Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading

The Most Honourable The Marquess of Reading GCB GCSI GCIE GCVO PC KC
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Leader of the House of Lords
In office 25 August 1931 – 5 November 1931
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Ramsay Macdonald
Preceded by	Arthur Henderson
Succeeded by	Sir John Simon
Viceroy and Governor-General of India
In office 2 April 1921 – 3 April 1926
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	See list David Lloyd George Andrew Bonar Law Stanley Baldwin Ramsay Macdonald
Preceded by	The Lord Chelmsford
Succeeded by	The Earl of Lytton
Lord Chief Justice of England
In office 21 October 1913 – 8 March 1921
Monarch	George V
Preceded by	The Viscount Alverstone
Succeeded by	The Lord Trevethin
Attorney General for England
In office 7 October 1910 – 19 October 1913
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	H. H. Asquith
Preceded by	Sir William Robson
Succeeded by	Sir John Simon
Solicitor General for England
In office 6 March 1910 – 7 October 1910
Monarch	Edward VII George V
Prime Minister	Herbert Henry Asquith
Preceded by	Sir Samuel Evans
Succeeded by	Sir John Simon
Member of Parliament for Reading
In office 6 August 1904 – 19 October 1913
Preceded by	George William Palmer
Succeeded by	Leslie Orme Wilson
Personal details
Born	Rufus Daniel Isaacs (1860-10-10)10 October 1860 Tower Hamlets, London, United Kingdom
Died	Mayfair, London, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Political party	Liberal
Spouse(s)	Alice Edith Cohen (1887–1927) Stella Charnaud (1931–1935)
Profession	lawyer, jurist, politician
Religion	Jewish

Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading GCB GCSI GCIE GCVO PC KC (10 October 1860 – 30 December 1935) was the Viceroy of India (1921–25), barrister, jurist and the last member of the official Liberal Party to serve as Foreign Secretary. He was the second practising Jew to be a member of the British cabinet (the first being Herbert Samuel, who was also a member of the Asquith Government), the first Jew to be Lord Chief Justice of England, and the first British Jew to be raised to a marquessate.

Biography

The son of a Jewish fruit merchant at Spitalfields, Rufus Daniel Isaacs was educated at University College School and then entered the family business at the age of 15. In 1876–77 he served as a ship's boy and later worked as a jobber on the stock-exchange from 1880–84.

He entered the Middle Temple to study law, and was called to the Bar in 1887. He was appointed a QC in 1898.

In 1887 he married Alice Edith Cohen, who suffered from a chronic physical disability and died of cancer in 1927, after 40 years of marriage, and a year after Reading's Indian viceroyalty ended. He then married Stella Charnaud, the first Lady Reading's secretary. His second marriage lasted until his own death in 1935. After his death Stella Isaacs was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1941, promoted to Dame Grand Cross (GBE) in 1944, and then in 1958 made a life peeress as Baroness Swanborough, of Swanborough in the County of Sussex.

Isaacs lived at Foxhill House in Earley, adjoining Reading, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1914, and continued to rise in the peerage: he was created Viscount Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1916; Earl of Reading along with the subsidiary title of Viscount Erleigh, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1917; and eventually Marquess of Reading in 1926. His marquessate was the highest rank in the British peerage ever achieved by a Jew. He was knighted in 1910, made a KCVO in 1911, a GCB in 1915, a GCSI and GCIE in 1921 (upon appointment as Viceroy of India) and a GCVO in 1922. Although he had no apparent link with Canada, his eminence was such that the Lord Reading Law Society (founded in 1948 to promote the interests of Jewish members of the Quebec Bar) was named in his honour.

Lord Reading died in London in December 1935 aged 75. After cremation at Golders Green Crematorium his ashes were buried at the nearby Jewish cemetery. The house where he died, No. 32 Curzon Street in Mayfair, has had a blue plaque on it since 1971.

Legal and political career

Lord Reading and his wife at Haifa Power Station, 1930s

Isaacs garnered fame in the Bayliss v. Coleridge libel suit in 1903, and the Whitaker Wright case in 1904. In 1904, he entered the House of Commons as Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for the Reading constituency, a seat he held until 1913. During this period, he served as both Solicitor General and Attorney-General in the government of Herbert Henry Asquith, becoming the first Attorney-General to sit in the Cabinet in 1912. He led for the prosecution in the Seddon poisoning case in 1912 and that same year represented the Board of Trade at the inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic. In 1913, he was made Lord Chief Justice, a position in which he served until 1921.

Isaacs was one of several high-ranking members of the Liberal government accused of involvement in the Marconi scandal. An article published in Le Matin on 14 February 1913 alleged corruption in the award of a government contract to the Marconi Company and insider trading in Marconi's shares, implicating a number of sitting government ministers, including Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; Isaacs, then Attorney General; Herbert Samuel, Postmaster General; and the Treasurer of the Liberal Party, the Master of Elibank, Lord Murray. The allegations included the fact that Isaacs' brother, Godfrey Isaacs, was managing director of the Marconi company at the time that the cabinet, in which Isaacs sat, awarded Marconi the contract. Isaacs and Samuels sued Le Matin for libel, and as a result, the journal apologised and printed a complete retraction in its 18 February 1913 issue. The factual matters were at least partly resolved by a parliamentary select committee investigation, which issued three reports: all found that Isaacs and others had purchased shares in the American Marconi company, but while the fellow-Liberal members of the committee cleared the ministers of all blame, the opposition members reported that Isaacs and others had acted with "grave impropriety". It was not made public during the trial that these shares had been made available through Isaacs's brother at a favourable price.

