Harry Hodson

Not to be confused with Harry Hudson.

Henry Vincent Hodson (12 May 1906 – 26 March 1999, aged 92) was an English economist, Sunday Times editor, founding Provost of the Ditchley Foundation and editor of the Annual Register.

Positions held

Henry Vincent Hodson, 1906-1999 (aged 92) was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, 1928-35; Assistant Editor, The Round Table 1931-34, Editor 1934-39; Director, Empire Division, Ministry of Information 1939-41; Reforms Commissioner, Government of India 1941-42; Principal Assistant Secretary/head of Non-Munitions Division, Ministry of Production 1942-45; Editor, The Sunday Times 1950-61, Assistant Editor 1946-50; Provost of the Ditchley Foundation 1961-71; Master, Mercers' Company 1964-65; Editor, The Annual Register 1973-88.

Education

Hodson was born in Edmonton, London. He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Balliol College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1928-35.

The Round Table

Milner's Kindergarten, 1902

In 1931 he joined the The Round Table, the journal established by former members of Milner's Kindergarten which formed in South Africa to advance the imperial cause but later coined and supported an independent Commonwealth. As well as editing the journal, it meant Hodson was secretary to the "Moot", its editorial board, handling the correspondence and regularly visiting the Commonwealth Dominions. He was Editor of The Round Table from 1934 to 1939.

Hodson's connection to the Round Table was lifelong. His first article, England in the Great Depression appeared in 1930 and his last Crown and Commonwealth was 65 years later in 1995.

Commonwealth conference 1938

Owing to his intimate knowledge of all the Commonwealth countries that he had gained through his frequent visits to them as editor of The Round Table, Hodson was a British delegate and the Recorder of the Second Commonwealth Conference from 3 - 17 September 1938 , organised by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and held at Lapstone near Sydney, Australia.

Lord Lothian led the British delegation. This was a year before Lothian became the wartime British Ambassador to the United States. This conference followed the initial one held in Toronto in 1933. This second one in Australia was held just a year prior to WWII and so it was highly consequential.

Ernest Bevin (later to become Foreign Secretary in the post war Attlee Labour government)

The rest of the delegation from Britain included the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union Ernest Bevin, (he subsequently served as Minister of Labour and National Service in the wartime coalition government and British Foreign Minister in the post-WWII Attlee Labour government so as Foreign Secretary from 1945-1951 he held office at the outset of the Cold War, the independence of India and the formation of NATO in 1949), James Walker M.P., General John Burnett-Stuart, Admiral John Kelly, Geoffrey Vickers V.C., Lionel Curtis and Ivison Macadam (Conference Secretary).

The significance of this conference was that it exposed the then five Commonwealth countries, (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom) to the possibility that war with Germany lay ahead and it gave each of them a full year to prepare and decide whether each of these independent Commonwealth nations would voluntarily commit their armed forces should war break out.

In the event when it did, they all committed at their own volition to declare their nations at war with Germany after Britain had done so on September 3, 1939. As it turned out Britain could not have held out on its own without the Commonwealth countries contribution after the fall of France and before the United States joined the conflict in December 1941 and so they were to play a vital role in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Britain in the air, the Italian Campaign, the Normandy landings and the many other land and sea battles that led to the liberation of Europe and the ultimate defeat of Hitler's Germany.

Ministry of Information

Ministry of Information poster

When war broke out in 1939, Hodson took charge of the Empire Division of the Ministry of Information, where he edited a weekly newsletter. He was Director of the Empire Division of the Ministry of Information from 1939 to 1941.

India

He was appointed in 1941 Reforms Commissioner where he joined the staff of Viceroy of India, the Marquess of Linlithgow until 1942. His personal channel however to Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India was blocked by Linlithgow. Also Hodson's effort to gently move the country towards Dominion status was frustrated by Stafford Cripps mission, which led to problems and Muslim demands for the separation of Pakistan so Hodson returned to Britain in 1942. His work there and his grasp of Indian affairs resulted in his book The Great Divide; Britain-India-Pakistan, published in 1969.

