Hugh Dalton

The Right Honourable The Lord Dalton PC
Dalton in 1940
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 31 May 1948 – 28 February 1950
Prime Minister	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	The Lord Pakenham
Succeeded by	The Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 27 July 1945 – 13 November 1947
Prime Minister	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	John Anderson
Succeeded by	Stafford Cripps
President of the Board of Trade
In office 22 February 1942 – 23 May 1945
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	John Llewellin
Succeeded by	Oliver Lyttelton
Minister of Economic Warfare
In office 15 May 1940 – 22 February 1942
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	Ronald Cross
Succeeded by	Roundell Palmer
Chairman of the Labour Party
In office 9 October 1936 – 8 October 1937
Leader	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	Jennie Adamson
Succeeded by	George Dallas
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
In office 11 June 1929 – 3 September 1931
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	Anthony Eden
Succeeded by	James Stanhope
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
In office 28 January 1960 – 13 February 1962 Life Peerage
Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland
In office 14 November 1935 – 18 September 1959
Preceded by	Aaron Curry
Succeeded by	James Boyden
In office 30 May 1929 – 7 October 1931
Preceded by	Ruth Dalton
Succeeded by	Aaron Curry
Member of Parliament for Peckham
In office 29 October 1924 – 10 May 1929
Preceded by	Collingwood Hughes
Succeeded by	John Beckett
Personal details
Born	(1887-08-26)26 August 1887 Neath, Wales
Died	13 February 1962(1962-02-13) (aged 74)
Political party	Labour
Alma mater	King's College, Cambridge, London School of Economics

Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, Baron Dalton, PC (16 August 1887 – 13 February 1962) was a British Labour Party economist and politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947.^[1] He shaped Labour Party foreign policy in the 1930s, opposing pacifism; promoting rearmament against the German threat; and strongly opposed the appeasement policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Dalton served in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition cabinet; after the Dunkirk evacuation he was Minister of Economic Warfare, and established Special Operations Executive. As Chancellor, he pushed his policy of cheap money too hard, and mishandled the sterling crisis of 1947. His political position was already in jeopardy in 1947 when he, seemingly inadvertently, revealed a sentence of the budget to a reporter minutes before delivering his budget speech. Prime Minister Clement Attlee accepted his resignation; Dalton later returned to the cabinet in relatively minor positions.

His biographer Ben Pimlott characterised Dalton as peevish, irascible, given to poor judgment and lacking administrative talent.^[2] Pimlott also recognised that Dalton was a genuine radical and an inspired politician; a man, to quote his old friend and critic John Freeman, "of feeling, humanity, and unshakeable loyalty to people which matched his talent."^[3]