Robert Spear Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson, (15 August 1886 – 2 February 1957) was a British Conservative Party politician who held a number of ministerial posts during World War II.
Diplomatic career He was the eldest son of Robert William Hudson, who had inherited and then sold the substantial family soap business, and Gerda Frances Marion Bushell. The wealth he inherited from the soap business ensured that Hudson always had a very privileged and well off existence. Hudson was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He entered the Diplomatic Service in 1911, becoming an attaché and First Secretary at the British embassy in Washington. Hudson afterwards served as a diplomat in Russia. On 1 December 1918, he married a wealthy American woman, Hannah Randolph of Philadelphia, whom he had met during his time as a diplomat in Washington. He had a particular interest in farming and was a member of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society.
MP Hudson was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Whitehaven in 1924 and served there until losing in 1929. In 1931 he was returned for Southport. He served in several ministerial posts, becoming a Privy Counsellor in 1938. From 1937 to 1940, Hudson served as Secretary for Overseas Trade. Hudson was on the right wing of the Conservative party, being opposed to the "one nation" Conservatives such as Neville Chamberlain. He greatly disliked the coalition National government and frequently advocated that the Conservatives dispose of their Liberal National Party and National Labour allies to create all Tory government. Hudson had a particular dislike of the Liberal National War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha whom he intrigued against endlessly as he very much wanted to see Hore-Belisha out of the cabinet. Besides for the coalition National government, Hudson resented the dominance of the "provincial" lawyers and businessmen who made up the majority of the Conservative backbenchers who he felt lacked the necessary vision for Britain's future. The British historian D.C. Watt wrote: "Normally a mere parliamentary undersecretary is the lowest, the most cribbed and confined of political figures, whose role is merely to deputise for his minister in answering the less controversial of parliamentary questions...But the Department of Overseas Trade...was unique, a hybrid sub-department nominally responsible to, yet in fact independent of, the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office. In practice, this meant that Hudson was his own master".
In the spring and summer of 1938, Hudson was deeply involved in talks for an Anglo-German economic agreement. Hudson was especially concerned with coal, at the time a major industry in Britain. Between 1933 and 1937, Britain's exports of coal had declined by 20%, mostly because of cheaper German coal from Silesia and the Ruhr, which in turn had been possible by generous state subsidies to German coal mining companies. Hudson favored some sort of an agreement to end Anglo-German trade competition, especially regarding coal. Hudson wrote that an Anglo-German coal cartel were created then "if such an agreement emerged it would have great possibilities as a stepping stone to political appeasement".
In October–November 1938, Hudson was involved in renewed talks to improve Anglo-German trade. The main issue in the talks, which broke down, were centered around proposals for joint Anglo-German investment in central Africa. However, the British cabinet, which was starting to become concerned with the increasing German economic domination of eastern Europe, were not willing to accept the German demand that the Balkans and Turkey be assigned to the exclusive economic sphere of influence for the Reich. At the same time, Hudson was the lead British negotiator for the Anglo-American trade agreement of 1938. The purpose of the agreement was to reduce the effects of the long Anglo-American trade war that had been started by the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. The State Department had a strong distrust and dislike of Hudson. Jay Pierrepont Moffat, the chief of the State Department's Western European bureau, wrote that Hudson was "unfriendly to American interests or at least...unwilling to subordinate immediate British interests with a view of obtaining a broader agreement with us in world trade...he has certainly encouraged the Prime Minister to seek cartel agreements with Germany. He is ready to sacrifice people to pounds sterling". In Britain, the Anglo-American trade agreement was felt to be unsatisfactory, but given the tensions in Europe and Asia, the agreement was felt to be necessary in order to improve relations with the United States.