Ministry of Production

Returning to England in 1942, he was made Principal Assistant Secretary and later Head of Non-Munitions, at the Ministry of Production in 1942 until 1945. There he was responsible for everything not related to munitions or food.

The Sunday Times

At the end of the Second World War, he returned to journalism, becoming Assistant Editor of The Sunday Times, and then Editor of the paper from 1950 until 1961 of what was one of the most influential newspapers in Britain.

A lucid leader-writer with a thorough knowledge of Commonwealth problems and Anglo-American Relationship. Hodson took over the editorship of a 10 page paper in 1950. With the end of newsprint restrictions he saw its pages rise to 48 pages. The newspapers circulation under his editorship roughly doubled from 500,000 and passed a million, then a prodigious figure for a serious newspaper. He hired able assistants such as William Rees-Mogg (later editor of The Times) and Frank Giles.

His experience showed when early on in the Suez Crisis he wrote an article from America warning of forecasting serious consequences.

Hodson and his somewhat staid proprietor the Viscount Kemsley sometimes had a difficult relationship. When Kemslsey phoned him one time after dinner during the Korean War to demand the Americans drop an Atomic bomb Hodson threatened to resign.

Hodson wrote what was considered a significant and transformational leading editorial (leader) advocating the liberalisation of the law relating to homosexuality. This from the pen of a devout Anglican was far ahead of the social and religious mores of the time (and to proprietorial concern). It lead to the setting up of the Wolfenden Commission which resulted in the Wolfenden report and homosexual decriminalisation.

As editor, although appreciating good writing he was ready to kill a music critics copy for being too highbrow and he dispensed of the services of Sacheverell Sitwell as Atticus for lacking incisiveness.

The Sunday Times and the Kemsley group was bought in 1959 by Lord Thomson, and after two years of amicable relations with Roy Thomson, Hodson stepped down. He thereafter was a regular presence at the Friday leader (editorial) conferences and was a steadying voice of Conservatism amongst the more radical of those present.

The Mercers

From 1927, Hodson was a freeman of the Mercers' Company by right of patrimony. In 1964, he was Master of the company.

Hodson then led the initiative (with David Vermont and Rt Rev Richard Chartres) that was responsible for the reestablishment of Gresham College as an independent entity. Twenty-five years later his son Anthony Hodson (also a past Master of the company and as member and Chairman of Council) helped launch the College onto the Internet to lead nearly thirty years on to its present global outreach activities.

Ditchley Foundation

Ditchley was founded as a privately-funded charity in 1958 by the philanthropist Sir David Wills in order to support the Transatlantic Alliance between the United States and Europe by bringing decision makers and experts together in a unique and inspiring setting. He was moved to act by painful memories of the Second World War and the dangers of the Cold War.

Ditchley House, home of the Ditchley Foundation, Oxfordshire, England

Hodson was appointed the first Provost of the Ditchley Foundation, after the house's remodelling. in 1961.

First he had to put in more extra effort into the conversion of the original great house into a comfortable conference centre. In this he was vastly aided by his wife Margaret. She was a very able interior decorator as well as hostess, with a broad vision of what was required, and had the energy and management skills to bring it all to fruition.

Harry Hodson's concept from the outset in organising the conferences was "Go for the best..., not without advice from that old hand at organising international meetings, Ivison Macadam. If you invite from Washington, say, an Assistant Under-Secretary of State, he may recommend one of his subordinates; invite the Secretary of State himself, and he will send an Under-Secretary. Consider, or find out, who is the top man in any category you want " civil servant, diplomat, politician, business leader, academic expert or whatever it may be ” and go all out for him. The worst he can do is decline the invitation, and if he does he will probably put you on to someone pretty nearly as good. " So that is what I did, and it worked. Ditchley was quite unknown in those days; all we had to recommend us was the eminence of our sponsoring Council members and Governors and an illustrated brochure about the house (with its American connections through the Lee family of Ditchley and Virginia, and through Winston Churchill's use of it for talks with United States leaders and others during the war) and about the Foundation itself. What counted was our own estimate of ourselves as second to none, as a place and a purpose quite unique, and our determination to be so regarded."

