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Within months of his leaving the premiership Chamberlain's health began to fail; he resigned from the cabinet, and died after a short illness in November 1940. In 1944, Home returned to London and to the back benches of Parliament. On September 29, 1944, he delivered one of his most important speeches. Churchill had implied that he was letting Russia have Poland in return for helping to defeat the Germans. Home reminded Churchill that Britain had guaranteed Poland's independence in 1939 and that the treaty was still in effect. Churchill, along with the Americans, gave in to the Russian demands at Yalta.
His first major problem in this sphere was in 1961 when on the orders of the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, the Berlin Wall was erected to stop East Germans escaping to West Germany via West Berlin. During their discussions Macmillan commented that de Gaulle showed "all the rigidity of a poker without its occasional warmth." An agreement was reached, and the allies tacitly recognised that the wall was going to remain in place. The Soviets for their part did not seek to cut off allied access to West Berlin through East German territory. Macleod wished to push ahead with majority rule and independence; Home believed in a more gradual approach to independence, accommodating both white minority and black majority opinions and interests. Macleod disagreed with those who warned that precipitate independence would lead the newly independent nations into "trouble, strife, poverty, dictatorship" and other evils. Macleod had his way, but by that time Home was no longer at the Commonwealth Relations Office.
Postwar and House of Lords (1945–
He was encased in plaster and kept flat on his back for most of that period. Although buoyed up by the sensitive support of his wife and family, as he later confessed, "I often felt that I would be better dead". Towards the end of 1942 he was released from his plaster jacket and fitted with a spinal brace, and in early 1943 he was mobile for the first time since the operation. During his incapacity he read voraciously; among the works he studied were Das Kapital, and works by Engels and Lenin, biographies of nineteenth and twentieth century politicians, and novels by authors from Dostoyevsky to Koestler.
He made his maiden speech in February 1932 on the subject of economic policy, advocating a cautiously protectionist approach to cheap imports. He countered Labour's objection that this would raise the cost of living, arguing that a tariff "stimulates employment and gives work increases the purchasing power of the people by substituting wages for unemployment benefit." In his later years, Home wrote a number of books including his autobiography The Way the Wind Blows in 1976, and Border Reflections in 1979. His hobbies included bird watching, hunting, and fishing at his ancestral homes of Hirsel or Castlemains. Taxes had reduced the family estates considerably, and Home was not among the richest border lords. He died in Berwickshire, Scotland, on October 9, 1995, having devoted a lifetime to British political service.
Politics
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home was born in London on July 2, 1903, the eldest son of Charles Cospatrick Archibald Douglas-Home and Lilian Lambton, daughter of the fourth Earl of Durham. According to his biographer, Kenneth Young, his family had played an important role in English history for centuries. As the future fourteenth earl of Home, he was heir to 134,000 acres of land and coal mines in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The eldest of seven children, his younger brothers included Henry, an ornithologist; William, a playwright, and Edward. Home was raised at Springhill House in Scotland for the first sixteen years of his life and returned there as an adult after his marriage.
Douglas-Home, who was alone at the time, answered the door and found the two students, who announced that they were going to kidnap him. Douglas-Home replied "I suppose you realize if you do, the Conservatives will win the election by 200 or 300." After packing some items, he offered his would be kidnappers some beer, which they accepted. They were eventually convinced by Douglas-Home to abandon the plan and leave the house voluntarily. He never spoke publicly of this incident because he did not want his bodyguard's career to be destroyed.
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Australia, New Zealand and South Africa backed the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. Throughout Churchill's second term as Prime Minister (1951–55) Home remained at the Scottish Office, although both Eden at the Foreign Office and Lord Salisbury at the Commonwealth Relations Office invited him to join their ministerial teams. Among the Scottish matters with which he dealt were hydro-electric projects, hill farming, sea transport, road transport, forestry, and the welfare of crofters in the Highlands and the Western Isles. These matters went largely unreported in the British press, but the question of the royal cypher on Post Office pillar boxes became front-page news. Because Elizabeth I of England was never queen of Scotland, some nationalists maintained when Elizabeth II came to the British throne in 1952 that in Scotland she should be styled "Elizabeth I".
At first-class level he represented the Oxford University Cricket Club, Middlesex CCC and MCC. Educated at Eton College, he became the last British prime minister to have received a private schooling until Tony Blair was elected in 1997. Alec Douglas-Home did not resign as Prime Minister, but he replaced Harold Macmillan, who had left. Alec Douglas-Home’s premiership ended when he lost the 1964 general election to Harold Wilson.
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The opposition retreated, with a statement in the press that "The Labour Party is not interested in the fact that the new Prime Minister inherited a fourteenth Earldom – he cannot help his antecedents any more than the rest of us." Having ruled himself out of the race when the news of Macmillan's illness broke, Home angered at least two of his cabinet colleagues by changing his mind. Macmillan quickly came to the view that Home would be the best choice as his successor, and gave him valuable behind-the-scenes backing. He let it be known that if he recovered he would be willing to serve as a member of a Home cabinet. Butler, by contrast, was seen as on the liberal wing of the Conservatives, and his election as leader might split the party.
As of 2009, Douglas-Home ranks as the third-longest-lived British Prime Minister, behind James Callaghan and Harold Macmillan. His correspondence with his grandson Matthew Darby was published as Letters to a Grandson in 1983. Return to government In 1970, Heath became prime minister, Douglas-Home returned to the post of Foreign Secretary. As of 2010, he is the last former Prime Minister to take a Ministry in someone else's cabinet. Douglas-Home believed it would not be practical to serve as Prime Minister from the Lords. It was widely believed that Lord Curzon had not been invited to become prime minister in 1923 because of his seat in the Lords.
After half a century of democratic advance, of social revolution, of rising expectations, the whole process has ground to a halt with a fourteenth Earl."Labour would reject move to postpone M.P.s' return", The Times, 21 October 1963, p. 6. The only Prime Minister to have played first class cricket at the school, club and county levels. The bill was passed under his government, but it was the work of Edward Heath. Alec Douglas-Home replaced Harold Macmillan when he was forced to resign due to health problems. Douglas-Home was elected informally by the ‘customary processes’ and would be the last prime minister elected without a formal election. He also praised his civility and astuteness in the negotiations leading up to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
He was a talented cricketer and served in the ‘Territorial Army,’ too. He entered the parliament during the administration of Neville Chamberlain and earned enough experience to help him make decisions later in his career. He regained his seat in 1950, after a loss in the 1945 general election.
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