[1] Hatch was born in Stockport, Lancashire but moved to Yorkshire at an early age.
He attended Keighley Boys' Grammar School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
He subsequently became a tutor in Labour colleges and a lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
[2] He was Commonwealth Secretary of the Labour Party during the 1950s,[2][3] before becoming Director of the Extra-Mural Department of the University of Sierra Leone in 1961.
He was made a life peer on 5 May 1978 as Baron Hatch of Lusby of Oldfield in the County of West Yorkshire.