Hugh Dalton

Who was Hugh Dalton?

Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, Baron Dalton PC was a British Labour Party economist and politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947. He shaped Labour Party foreign-policy in the 1930s, opposed pacifism, promoted rearmament against the German threat, and strongly opposed the appeasement policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938. He served in Churchill's wartime coalition cabinet. As Chancellor, he pushed his cheap money policy too hard, and mishandled the sterling crisis of 1947. Dalton's political position was already in jeopardy in 1947, when he blundered badly by telling a reporter the budget details an hour early. Prime Minister Clement Attlee accepted his resignation, but he later returned to the cabinet in minor positions.

His biographer Ben Pimlott characterizes Dalton as peevish, irascible, given to poor judgment, and lacking administrative talent.