Between 15 and 18 November 1938, King Carol II of Romania paid a state visit to Britain. Carol met his cousin, King George VI along with Chamberlain and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. During his visit, the king warned that Romania was steadily falling into the German economic sphere of influence, and that he wanted British help to keep Romania out of the German sphere. Carol's request for a £30 million loan for Romania was refused by Chamberlain, and all the king obtained was a British promise to buy 200,000 tons of Romanian wheat annually with an option to buy 400,000 more tons of wheat and for an Anglo-Romanian committee to be set up to examine ways to improve Anglo-Romanian trade. Carol's visit led to an extended debate in the House of Commons, during which Hudson broke with the government and spoke in favour of closer economic ties with Romania. Hudson argued along with Oliver Stanley, the President of the Board of Trade, that Britain had a vested interest in keeping the Balkans from falling into the German sphere of influence, and that Britain should have done more to take up Carol's request for closer Anglo-Romanian economic relations. Reflecting both the financial realities imposed by the costs of rearmament and the order of priorities, the Chamberlain government introduced a bill that was signed into law in February 1939 that committed H.M. government to spend over the next year £10 million in government-backed trade credits to subsidise China; £3 million in trade credits for Iraq and Afghanistan; £1 million in trade credits for Portugal and another £1 million in trade credits for Egypt. The largest sum was allocated to China whose economy had been badly strained by the war with Japan. From the British perspective, subsidising China was in their best interest because as long as Japan was bogged down in the war against China, it was less likely that Japan would try to seize Britain's Asian colonies. For the Balkans, £2 million in trade credits were allocated for Greece (the location of Greece aside the main shipping lane to the Suez canal made it crucial from the British viewpoint) and only £1 million in trade credits were allocated for Romania.
Mission to Moscow In early 1939, it was announced that Hudson would visit Moscow on a high-profile visit to negotiate a trade treaty. At the same time, the government made an effort to improve the often strained Anglo-Soviet relations. In January 1939, Sir William Seeds was appointed the ambassador to Moscow to replace Lord Chilston, becoming the first British ambassador to the Soviet Union who was actually fluent in Russian, which was taken at the time as a sign of a wish to improve Anglo-Soviet relations. At the same time, it was announced that Hudson would visit Moscow. Lord Halifax, a devout Anglican who normally did little to disguise his discomfort with atheist Soviet Russia, had dinner on 20 February 1939 at the Soviet embassy with Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the court of St. James's. Halifax-who tended to favor a tougher line with Germany than Chamberlain-told the Cabinet that he "did not want to lose any opportunity of establishing closer relations with Russia". Halifax spoke of "warming up to Russia" and stated that he high hopes that sending the Russian-speaking Hudson to Moscow to negotiate a trade treaty as the best way of effecting that aim. On 1 March 1939, Chamberlain along with four cabinet ministers attended a reception at the Soviet embassy hosted by Maisky to honour the 22nd anniversary of the February revolution of 1917, becong the first time that a prime minister had attended such a reception.
On 8 March 1939, Hudson met with Maisky. Hudson expressed a wish for better Anglo-Soviet relations and assured Maisky that Anglo-German relations were deteriorating. Hudson in his account of his meeting wrote that Maisky had told him that he was "quite convinced that we, the British empire, were unable to stand up against German aggression, even with the assistance of France, unless we had the collaboration and help of Russia". Hudson replied that he did not share that assessment, saying that he believed that Britain and France were capable of defeating Germany on their own and did not need the help of the Soviet Union. Maisky in his account of the meeting stated that Hudson had told him that the Chamberlain had "firmly decided to maintain the empire and its position as a great power". Maisky had Hudson saying that Britain wanted allies and that: "Here in London, however, many people assured him [Hudson] that the USSR now did not want collaboration with the Western democracies, that it is inclined more and more to a policy of isolation, and that therefore it was pointless to seek a common language with Moscow". Maisky wrote that Hudson had told him that his upcoming visit to Moscow was meant to clarify "do we [the Soviets] want or do we not want a rapprochement and collaboration with London". Maisky concluded: "Hence, Hudson's visit to Moscow could play a large role...Personally, Hudson would desire very much that this orientation moved on the line London-Paris-Moscow". Maisky concluded that Hudson was a very ambitious politician who wanted to be prime minister one day, "but I do not think Hudson could take the general line which he developed in today's discussion without the sanction of Chamberlain". Hudson-whom Watt called an "ambitious and driving young Conservative hopeful"-was hoping to achieve some sort of political success during his visit to Moscow that would link better economic relations to closer political ties. Hudson spoke frankly with Sefton Delmer, the foreign correspondent with the Daily Express newspaper about his ambitions to achieve some sort of an agreement in Moscow that would improve his chances of being promoted into the cabinet proper. In March 1939, Hudson was scheduled to visit Germany to discuss improving Anglo-German trade, but in protest against the German violation of the Munich Agreement by occupying the Czech of Czecho-Slovakia on 15 March 1939, the visit was cancelled. Hudson was an appeaser who believed that improving Anglo-German economic relations was the key to saving the peace had very much looking forward to his visit to the Reich.