SCHUSTER, George Ernest
Type
25th April 1881 to 5th June 1982
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Occupation
Biographical Text
Schuster was a barrister and administrator with particular expertise in the world of finance. He later became finance minister of India and a Liberal MP.
Schuster was born on 25 April 1881 in London, the son of a barrister. He was educated at Charterhouse and then New College, Oxford, where he obtained a first in literae humaniores in 1903. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1905, and then went to work for a London financial house, H.R. Merton & Co. He married Gwendolyn Parker in 1908.
Schuster was a member of the Liberal Party and had ambitions to stand for parliament, but as the First World War approached it was deemed that his German surname (his grandfather had emigrated from Germany) would not make him a suitable candidate. Upon the outbreak of war Schuster joined the Oxford Yeomanry and served in France, mostly in staff roles with the British First Army. During the Russian Civil War he was sent with a British expedition to Murmansk to bolster the White Russian forces there. He ended the war with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was awarded the CBE, the Military Cross and the Russian Order of St Vladimir.
After the war Schuster studied finance at the University of Birmingham and served on the treasury advisory committee of the League of Nations; in 1921 he was listed as ‘chief assistant to the organiser of the international credit scheme’ run by the League. From 1922-7 he was financial secretary to the British colonial government in the Sudan. After a brief stint as advisor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, from 1928-34 Schuster was finance minister on the Council of India. In 1929 he was wounded in a bomb attack on the Central Legislative Assembly by Indian independence campaigners. Schuster was knighted KCMG in 1925, and again as KCSI in 1931.
From 1934-8 Schuster worked again in financial services, before resuming his political career with the Liberal Party. In October 1938 he was elected to the seat of Walsall in a by-election, holding the seat throughout the Second World War. During the war he was an active constituency MP, working closely with Stafford Cripps at the Ministry of Aircraft Production. He lost his seat to Labour in the 1945 general election. Thereafter he served on a wide variety of government and charitable committees, most notably as a member of an inquiry into the finances of Malta and as chairman of the Oxford Regional Hospital Board. He died at his home near Banbury in Oxfordshire on 5 June 1982.
Schuster attended the conference in April 1921 in place of his boss, the chief organiser of the international credit scheme, Sir Drummond Fraser, and he opens with an apology for this. He then makes an impassioned plea for co-operation, between capital and labour, but also between nations, in order to rebuild after the devastation of the First World War and achieve greater prosperity:
All that I have seen in travelling about Europe makes me feel how important it is that each of us should realise how close is the connection between all the different factors in the present situation, and that each of us should do his very best, in his own sphere, to secure real co-operation. We must pull together. The world is still in a dangerous and critical state. Not only must employer and employed find some basis of agreement, but the nations of the world must learn to work in harmony. We are all in the same boat, and none of us can really he prosperous until all classes and all nations have attained some measure of prosperity.
Particularly important, says Schuster, is the revival of trade. Some forms of trade, such as in foodstuffs, are absolutely essential to feed Europe’s hungry people. But more than that, trade generates income and wealth, which are the foundation of prosperity.
There is, he says, a great deal of latent wealth in Europe. Many of the newly independent states of eastern and central Europe could be highly wealthy if they had incentives to increase production. One of the key factors holding these countries back is lack of credit, and Schuster describes the work of his own international credit scheme in easing the situation. He offers the hope that, in time, the international trade networks will begin to function again, leading to greater prosperity for all, but he warns his listeners that the road back to prosperity will not be an easy one, and many barriers lie across it.
Bibliography
Van Oss, O., ‘Schuster, Sir George Ernest’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Original Source
‘Getting the world back to work’, 15 April 1921, Balliol College