In the
1906 general election as a
Conservative candidate, he unsuccessfully contested
Stowmarket, a constituency in which he had a family estate. A year later, in 1907, Guinness was elected to the
London County Council on which he sat until 1910 and also, at
a 1907 by-election, to
the House of Commons as Conservative member for
Bury St Edmunds, which he continued to represent until 1931. He took the conservative line on
Home Rule for Ireland, suffragism and reform of the House of Lords. In 1912, the editor of the magazine Guinness owned,
The Outlook, broke the
Marconi scandal, accusing
Lloyd George and other Liberal ministers of share frauds. Other publications developed the story, but it could not be proven even after lengthy debate. When his role was debated, Guinness explained that he was on safari in Africa at the start, and that his editor's target was inefficiency, not corruption. He visited eastern
Anatolia in 1913 and reported that
Armenians were being armed secretly by Russia.
World War I reduced Guinness's attendances and opponents accused him of cowardice for being in the House at all. In a heated
Armistice speech, he insisted that Germany pay full war reparations, that no ties be made with
Russian Bolshevism, and that "Since the days of
Mahomet no prophet has been listened to with more superstitious respect than has
President Wilson" (of the USA). Irish political developments after 1916 were a concern as the
Guinness business was in Dublin. During the
Easter Rebellion the brewery first-aid teams helped both sides. The Guinness family was opposed to the rebels, who hailed the
Central Powers as "gallant allies." This attitude had to change, and by the time of the
Treaty debates in 1922 which established the
Irish Free State, he said he preferred "a slippery slope to a precipice" and voted in favour. Despite their politics, during the
Irish War of Independence and the
Irish Civil War his family was popular enough to escape loss or injury. In 1922, the
Chanak crisis caused the coalition Prime Minister
Lloyd George to step down unexpectedly in favour of
Bonar Law. Guinness's comments on Turkey were a part of the debate; he had come to admire
Atatürk, despite serving at
Gallipoli and he was appointed
Under-Secretary of State for War under
Lord Derby. Thereafter, his pronouncements appear less dogmatic. He lost office when a Labour government came to power in January 1924, but the following month, Guinness was sworn of the
Privy Council. Though they had generally been political opponents in 1907–21, Guinness's working political relationship with
Winston Churchill started after the Conservative election victory in October 1924, when he was made
Financial Secretary under Churchill, the new
Chancellor. His ties to Churchill were also strengthened through "
The Other Club," an informal dining club for politicians in London that Churchill had founded in 1911 and that Moyne later joined. A rule was that members had to freely express their opinions. A ministerial vacancy enabled him to join the Cabinet as
Minister of Agriculture from November 1925 until June 1929, where his main success was in increasing the
sugar beet area. The first beet processing factory was built in his constituency, partly on the advice of Martin Neumann (a grandfather of
Stephen Fry), who became a manager there. After the
Conservative defeat in 1929, he had to retire from office. He did not stand for re-election in the
1931 election and was created
Baron Moyne, of
Bury St Edmunds in the
County of Suffolk on 21 January 1932. In 1930, Moyne and Churchill agreed that the government policies of dropping the
Pound sterling off the gold standard and de-rating to cope with the Great Depression were inadequate, along with proposals for dominion status for India. Together, they put the
Pound sterling back on the gold standard; a point of pride, but not a policy that lasted for long. When the 1931 coalition government was formed, their criticisms meant that as former ministers they were now out in the political cold. From 1934, they also warned about
Hitler's rise to power and German rearmament. Moyne was in The Other Club on 29 September 1938 when the bad news came of Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler at
Munich. Also present were
Brendan Bracken,
Lloyd George,
Bob Boothby,
Duff Cooper,
J.L. Garvin, editor of
The Observer, and
Walter Elliot. "Winston ranted and raved, venting his spleen on the two government ministers present and demanding to know how they could support a policy that was 'sordid, squalid, sub-human and suicidal.'" At that time, they still shared the minority view in parliament; the majority agreed with Moyne's cousin-in-law
'Chips' Channon MP, who recorded about the
Munich that "the whole world rejoices whilst only a few malcontents jeer." On 11 September 1938, just before the Munich crisis, Churchill wrote an oft-repeated comment in a letter to Moyne: "Owing to the neglect of our defences and the mishandling of the German problem in the last five years, we seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later, on even more adverse terms than at present."
Later political career Even though an elevation to the Lords ends many political lives, Moyne spent part of 1932 in the colony of
Kenya overseeing its finances. In 1933, he chaired a parliamentary committee supervising English slum clearances, in light of his experience gained in his family's charitable trusts mentioned above. In 1934, he joined the
Royal Commission examining
Durham University, as well as a 1936 committee investigating the British film industry. In 1938, Moyne was appointed chairman of the West Indies Royal Commission, which was asked to investigate how best the British colonies in the
Caribbean should be governed, after
labour unrest. The Report and notes were published in 1939 and are held by the
PRO at Kew, London. Just before he returned from the Caribbean, his wife Evelyn died on 21 July 1939. From the outbreak of the
Second World War in 1939, Moyne sought the internment of
Diana Mosley, his former daughter-in-law, who had left his son
Bryan in 1932. She had remarried in 1936 in Berlin to the British fascist leader
Sir Oswald Mosley, with
Hitler and
Goebbels as witnesses. File No KV 2/1363 at the
PRO, Kew is part of a collection released in 2004 on British right-wing extremists. The PRO's on-line archivist notes that "Diana Mosley was not interned on the outbreak of war, and remained at liberty for some time. There is a
Home Office letter of May 1940 explaining the
Home Secretary's decision not to intern her at that time, and then correspondence from her former father-in-law, Lord Moyne, which seems to have resulted in her detention the following month." Moyne's friend Churchill had become
prime minister on 10 May 1940. Moyne's last letter, dated 26 June 1940, is quoted in
Anne de Courcy's book on Diana Mosley. Later that day her order of detention was signed by J.S. Hale, a principal Secretary of State. From September 1939, given Hitler's
Invasion of Poland (1939), Moyne chaired the Polish Relief Fund in London and gave over his London house at 11 Grosvenor Place, in
Belgravia near
Buckingham Palace, for the use of Polish officers. From the elevation of Churchill in May 1940, Moyne held several positions in the
Churchill war ministry, starting with a Joint Secretaryship in the
Ministry of Agriculture. In a cabinet reshuffle in February 1941, he took on his post in the
Colonial Office and led the Churchill government's business in the
House of Lords, with the honorific title of
Leader of the House of Lords. Largely as a result of his travels and his work in the
West Indies, Lord Moyne was appointed
Secretary of State for the Colonies by Churchill, serving from 8 February 1941 to 22 February 1942. Moyne was next appointed Deputy Resident Minister of State in
Cairo from August 1942 to January 1944 and
Minister-Resident for the Middle East from then until his death. Within the British system at that time, this meant control over
Persia, the
Middle East, including
Mandatory Palestine, and
Africa. The main task was to ensure the defeat of the
Axis forces in
North Africa, principally the
Afrika Korps led by General
Rommel. Another concern was the influence on Arab opinion of the
Grand Mufti, a leader of the
1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, who had moved on to Nazi German sanctuary in Berlin in 1941. ==Business and charitable interests==