Harry Hodson
Henry Vincent Hodson was an English economist, editor of The Sunday Times, founding Provost of the Ditchley Foundation and editor of The Annual Register.
Positions held
Henry Vincent Hodson, 1906-1999 was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, 1928–1935;Assistant Editor, The Round Table 1931–1934, Editor 1934–1939;
Director, Empire Division, Ministry of Information 1939–1941;
Reforms Commissioner, Government of India 1941–42;
Principal Assistant Secretary/head of Non-Munitions Division, Ministry of Production 1942–1945;
Editor, The Sunday Times 1950–1961, Assistant Editor 1946–1950;
Provost of the Ditchley Foundation 1961–1971;
Master, Mercers' Company 1964–65;
Editor, The Annual Register 1973–1988.
Education
Hodson was born in Edmonton, London. He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Balliol College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1928–35.''The Round Table''
In 1931 he joined The Round Table, the journal established by former members of Milner's Kindergarten a group of very able young men including the politician and novelist John Buchan, the constitutional scholar Lionel Curtis, the banker Robert Brand, Lionel Hichens and others who were determined to create a liberal regime in South Africa to advance the imperial cause but later coined and supported an independent Commonwealth. The international quarterly was founded in 1910 with Philip Kerr as its first editor. Hodson became assistant editor from 1931 and then Editor from 1934 to 1939. and as such it meant he was secretary to the "Moot", its editorial board, handling the correspondence and regularly visiting the Commonwealth Dominions. A total of eight years which gave him an intimate knowledge of the Dominions and the Commonwealth.Hodson's connection to The Round Table was lifelong. His first article, England in the Great Depression appeared in 1930 and his last Crown and Commonwealth was 65 years later in 1995. He contributed over sixty articles to the journal and remained an active editorial board member until his death.
The Round Table Harry Hodson Prize was established as an annual Award after his death to mark the nearly seventy years involvement of its late editor with the journal. It is awarded for a written piece of work by an undergraduate or postgraduate student from a university in the Commonwealth.
Commonwealth conference 1938
Owing to his intimate knowledge of all the Commonwealth countries that he had gained through his frequent visits to them with his eight years of editorial experience on The Round Table quarterly, Hodson was the official Rapporteur of the Second Commonwealth Conference from 3–17 September 1938, organised by the Royal Institute of International Affairs and held at Lapstone near Sydney, Australia.Lord Lothian led the British delegation. This was a year before Lothian became the wartime British Ambassador to the United States. This conference followed the initial one held in Toronto in 1933. This second one in Australia was held just a year prior to WWII and so was highly consequential.
The rest of the delegation from Britain included the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union Ernest Bevin,, James Walker M.P., General John Burnett-Stuart, Admiral John Kelly, Geoffrey Vickers V.C., Lionel Curtis and Ivison Macadam.
The significance of this conference was that it exposed the then five active Commonwealth countries, to the possibility that war with Germany lay ahead and it gave each of them a full year to prepare and decide whether each of these independent Commonwealth nations would voluntarily commit their armed forces should war break out.
In the event when it did, they all committed at their own volition to declare their nations at war with Germany after Britain had done so on 3 September 1939. As it turned out Britain could not have held out on its own without the Commonwealth countries contribution after the fall of France and before the United States joined the conflict in December 1941 and so they were to play a vital role in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Britain in the air, the Italian Campaign, the Normandy landings and the many other land and sea battles that led to the liberation of Europe and the ultimate defeat of Hitler's Germany.
