Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne - Later Political Career

Later Political Career

Though an "elevation" to the Lords ends many political lives, Moyne spent part of 1932 in the colony of Kenya overseeing its finances. In 1933, he chaired a parliamentary committee supervising English slum clearances, in light of his experience gained in his family's charitable trusts mentioned above. In 1934, he joined the Royal Commission examining Durham University as well as a 1936 committee investigating the British film industry.

In 1938, Moyne was appointed chairman of the West Indies Royal Commission which was asked to investigate how best the British colonies in the Caribbean should be governed, after labour unrest. The Report and notes were published in 1939 and are held by the PRO at Kew, London. Largely as a result of his travels and his work in the West Indies, Lord Moyne was appointed Colonial Secretary by his friend Winston Churchill, serving from 8 February 1941 to 22 February 1942. Just before he returned from the Caribbean, his wife Evelyn died on 21 July.

From the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Moyne sought the internment of Diana Mosley, his former daughter-in-law, who had left his son Bryan in 1932. She had remarried in 1936 in Berlin to the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, with Hitler and Goebbels as witnesses. File No KV 2/1363 at the PRO, Kew, is part of a collection released in 2004 on British right wing extremists. The PRO's on-line archivist notes that: “Diana Mosley was not interned on the outbreak of war, and remained at liberty for some time. There is a Home Office letter of May 1940 explaining the Home Secretary's decision not to intern her at that time, and then correspondence from her former father-in-law, Lord Moyne, which seems to have resulted in her detention the following month.” Moyne's friend Churchill had become Prime Minister on 10 May 1940. Moyne's last letter, dated 26 June 1940, is quoted in Anne de Courcy's book on Diana Mosley. Later that day her order of detention was signed by J.S. Hale, a principal Secretary of State.

From September 1939, given Hitler's Invasion of Poland (1939), Moyne chaired the Polish Relief Fund in London and gave over his London house at 11 Grosvenor Place (which is beside Buckingham Palace) for the use of Polish officers. From the elevation of Churchill in May 1940, Moyne held several positions in the Churchill war ministry, starting with a Joint Secretaryship in the Ministry of Agriculture. In a cabinet reshuffle in February 1941, he took on his post in the Colonial Office and led the Churchill government's business in the House of Lords, with the honorific title of Leader of the House of Lords.

Moyne was next appointed Deputy Resident Minister of state in Cairo from August 1942 to January 1944 and Resident Minister from then until his death. Within the British system at that time, this meant control over Persia, the Middle East and Africa. The main task was to ensure the defeat of the Axis forces in North Africa, principally the Afrika Korps, led by General Rommel. Another concern was the influence on Arab opinion of the Grand Mufti, a leader of a revolt in 1936–39, who had moved on to Berlin in 1941.