John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon
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| John Allsebrook Simon 1st Viscount Simon | |
| | |
| In office 28 May 1937 – 12 May 1940 | |
| Preceded by | Neville Chamberlain |
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| Succeeded by | Kingsley Wood |
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| Born | 11 January 1954 |
| Political party | Conservative |
John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon GCSI GCVO OBE PC (28 February 1873 – 11 January 1954) was a British politician and statesman. Educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh and Wadham College, Oxford, he became a fellow of All Souls and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1899. Simon became a successful lawyer, and entered Parliament as a Liberal representing Walthamstow at the 1906 general election, later being elected for Spen Valley. He entered the Government as Solicitor-General in 1910, and advanced in 1913 to Attorney-General, in both cases succeeding Rufus Isaacs. In Asquith's coalition government in May 1915, Simon became Home Secretary, but resigned early the next year in protest against the introduction of conscription.
After Asquith's fall in late 1916, Simon remained in opposition as an Asquithite Liberal until 1918, and once again after 1922. From 1927 to 1931 he chaired the Simon Commission on India's constitution. In 1931, when the Liberals split once again, Simon became leader of the National Liberals who supported protectionism and Ramsay MacDonald's Coalition government, and served as Foreign Secretary under MacDonald, and then as Home Secretary and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons under Baldwin and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Chamberlain. Over this time, Simon's National Liberals became hardly distinguishable from the Conservatives. In 1940, Simon was raised to the peerage as Viscount Simon, of Stackpole Elidor in the County of Pembroke, and became Lord Chancellor in Churchill's government, although he did not sit in the War Cabinet. In 1945 Churchill formed a brief peacetime administration but once again excluded Simon from the Cabinet - an unprecedented move in peacetime. With Churchill's defeat in 1945, Simon retired from public life. Simon 's portrait (by Frank O. Salisbury, 1944) is in the National Portrait Gallery.
After his death in 1954, Simon's estate was probated at 93,006 pounds sterling.
Categories: 1873 births | 1954 deaths | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament from English constituencies | Liberal MPs (UK) | British Secretaries of State | Chancellors of the Exchequer | Former students of Wadham College, Oxford | Knights Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India | Knights Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order | Lord Chancellors of Great Britain | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | Officers of the Order of the British Empire | Presidents of the Oxford Union | Secretaries of State for the Home Department | Viscounts in the Peerage of the United Kingdom | Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs | UK MPs 1906-1910 | UK MPs 1910 | UK MPs 1910-1918 | UK MPs 1922-1923 | UK MPs 1923-1924 | UK MPs 1924-1929 | UK MPs 1929-1931 | UK MPs 1931-1935 | UK MPs 1935-1945
