Henry Page Croft, 1st Baron Croft

Henry Page Croft, 1st Baron Croft PC (1881–1947) was a British Conservative politician.

Croft was born the son of a naval officer who had married into a family of Ware brewers. He was educated first at Eton College, until the death of his housemaster, then at Shrewsbury and finally at Trinity Hall, where was a Volunteer and an oarsman. Upon leaving Cambridge Croft joined the family business.

He became an active participant of the 'Confederacy' of young gentry Chamberlainites who organised a Protectionist movement in Hertfordshire. In the general election of 1906 Croft stood at Lincoln against a Conservative Free Trader but failed to win the seat. In January 1910 however he won Christchurch as an anti-German Protectionist.

In the House of Commons he was a prominent advocate of food taxation, Imperial Preference and as a supporter of Ulster against Home Rule. Croft was with Viscount Castlereagh at Mount Stewart when Ulster prepared for war in 1914. When the Great War broke out he went to France with his territorial battalion of the Hertfordshire Regiment. In 1915 he was the first territorial to command a brigade in the field but his reports to politicians back home about the conduct of his commanders aroused controversy and so in 1916 he was recalled, where he returned to the Commons.

In co-operation with Sir Richard Cooper and because of what they perceived as the 'discrediting of the old party system' they founded the National Party in 1917. At the 1918 election Croft was elected as the National candidate for Bournemouth, a seat he would hold until 1940. In February 1919 Croft denounced H. H. Asquith, Reginald McKenna, Walter Runciman, Arthur Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald as "the worse type of pacifist cranks": "It is very delightful to have been able to mention their names in this House. [If they were not defeated at the election and still MPs Croft would have had to call them 'The Right Hon. Member', etc.] These men...were not defeated at the polls but squelched. Why did they rally to the proposal? [i.e. the placing of conquered German colonies under League of Nations mandate] . Because they saw it was unnational". [R. B. McCallum, "Public Opinion and the Last Peace" (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 30.] When Coalition Liberal MP Alexander Lyle-Samuel made a speech criticising reparations from Germany and supported the League of Nations, Croft claimed that although Lyle-Samuel sat for a Suffolk constituency, he might well sit for Wurtemburg or Bavaria in Germany. [Ibid., p. 41.]

The Gladstonian liberal, Ronald Buchanan McCallum, said Croft "was the authentic voice of triumphant, nationalist Toryism... [he] represented the crude, philistine spirit of John Bullish nationalism. He was speaking for millions". [Ibid., p. 30.]

Along with Cooper, Croft was prominent in the campaign against the Prime Minister David Lloyd George in July 1922 for selling honours.

Croft wrote articles for the "National Review" and doubted the effectiveness of the League of Nations. In 1940 Croft was ennobled and appointed by Winston Churchill as Under-Secretary of State for War, a post he would hold until July 1945.

Notes

References

*Sir Henry Page Croft, 1st Baron Croft, "My Life of Strife" (Hutchinson, 1948).
*Larry Witherell, "Rebel on the Right: Henry Page Croft and the Crisis of British Conservatism, 1903–1914" (University of Delaware Press, 1998).
*Maurice Cowling, "The Impact of Labour. 1920 - 1924" (Cambridge University Press, 1971).

External links

* [http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FCRFT Archives of Lord Croft of Bournemouth]