In
1929, Dugdale was elected as
Member of Parliament (MP) for
Richmond,
North Yorkshire, where he remained until 1959. He served as
Parliamentary Private Secretary to several ministers, including
Stanley Baldwin, and Deputy
Chief Whip. He was later
Chairman of the Conservative Party and Chairman of the Party's Agricultural Committee. He was created a
baronet in the
1945 New Year Honours "for political and public services".
The Crichel Down affair When the Conservatives won the
1951 election,
Churchill made Dugdale his
Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Crichel Down was a piece of farmland in
Dorset which had been bought compulsorily by the government for defence use. George Marten, whose wife Mary was the only child and heiress of the original owner of the land,
Lord Alington, wanted to buy the land back in the 1950s, because it was no longer used by the
Ministry of Defence. However, the Ministry of Agriculture resisted, wanting to use the land for experimental farming in a time of
rationing and agricultural development. Marten, a former
equerry to the royal family, had very influential friends and stirred up considerable trouble in the local Conservative Party and on the government backbenches. There followed a public inquiry that criticised the department's decision and its civil servants, especially their methods, which were seen as an example of an over-powerful state. In 1954, Dugdale announced that Marten could buy the land back, and told the
House of Commons he was resigning, having been the responsible minister.
Resignation Dugdale's resignation went down in history as an honourable, even heroic, one: a minister taking responsibility for
civil servants' actions, which would lead to the perceived code of
individual ministerial responsibility. However, in papers released thirty years after the affair it was found that Dugdale had known and approved of his civil servants' actions, and had to an extent passed the blame to them himself. It was also found that the inquiry was inaccurate and biased, having been led by a former Conservative candidate who was very opposed to civil servants and state interference. Dugdale's junior minister,
Lord Carrington, also tendered his resignation, but it was refused. He went on to be
Foreign Secretary, resigning the post in 1982 over the
Falklands War. Marten received his land, but not a Conservative parliamentary seat, for which he had hoped. In 1959, Dugdale was raised to the peerage as
Baron Crathorne, of Crathorne in the North Riding of the County of York. Subsequently, he had a second political career in Europe, building links with parliamentarians in
NATO and the
Council of Europe. ==Family==