Alec DouglasHome

1
Alec Douglas-Home

• Prime Minister
• 19th October 1963 16th October 1964

2
Early Life

• He was born on 2nd July 1903 in Mayfair, London
• His father was Lord Dunglass
• His grandfather was 12th Earl of Home
• In 1918 he became Lord Dunglass
• He went to school at Eton College and then to
  university at Christ College, Oxford

3
Early Political Career

• He became a Conservative MP for Lanark
• He was elected into the House of Commons in the
  1931 General Elections
• He was appointed Principle Private Secretary to
  Neville Chamberlain
• He was involved in negotiations with Adolf Hitler
  and Benito Mussolini in 1937 and 1939
• During the Second World War Home was in hospital
  having a spinal operation
• He lost his seat in the 1945 General Election
• He returned in 1950 only to have to resign in
  1951 because he inherited his fathers seat in
  the House of Lords
• He was now 14th Earl of Home

4
Positions held in Parliament

• 1955 Commonwealth Secretary
• 1957 Leader of the House of Lords
• and Lord President of the Council
• In 1960 he took up the post of Foreign Secretary
• In 1962 he was created a knight by the Order of
  the Thistle

5
The Road to Prime Minister

• In 1963 the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
  suddenly resigned when diagnosed with prostrate
  cancer from which he was (wrongly) expected not
  to recover.
• There were three contenders to become the next
  Prime Minister -
• Rab Butler
• Quintin Hogg
• Alec Douglas-Home
• Butler was favourite amongst the Conservative MPs
  but Home was preferred by the elder statesmen
• Macmillan advised Queen Elizabeth the second on
  the opinion of the senior figures of the party
• She choose Alec Douglas-Home to become Prime
  Minister and First Lord of the Treasury

6
Prime Minister

• The government had been too badly damaged to
  survive
• In the October 1964 Elections they lost to the
  Labour Party under the leadership of Harold
  Wilson
• Home remained leader of the party until his
  resignation in July of the following year
• He created an electoral mechanism for choosing
  Conservative Leaders, a vote by MPs
• His successor was Edward Heath
• When Heath became Prime Minister in 1970 Home
  returned to his post as Foreign Secretary

7
Later Life

• In 1973 Home decided to retire from Parliament
  at the next General Election which was in
  February 1974
• He was restored to the House of Lords where he
  accepted a life peerage, becoming known as Baron
  Home of the Hirsel
• He continued to make interventions in the House
  of Lords into his nineties
• He is the third longest lived Prime Minister so
  far.
• He died in Berwickshire, Scotland on 9th October
  1995.