Andrew McFadyean

Sir Andrew McFadyean (23 April 1887 – 2 October 1974) was a British diplomat, economist, Treasury official, businessman, Liberal politician, publicist and philosopher.

[3] His marriage to Dorothea Emily, youngest daughter of Charles Kean Chute (1858-1905), an actor and theatre manager, and Sybil Claridge (née Andrews; 1860-1930), an actress, took place on 7 October 1913.

He accompanied Sir Samuel Hardman Lever on an important financial mission to the USA in 1917; from 1917 to 1919, he served in the Treasury division, where his responsibilities included external finance.

In 1924, he worked for a reduction in German reparations; in this he agreed with John Maynard Keynes, whose book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, had been published in 1919.

The German currency, the Reichsmark, would be stabilised on gold, thus bringing about a restoration of confidence and enabling an international loan to be raised to cover the instalment for the first year.

He strongly supported the idea of the European Common Market and, believing that tariffs and monopolist and restrictive practices in industry were wrecking the UK's competitiveness, he served as president of the Free Trade Union from 1948 to 1959.

He helped persecuted Jews (also urging the admission of Jewish refugees to Palestine)[9] and enemy aliens who had been unjustly interned by the UK during the war.

[10][11][12][13] He worked with John MacCallum after the Second World War to organise the Liberal International, which succeeded the pre-war 'Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et Démocratiques'.

[citation needed] The information above is drawn from the obituary in the Times of 3 October 1974 and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.