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British Conservative politician (1886–1957)

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.

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. In 1931 he was returned for Southport. Churchill was dissatisfied with the current agriculture minister, Reginald Dorman Smith, who was very close to the farmers' lobby, and replaced him with Hudson, who was an advocate of a "scientific" approach to agriculture. Hudson favoured using the latest scientific methods to improve agricultural productivity with no regard for traditional farming methods, an approach that Dorman Smith was opposed to. Hudson, besides for his advocacy of a "scientific" approach, also favoured a "nutritional" approach under enough food which would be produced to supply essential nutrion, a plan that Dorman Smith opposed. Dorman Smith had once been the president of the National Farmers Union, and in common with many British farmers resented the idea of university educated experts telling farmers how to best manage their farms. Dorman Smith disliked the "nutritional" approach, saying "once we fall into the nutrition trap we are sunk". For an example, Dorman Smith was opposed to pasteurised milk under the grounds that British people had drunk unpasteurised milk for thousands of years, and he saw no reason for any change. In the winter of 1939–1940, Dorman Smith had "different conclusions" about agriculture with Winston Churchill, who was serving as the First Lord of Admiralty, and upon becoming prime minister on 10 May 1940, Churchill sacked Dorman Smith on 14 May. Hudson's career had benefitted from his friendship with Robert Boothby who had once served as Churchill's parliamentary secretary and who recommended him as Agriculture minister to Churchill. A major problem for Britain in World War Two was the number of British people vastly exceeded the agricultural capacity of British farms, which thus required Britain to import food to prevent a famine. In 1938, 70% of all the food consumed in Britain came from abroad while only 30% of the food came from British farms. A major aim for Germany in the Second World just as in the First World War was to have the U boats sink enough shipping to cut off Britain and induce a famine that would force the British to sue for peace. On 28 June 1940, a Scientific Committee appointed by Hudson recommended "a basal diet" as the "foundation of food policy" in view of the possibility of an U boat caused famine. The Committee advised that a diet of 2,000 calories per day for every British person would be sufficient to keep the population alive and allow war production to continue. The "basal diet" advised was a mixture of vegetables (especially potatoes), bread, fats (butter and cooking fats), milk and oatmeal. The "basal diet" that was imposed was made possible by extensive rationing. As Agriculture minister, Hudson strove to make British farming more productive to make up for the food shortages caused by the U boat campaign. One of Hudson's first acts as minister was to appoint 12 leading farmers as his personal deputies with each assigned to a particular region of Britain. In a controversial move, Hudson established in June 1940 a private corporation, Fyfield Estates Limited, of which he and his wife were the leading shareholders, which purchased a number of farms across Britain. By 1945, Fyfield Estates owned 2,000 acres of farmland while Hannah Hudson had purchased a farm in Oxfordshire, where her husband was often seen. Presented as a symbol of Hudson's love of agriculture, Fyfield Estates generated controversy as a source of a potential conflict of interest as Hudson was engaged in agriculture while also serving as the minister of agriculture. In April 1939, Britain had imposed peacetime conscription for the first time ever in British history, and to make up for the farmers conscripted, the Women's Land Army had been created in June 1939. Upon becoming Agriculture Minister, Hudson played a major role in expanding the Women's Land Army to send thousands of "Land Girls" to the countryside to work the farms. Many of the "Land Girls" as women serving in the Women's Land Army were called complained that their efforts were not being taken seriously and that the male civil servants of the Ministry of Agriculture treated them in a very patronising fashion. The stories of the contempt that the "Land Girls" were being shown drove down the number of women willing to join the Women's Land Army. Hudson argued that with many British farmers and farmhands serving in the military that the "Land Girls" were essential to provide the necessary workers to expand the productivity of British agriculture and ordered his civil servants to be more respectful of the "Land Girls". Besides for the "Land Girls", Hudson had German and Italian POWs; Jewish refugees; serviceman on furlough who had been farmers before the war; conscientious objectors; and volunteers from the cities all put to work on British farms. Hudson especially favoured the use of Italian POWs as rural labourers because many of the many Italian servicemen taken prisoner came from the rural areas of Italy and were experienced farmers. Owing to the disinclination of many Italians to fight for the Fascist regime and serious morale problems in the Italian military, by 1943 British forces had captured over half million Italians, making the Italians easily the largest group of Axis POWs in British custody, vastly outnumbering the German and Japanese POWs. Starting in 1941, Italians captured in the campaigns in North Africa and East Africa were shipped to the United Kingdom to serve as rural labour and by 1944, there were 150,000 Italian POWs working on British farms. Besides the fact that many of the Italian POWs came from rural areas, it was believed by British officials that the Italian POWs were less likely to cause problems with the British rural communities than the German POWs. In 1941–1942, Hudson was involved in difficult talks with the United States regarding the American demand for the end of the Imperial Preference tariff system and for Britain to commit to signing a trade agreement that would force Britain to buy a certain amount of American wheat annually at a fixed price. Hudson regarded the American advocacy of multilateralism as the basis of the post war order as "the height of hypocrisy" as he accused the Roosevelt administration of attempting to use the lend lease military aid as a leverage to impose an unfavourable economic agreement that would benefit American farmers at the expense of British farmers. During the war, the