecture, Monetarism Is Not Enough, with forward by Margaret Thatcher. (Barry Rose Pub.) Margaret Thatcher Foundation (2006).
  2. ^ David Friedman, New America Foundation (2002-06-15).No Light at the End of the Tunnel Los Angeles Times.
  3. ^ Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, Keith Joseph (Acumen, 2002), p. 267.
  4. ^ Ibid, p. 250.

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Parliament of the United Kingdom (1801–present)
Preceded by
Osbert Peake		 Member of Parliament for Leeds North East
1956–1987		 Succeeded by
Timothy Kirkhope
Political offices
Preceded by
Richard Crossman		 Secretary of State for Social Services
1970-1974		 Succeeded by
Barbara Castle
Preceded by
Eric Varley		 Secretary of State for Industry
1979-1981		 Succeeded by
Patrick Jenkin
Preceded by
Mark Carlisle		 Secretary of State for Education and Science
1981-1986		 Succeeded by
Kenneth Baker
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Samuel Joseph		 Baronet
 (of Portsoken)
1944–1994		 Succeeded by
James Joseph (unproven)

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Political Biography. A Dictionary of Political Biography. Copyright © 1998, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
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