In 1918, Isaacs was appointed Ambassador to the United States, a position in which he served until 1919, while continuing at the same time as Lord Chief Justice. In 1921, he resigned the chief justiceship to become Viceroy of India. Although he preferred a conciliatory policy, he ended up using force on several occasions, and imprisoned Mahatma Gandhi in 1922. In MacDonald's National Government in August 1931, he briefly served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but stood down after the first major reshuffle in November due to ill-health.

In his approach to politics, Isaacs was, according to Denis Judd,

“no blood-red Radical, and had ‘little sympathy with the narrower aspects of the Nonconformist outlook which constituted so powerful an element in contemporary Liberalism.’ Liberalism, none the less, was the natural party for him to support. Within his own father’s lifetime Jews had been obliged to struggle to obtain full civil rights. Moreover, the Liberal party apparently stood for the noble principles of liberty, toleration and progress whereas the Tories, although somewhat disguised with the Unionist coalition, seemed to offer little in the way of enlightened policies. For a man who approved of social reform, yet wanted to stop well short of revolution, the Liberal party was the obvious home.”

Indeed, Isaacs championed such measures as the taxation of land values and reforms in the legal standing of unions, education, licensing, and military organization. Isaacs also gave staunch official backing to David Lloyd George’s initiative on land reform, together with his tax on land values and national social insurance scheme.

Israel Electric Corporation

Along with his in-law Alfred Mond and Herbert Samuel, Isaacs was a founding chairman of the Palestine Electric Corporation, precursor to the Israel Electric Corporation in the British Mandate of Palestine. The Reading Power Station in Tel Aviv, Israel was named in his honour.

Styles

• 1860–1887: Rufus Daniel Isaacs
• 1887–1898: Rufus Daniel Isaacs Esq.
• 1898–1901: Rufus Daniel Isaacs QC, Esq.
• 1901–1910: Rufus Daniel Isaacs KC, Esq.
• 1910–1911: Sir Rufus Daniel Isaacs KC
• 1911–1914: The Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus Daniel Isaacs KCVO, KC
• 1914–1915: The Rt. Hon. The Lord Reading KCVO, PC, KC
• 1915–1916: The Rt. Hon. The Lord Reading GCB, KCVO, PC, KC
• 1916–1917: The Rt. Hon. The Viscount Reading GCB, KCVO, PC, KC
• 1917–1918: The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Reading GCB, KCVO, PC, KC
• 1918–1919: His Excellency The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Reading GCB, KCVO, PC, KC, His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States of America
• 1919–1921: The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Reading GCB, KCVO, PC, KC
• 1921–1922: His Excellency The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Reading GCB, GCSI, GCIE, KCVO, PC, KC, Viceroy and Governor-General of India
• 1922–1925: His Excellency The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Reading GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC, KC, Viceroy and Governor-General of India
• 1925–1926: The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Reading GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC, KC
• 1926–1935: The Most. Hon. The Marquess of Reading GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC, KC

Gallery

• 

  Mr. Lloyd George (2nd left), Lord Reading (2nd from right) and M. Albert Thomas (far left) visiting the Front, France. (photo: Ernest Brooks)

• 

  Isaacs caricatured by Spy for Vanity Fair, 1904

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Marquess of Reading

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by George William Palmer	Member of Parliament for Reading 1904–1913	Succeeded by Leslie Orme Wilson
Political offices
Preceded by The Lord Parmoor	Leader of the House of Lords 1931	Succeeded by The Viscount Hailsham
Preceded by Arthur Henderson	Foreign Secretary 1931	Succeeded by Sir John Simon
Party political offices
Preceded by The Earl Beauchamp	Leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords 1931–1935	Succeeded by The Marquess of Crewe
Legal offices
Preceded by Sir Samuel Evans	Solicitor General 1910	Succeeded by Sir John Simon
Preceded by Sir William Robson	Attorney General 1910–1913
Preceded by The Lord Alverstone	Lord Chief Justice 1913–1921	Succeeded by The Lord Trevethin
Government offices
Preceded by The Lord Chelmsford	Viceroy of India 1921–1925	Succeeded by The Earl of Lytton
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Sir Cecil Spring Rice	British Ambassador to the United States 1918–1919	Succeeded by The Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Honorary titles
Preceded by The Earl Beauchamp	Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports 1934–1935	Succeeded by The Marquess of Willingdon
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation	Marquess of Reading 1926–1935	Succeeded by Gerald Isaacs
	Earl of Reading 1917–1935
	Viscount Reading 1916–1935
	Baron Reading 1914–1935