U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt championed what was known at the time as "economic multilateralism" and is today known as "economic globalisation". As the basis of a post war economic order, Roosevelt called for the lowering of tariffs, the end of currency exchange regimes, the end of trade quotas and international bodies to arbitrate trade disputes. Roosevelt believed that it was the division into rival economic blocs that were the ultimate cause of both World War One and especially World War Two and that only an "open" economic system uniting the world after the war could prevent another world war. Hudson was one of the leading opponents of "economic multilateralism" in the British cabinet. Hudson maintained that a laissez faire approach and a free trade system would bankrupt most British farmers who would not be able to compete against a flood of cheap American butter, milk, cheese, beef and wheat pouring into the British market. Hudson argued that a system of tariffs would be needed to ensure the survival of British agriculture after the war. Hudson favoured a system of massive subsidies for British farmers and felt that Britain should sign commodity agreements with nations that were weaker than the United Kingdom, which would allow the British to impose economic agreements that would be at their expense. Along with Lord Beaverbrook, the minister of aircraft production and Leo Amery, the India secretary, Hudson was one the principle advocates in the Churchill cabinet who favoured the continuation of the sterling area and the Imperial preference tariffs after the war as being necessary for the economic "survival" of the United Kingdom as a great power. Beaverbrook, Hudson and Amery were described by the American historian Randall Woods as "the most strident opponents of multilateralism in all of Britain" were opposed by another pro multilateralism group within the cabinet that consisted of Lord Cherwell, Sir Richard Law and Sir John Anderson. The protectionist, sterling area approach favoured by Hudson, Beaverbrook and Amery who argued that bilateral trade agreements would be "self righting" met with much criticism from the economist John Maynard Keynes who serving as a senior civil servant with the Treasury. Keynes wrote: "You exaggerate the extent to which payments agreements are, as such, self righting or productive of autonomic equilibrium. In the absence of government trading both ways, it is far from the case of being self righting. For one thing, the initiative to make them lies with the creditor rather than with the debtor country, yet the potential importers and creditor country have no particular motive to discriminate in favour of the goods of the debtor country". Keynes used as an example the Anglo Argentine economic agreement of 1933 which increased the exports of Argentine beef and wheat to Britain and led to Argentina being awash in pound sterling, but did not led to Argentines importing more British cotton and textiles as the supporters of the agreement had hoped it would. Keynes admitted that economic multilateralism presented problems for Britain, but he argued that it would be a better economic system after the war than the approach advocated by Beaverbrook, Hudson and Amery. In April 1942, Hudson purchased Manor Farm in Manningford from George Odlum. Odlum, a leading Canadian agricultural expert had played a key role in developing the tobacco industry in Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) for the British South Africa Company, and then worked in Honduras and Kenya as a plantation manager. Odlum had brought the farm in 1926, where he became renowned for his "scientific" farming as he sought to use the latest methods to improve crop yields and produce cattle whose milk was disease free. In August 1943, a team of 26 journalists visited Manor Farm and were told that the farm was in a "very poor condition" when Hudson had purchased it the previous year, and the current flourishing state of the farm was all the work of "farmer Hudson". Odlum at first threatened to sue for libel unless the offending statement about the farm being "in a very poor condition" at the time that Hudson brought it, which appeared in a number of British newspapers, was withdrawn. Odlum had won several awards for his efficiency as a farmer, and felt that the statement that Manor Farm being in a "very poor condition" suggested that the modern farming techniques being employed were all the work of Hudson. When the statement was not withdrawn, Odlum sued Hudson for libel in February 1944. In 1943, Hudson's work together with Lord Woolton and Lord Leathers was lauded by the Canadian journalist Robert Thurlow as a "success story". Thurlow wrote: "This is the story of three men who supply, and operate, what is probably the world's biggest store". From 1939 to 1943, the amount of arable acreage in Britain increased from 12 million acres to 18 million acres. More importantly, by 1943, 60% of the food consumed in the United Kingdom came from British farms, which lessened the dependence on imported food while freeing up shipping to bring in other supplies.

The libel suit that Odlum launched in 1944 finally came to trial on 21 June 1946. Hudson testified at the trial that Manor Farm was indeed in a "very poor condition" when he purchased it in 1942 as he maintained that the farm yields were sub par and that Odlum had apologised to him in person for his poor farming skills. Odlum by contrast testified that Hudson had expressed much admiration for the condition of the farm when he inspected it before buying the property. Odlum introduced as evidence the bill of sale that showed that Hudson had paid additional £19,000 for the cattle and farm machinery that went with the farm, which contradicted Hudson's account that the farm was derelict and the cattle were understrength. Hudson claimed that he had paid a high price for the farm and only discovered later in 1942 that it was in dismal condition. A key moment occurred when Hudson testified that a potato field on Manor Farm was wasteland when he purchased it, only for Odlum to introduce as evidence a photograph that he had taken of the said field shortly before he sold the farm to Hudson that showed it was already a potato field. The evidence in favour of Odlum was overwhelming and he won the case, being awarded £500 for the damage done to his reputation by Hudson. The Hudson Odlum libel trial attracted much media attention, and the verdict in favour of Odlum is generally believed to have effectively finished Hudson's political career. Hudson was created Viscount Hudson in 1952.