Ministry of Information
When war broke out in 1939, Hodson took charge of the Empire Division of the Ministry of Information, where he edited a weekly newsletter. He was Director of the Empire Division of the Ministry of Information from 1939 to 1941.India
He was appointed in 1941 Reforms Commissioner where he joined the staff of Viceroy of India, the Marquess of Linlithgow until 1942. His personal channel however to Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India was blocked by Linlithgow. Also Hodson's effort to gently move the country towards Dominion status was frustrated by Stafford Cripps mission, which led to problems and Muslim demands for the separation of Pakistan so Hodson returned to Britain in 1942. His work there and his grasp of Indian affairs resulted in his book The Great Divide; Britain-India-Pakistan, published in 1969.Ministry of Production
Returning to England in 1942, he was made Principal Assistant Secretary and later Head of Non-Munitions, at the Ministry of Production in 1942 until 1945. There he was responsible for everything not related to munitions or food.''The Sunday Times''
At the end of the Second World War, he returned to journalism, becoming Assistant Editor of The Sunday Times from 1946 to 1950, and then Editor of the paper from 1950 until 1961, and thus editor of what was one of the most influential newspapers in Britain.A lucid leader-writer with a thorough knowledge of Commonwealth problems and Anglo-American Relationship, Hodson took over the editorship of a 10-page paper in 1950. With the end of newsprint restrictions he saw its pages rise to 48 pages. The newspapers circulation under his editorship roughly doubled from 500,000 and passed a million, then a prodigious figure for a serious newspaper. This was achieved despite formidable competition from the other quality Sunday "heavy", The Observer edited by David Astor during what many consider was that paper's golden years.
Hodson hired able assistants such as William Rees-Mogg and Frank Giles. Also during Hodson's tenure The Sunday Times was the first paper to publish, in 1958, a separate Review section enclosed with the paper each week.
His experience showed when early on in the Suez Crisis he wrote an article from America warning of serious consequences.
Hodson and his somewhat staid proprietor the Viscount Kemsley sometimes had a difficult relationship. When Kemsley phoned him one time after dinner during the Korean War to demand the Americans drop an Atomic bomb, Hodson threatened to resign.
Hodson wrote what was considered a significant and transformational leading editorial advocating the liberalisation of the law relating to homosexuality. This from the pen of a devout Anglican was far ahead of the social and religious mores of the time. It led to the setting up of the Wolfenden Commission which resulted in the Wolfenden report and homosexual decriminalisation.
As editor, although appreciating good writing he was ready to kill a music critics copy for being too highbrow and he dispensed of the services of Sacheverell Sitwell as Atticus for lacking incisiveness.
The Sunday Times and the Kemsley group was bought in 1959 by Lord Thomson, and after two years of amicable relations with Roy Thomson, Hodson stepped down. He thereafter was a regular presence at the Friday leader conferences and was a steadying voice of Conservatism amongst the more radical of those present.
The Institute for Race Relations
At the Fourth Commonwealth Relations conference held at Bigwin Inn, Muskoka lakes, Canada in September 1949 Hodson had been impressed that the larger Commonwealth, by then consisting of eight countries, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan and Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and recognised it was a far more disparate group of nations than it had been in the three earlier Commonwealth Relations conferences, in 1933 in Toronto, in 1938 at Sydney and in 1945 at Chatham House, London during WWII. Hodson, as a participant, knew the previous ones had largely been involved with Commonwealth relations between the predominately white nations discussing their inter-constitutional and diplomatic matters, although with national guest observers. At the 1949 conference he felt they were all faced with a new and different reality ' as to the changing relationships among peoples of different races, cultures and history, which gave them far different outlooks upon national and international affairs.'Hodson, then still the editor of The Sunday Times, had been invited in 1950, after the conference had finished, to give an address at Chatham House on Race Relations in the Commonwealth .
As a result, Hodson was the inspiration for the formation of The Institute for Race Relations and thus its founder. It began as a fledgling part of the Race Relations Unit of The Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1952 under the Chairmanship of Lord Hailey.
After three years as an embryonic part of Chatham House it evolved into the new and separately housed Institute of Race Relations. The council was chaired by Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders.. Hodson felt he combined rigorous academic knowledge with good administrative talents. Under him and his successor Leslie Farrer-Brown, with the director Philip Mason, the Institute of Race Relations "flourished". It received support from the Ford, Nuffield, and other foundations. It publishing books, pamphlets and journals, and built an international reputation.
After twenty years Hodson believed it began to evolve into a different body with a very different purpose. Living by then at Ditchley, Hodson had resigned from the IRR Council but remained for a while as vice-president. However he and the entire council resigned in April 1972, when it appeared that it had been turned into a British race relations group far different from its original intended role of deeper understanding of the differing races and expanding knowledge of their national cultures within the Commonwealth of Nations.