Hodson had implemented the concept of philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who was an early supporter of Ditchley and had a strong influence on Ditchley’s approach, for example through his conception of liberty as a process as well as a state. More pragmatically he wrote a letter that guides Ditchley in framing meetings today, advising that it was important to include “all kinds of apparently irrelevant persons,” dreading otherwise “a lot of dull-faced men probably saying it had all been very interesting...”. He stressed the value of leaving space for informal conversations and urged against too many presentations. Berlin came to love Ditchley, writing, “Moscow, Oxford, Ditchley, Harvard and Washington: each is a kind of legendary world framed within its own conventions.”

Hodson held between 20 and 25 conferences a year. This meant that he and his wife entertained, for a weekend or occasionally longer, between 700 and 800 guests each year. Some people went to more than one conference, but the net figure was over 5,000. They included ambassadors and foreign service officers not only from Britain and the United States, but from many other countries as well, government ministers, senior civil servants, Peers and MPs, Senators and Congressmen, leading figures from the United Nations, the World Bank and other international agencies, leading business men, trade union leaders, economists and experts of all kinds. They ranged from young American students attending courses, to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who presided over a conference, inspired by that life-changer his former headmaster Kurt Hahn, on rescue, relief and service. (When Hodson was thanking HRH he said he was one of the best chairmen Ditchley had ever had; he laughed " I bet you say that to everyone. ” Hodson wrote he certainly did not. Prince Philip worked hard when he took on a job like that, keeping long-winded speakers in order, directing the discussion to a purposeful end, and summarising the previous debate at the start of each session.)

Ditchley from the lake

Hodson initiated American Legislators' conferences, to which were invited hand-picked United States Senators and Congressmen to discuss with their parliamentary counterparts, MPs and Peers, and a few British experts, some subject of major common concern. These conferences became a permanent annual feature of the Ditchley programme. Not only was each of them a valuable exercise in itself, but in the course of years it came about that almost all the most influential members of the two Houses of Congress had been welcomed to Ditchley and affected by its genius. Among those who came in his time, whose names are well known on the other side of the Atlantic, were Robert and Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Henry (Scoop) Jackson, John Lindsay, John Tunney, Ed Muskie, Frank Church, Charles (Chuck) Percy, Daniel (Pat) Moynihan and many others.

Hodson ultimately retired from Ditchley in 1971.

The Annual Register

He was Editor of The Annual Register from 1973 - 88. The Annual Register is the world’s oldest annual reference book founded by Edmund Burke.

Governing bodies of educational establishments

He was a governor of Greshams School at Holt Norfolk.

He was on the governing body of Abingdon School from 1972 to 1986.

Personal life

He married Margaret Elizabeth Honey in Australia in 1933.

He died in Kensington and Chelsea, London in 1999, aged 92.

He and his wife had four sons: Nicholas Hodson, Anthony Hodson, Daniel Hodson, and Charles Hodson

Publications

Hodson's publications include:

• Economics of a Changing World (1933),
• The Empire in the World (1937),
• Slump and Recovery (1929, revised 1937 and 1938),
• The British Commonwealth and the Future (1939),
• Twentieth Century Empire (1948),
• Problems of Anglo-American Relations (1963),
• The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (1969), and
• The Diseconomics of Growth (1972).

Further reading

• Hodson, H.V., ed. (1939). The British Commonwealth and the Future. (Proceedings of the second unofficial conference on British Commonwealth Relations, Sydney, 3rd-17th September 1938. Oxford University Press.
• Lavin, Deborah (1995). From Commonwealth to International Empire, A Biography of Lionel Curtis. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198126164.

External links

• Henry Vincent Hodson at Athelstane E-Texts