David Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles

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For other persons named David Eccles, see David Eccles (disambiguation).

David McAdam Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles CH KCVO KBE PC (September 18, 1904–February 24, 1999) was a British Conservative politician.

Eccles was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He worked with the Central Mining Corporation in London and Johannesberg. During the Second World War he worked for the Ministry of Economic Warfare from 1939 to 1940 and for the Ministry of Production from 1942 to 1943 and was Economic Adviser to the British ambassadors at Lisbon and Madrid from 1940 to 1942.

Eccles was elected Member of Parliament for Chippenham in a wartime by-election in 1943, a seat he held until 1962. He served in the Conservative administrations of Churchill, Eden and Macmillan respectively as Minister of Works from 1951 to 1954 (in which position, he helped organise the 1953 Coronation, as Minister of Education from 1954 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1962 and as President of the Board of Trade from 1957 to 1959.

In 1962 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Eccles, of Chute in the County of Wiltshire, and in 1964 he was created Viscount Eccles, of Chute in the County of Wiltshire. Lord Eccles returned to the government in 1970 when Ted Heath appointed him Paymaster-General and Minister for The Arts, a post he held until 1973. As Minister for the Arts he clashed with the Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain Arnold Goodman over the funding of controversial plays and exhibitions and introduced mandatory admission charges at public museums and galleries.

Eccles married, firstly, Hon. Sybil Frances Dawson (1904–1977), daughter of Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn, on October 1, 1929. They had three children:

Selina Eccles, m. George Petty-FitzMaurice, 8th Marquess of Lansdowne
Simon Dawson Eccles
John Dawson Eccles, 2nd Viscount Eccles (born on April 20, 1931)

Widowed, he married again, this time to the book collector and philanthropist Mary Morley Crapo Hyde (1912-2003) on September 26, 1984. He died at age 94 at home of natural causes.

[edit] References

Mary, Viscountess Eccles: obituary, The Independent, September 5, 2003

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by: Victor Cazalet	Member of Parliament for Chippenham 1943–1962	Succeeded by: Daniel Awdry
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by: New creation	Viscount Eccles 1962–1999	Succeeded by: John Eccles
Political offices
Preceded by: Jennie Lee	Minister of State for the Arts 1970–1973	Succeeded by: Norman St John-Stevas