Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford, (19 November 1870 – 14 November 1949) was a prominent Liberal and later National Liberal politician in the United Kingdom. His 1938 diplomatic mission to Czechoslovakia was key to the enactment of the British policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany preceding the Second World War.
Background
Runciman was the son of the shipping magnate Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman. He was educated at South Shields High School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an MA degree in history in 1892.
Political career
1899–1913
Runciman unsuccessfully contested Gravesend in a by-election in 1898, but was elected as a member of parliament (MP) in a two-member by-election for Oldham in 1899, defeating the Conservative candidates, James Mawdsley and Winston Churchill. After winning, Runciman is reported to have commented to Churchill: "Don't worry, I don't think this is the last the country has heard of either of us." The following year in the 1900 general election Churchill stood against Runciman again and defeated him.
Runciman soon returned to Parliament for Dewsbury in a by-election in January 1902 and steadily rose through the ranks of the Liberal Party. A progressive, centrist reformer, he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1905, a post he held until 1907. Runciman's friends in Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet were Sydney Buxton, Charles Hobhouse and John Morley, all on the left.
He then served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury until 1908. In April of the latter year he was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed to his first Cabinet post, President of the Board of Education, by the new prime minister, H. H. Asquith, which position he retained for three years. Runciman approved of financing the purchase of land in Ireland, but the policy was becoming prohibitively expensive. He was one of the small group, that included Reginald McKenna, who believed in sound public finances; they had witnessed the lax administration of the Chief Secretary for Ireland.
Runciman, along with McKenna and Lord Haldane, pressured Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to reject Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George's 1910 People's Budget raising taxes on the landed aristocracy and upper class to pay for welfare programs.
He then served another three years as President of the Board of Agriculture. Runciman did not want war with the German Empire and favoured an understanding with her, but like others in the Cabinet was not able to exert much influence over foreign policy.
Other policies
Runciman was a personal friend of Margot Asquith, and a highly valued colleague in Cabinet. He supported the Haldane Mission of 1912, in a purged cabinet dominated by like-minded Liberal Leaguers. He and his allies believed that there would be peace in the long run, as the Imperial German Navy was 'a luxury' too expensive for the Reich to maintain. Runciman was also in the McKenna dining group that opposed escalation of the Anglo-German naval arms race, and in January 1914 opposed First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill's high naval estimates. The left-wing cabinet members desired specificity to Admiralty reductions, but the admirals themselves opposed them.
Runciman joined Lloyd George's "Council of War" on 13 June, which was mainly designed to exculpate Lloyd George of any involvement in the Marconi scandal. Runciman had done much to encourage Lloyd George as Chancellor in increasing levels of trade.
Runciman encouraged political dialogue, socialism, and James Larkin's movement in Ireland, which the cabinet swiftly sought to decriminalise. Runciman was one of those who agreed to fight the Larne gun-running incident by seizure of weapons. The cabinet banned all arms shipments to Ireland on 25 November.
Opposing total war
In 1914, on the British entry into World War I, the President of the Board of Trade, John Burns, resigned and on Sunday 2 August Runciman was appointed to succeed him.
The Board of Trade reported in October 1914 a build-up of German shipping at Hamburg; a record 187 ships entered British ports on 15 October, meaning the war seemed to be good for business. He approved food for Belgian refugees. On 12 January 1915, he agreed to send a memo to the US government to ban all copper imports to Ireland.