Political career
He agreed to join the Coalition slate and was elected for Hendon. He would hold this seat until his elevation to the House of Lords in 1935. His strong intellect was immediately recognizable as a member of the National Expenditure select committee scrutinizing the controversial McKenna Duties and Homes Fit For Heroes, after which in 1920 he was knighted.
He achieved his first ministerial post as Additional Under-Secretary Foreign Affairs in 1920 and took charge of the Overseas Trade Department in 1921 as Additional Parliamentary Secretary. In 1922 he became a Privy Counsellor and was appointed President of the Board of Trade, an office he would hold with two breaks until 1931. This fast elevation to the Cabinet came about because of the collapse of the Lloyd George Coalition Government, which forced the new Prime Minister Bonar Law to promote many inexperienced MPs.
In 1923, Law was forced to resign due to failing health and there was discussion as to whether he would be succeeded by Stanley Baldwin or Lord Curzon. As the last survivor of Law's Cabinet, Lloyd-Greame would later assert that it was Cabinet hostility to Curzon that prevented his appointment as Prime Minister, when he returned from the Imperial Economic Council. On 27 November 1924 Lloyd-Greame changed his surname to Cunliffe-Lister so as to be able to inherit property from his wife's family. Raised to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1929.
In 1931 Cunliffe-Lister was one of the Conservatives chosen to negotiate with the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald as the latter's government collapsed and was replaced by the multi-party National Government. As a sign of his prominence within the party, Cunliffe-Lister was one of just four Conservatives in the emergency Cabinet of 10, serving for the third and final time as President of the Board of Trade.
The National Government won a massive election victory in the 1931 general election but was internally divided on the question of protective tariffs. So as to balance the Cabinet Cunliffe-Lister was replaced at the Board of Trade by the supposed Free Trader Walter Runciman, and instead became Secretary of State for the Colonies, which he would hold until June 1935. When MacDonald retired as Prime Minister and was succeeded by Stanley Baldwin a Cabinet reshuffle took place in which Cunliffe-Lister became Secretary of State for Air. At the 1935 general election he did not contest his seat and was instead ennobled as Viscount Swinton, retaining his ministerial office for the next three years into the premiership of Neville Chamberlain he took the strategic post of Secretary of State for Air responsible for Britain air defences in the lead up to war.
He also seemingly served on the Home Security Executive during the war. Letters were exchanged between Swinton and Oswald Allen Harker regarding the detention of Barry Domvile. KV2-834, National Archives.
As Swinton was now in the House of Lords his hands were free to be Chairman of the UK Commercial Corporation responsible for boosting enterprise and output. So Chamberlain appointed the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Lord Winterton (an Irish peer who sat in the House of Commons) to speak for the Air Ministry in the Commons. This arrangement did not prove successful and in May 1938 there was a disastrous debate on air and it became clear to Chamberlain that the Secretary of State must sit in the House of Commons. Swinton was dismissed, his political career seemingly over.
After serving as Minister Resident in West Africa and being made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1943, during the Second World War Swinton's career revived when he was appointed as the first Minister of Civil Aviation, a post he held until the end of the war. During 1944 he served on the executive committee and on the Steering Committee at the Convention on International Civil Aviation done in Chicago, formally representing the United Kingdom.
When Winston Churchill formed his peacetime government in 1951 he appointed Swinton as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for War Materials a year later. As Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Swinton was also Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations for three years. When in 1955 Churchill retired, Swinton insisted on retiring too, and he was further ennobled as the Earl of Swinton. Towards the end of his life, Swinton was an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford.
