Alfred Moritz Mond 1st Baron Melchett

Mond, Alfred, 1st Baron Melchett (1868–1930). Industrialist and politician. Son of a German Jew who came to Britain in 1862 and built up a large chemical firm, Mond began as a lawyer but moved into the family business, which, in 1926, became the nucleus of ICI. An advocate of the advantages of size in industry, Mond sought to reconcile capital and labour by profit-sharing and employee shareholding. He entered Parliament in 1906 as a Liberal, was 1st commissioner of works 1916–21 and minister of health 1921–2 in Lloyd George's coalition government. In the 1920s he converted to imperial preference and took the Conservative whip. He was a convinced Zionist. His barony came in 1928. The Times obituary wrote that he had triumphed over ‘a bad voice, a bad delivery, and a presence unimpressive to all but the caricaturists’.

J. A. Cannon

Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett , 1868-1930, English industrialist and politician; son of Ludwig Mond. He played a leading part in the centralization of the English chemical industry; as managing director of his father's firm, Brunner-Mond, he arranged its merger with three smaller companies to form (1926) the huge Imperial Chemical Industries. He entered (1906) Parliament as a Liberal and served as first commissioner of works (1916-21) and minister of health (1921-22). He was an early advocate of health insurance and of profit sharing within a capitalist framework. In 1928 he organized the Mond-Turner talks, an attempt to achieve some collaboration between labor and the employers after the bitterness of the general strike of 1926. He was created a peer in 1928.

Bibliography: See biography by H. Bolitho (1933).