He first attracted attention in 1908 when he defeated Winston Churchill, a Liberal Cabinet Minister at the time, in a by-election for the seat of North-West Manchester but is best known as a long-serving and controversial Home Secretary in Stanley Baldwin's Second Government from 1924 to 1929.

He also played an important role in the fight against the introduction of the Church of England Revised Prayer Book, and in lowering the voting age for women from 30 to 21.

Initially he struggled to attract clients, but he was helped by his father's position as a leading member of the City Common Council and as Deputy Chairman of the London General Omnibus Company, for whom he did a great deal of claims work.

He was beginning to acquire a reputation as an evangelical lawyer with a perhaps paradoxical interest in the latest technology: motor cars (of which he owned several), telephones and aircraft.

[1] Ronald Blythe in "The Salutary Tale of Jix" in The Age of Illusion (1963) called it "the most brilliant, entertaining and hilarious electoral fight of the century".

This prompted H. G. Wells to send an open letter to Labour sympathisers in Manchester,[8] saying Joynson-Hicks "represents absolutely the worst element in British political life … an entirely undistinguished man … and an obscure and ineffectual nobody.

[7] Joynson-Hicks gained personal notoriety in the immediate aftermath of this election for an address to his Jewish hosts at a dinner given by the Maccabean Society, during which he said "he had beaten them all thoroughly and soundly and was no longer their servant.

"[12] Subsequent allegations that he was personally anti-Semitic formed an important strand of the authoritarian streak that many, including recent scholars David Cesarani and Geoffrey Alderman, detected in his speeches and behaviour.

[14] Whether or not it was justified, the notion that Joynson-Hicks was an anti-Semite played a large part in his portrayal as a narrow-minded and intolerant man, most obviously in the work of Ronald Blythe.

At the time, there was considerable unrest in India and a rapid growth in the Home Rule movement, something Joynson-Hicks opposed due to the great economic importance of the Indian Empire to Britain.

As part of this campaign, he led an abortive attempt to block Austen Chamberlain's nomination as leader of the Unionist party on Bonar Law's retirement, putting forward Lord Birkenhead instead with the express aim of "splitting the coalition".

[17] In that role, Joynson-Hicks was responsible for making the Hansard statement, on 19 July 1923, that the Inland Revenue would not prosecute a defaulting taxpayer who made a full confession and paid the outstanding tax, interest and penalties.

[22] Following the hung parliament, amounting to a Unionist defeat in the general election of December 1923, Joynson-Hicks became a key figure in various intra-party attempts to oust Baldwin.

The plot failed when Balfour refused to countenance such a move and the Liberals publicly announced they would support MacDonald, causing the government to fall in January 1924.

[17] Promotion appears to have gone to his head somewhat and he allowed himself to be touted as a prospective party leader, a possibility which Leo Amery dismissed as "amazing" (October 1925).

He clamped down on the work of D. H. Lawrence (he helped to force the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in an expurgated version), as well as on books on birth control and the translation of The Decameron.

The nightclub owner Kate Meyrick, proprietor of The 43 Club amongst other venues, was in and out of prison five times, her release parties being causes for big champagne celebrations.

[26][27] He instructed the head of London's Metropolitan Police, William Horwood that 'it is a place of the most intense mischief and immorality [with] doped women and drunken men.

I want you to put this matter in the hands of your most experienced men and whatever the cost will be, find out the truth about this club and if it is as bad as I am informed prosecute it with the utmost rigour of the law'.

[30][31] During the General Strike of 1926, he was a leading organiser of the systems that maintained supplies and law and order, although there is some evidence that left to himself he would have pursued a more hawkish policy – most notably, his repeated appeals for more volunteer constables and his attempt to close down the Daily Herald.

Against the wishes of Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain he ordered a police raid on the Soviet trade agency ARCOS in 1927, apparently actually hoping to rupture Anglo-Soviet relations.

[17] When the Prayer Book came before the House of Commons Joynson-Hicks argued strongly against its adoption as he felt it strayed far from the Protestant principles of the Church of England.

[34][33] Off the cuff and without Cabinet discussion, in a debate on a private member's bill on 20 February 1925, Joynson-Hicks pledged equal voting rights for women (clarifying a pronouncement of Baldwin's in the 1924 General Election).

He wrote to Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 6 February 1929, enclosing a memorandum proposing a programme of public works financed by a government loan.

A month after the election Joynson-Hicks was raised to the peerage as the Viscount Brentford, of Newick in the County of Sussex in the Dissolution Honours (necessitating a by-election at which the Conservatives narrowly held his old seat).

[40][31] Lord Brentford remained a senior figure in the Conservative Party, but due to his declining health he was not invited to join the National Government at its formation in August 1931.

[17] Lord Brentford married Grace Lynn, only daughter of Richard Hampson Joynson, JP, of Bowdon Cheshire, on 12 June 1895 in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.

As a result, public discourse has been shaped by material that portrayed him in an unflattering light, such as Ronald Blythe's biographical chapter in The Age of Illusion.

[46] In the 1990s the current Viscount lent his grandfather's papers to an MPhil student at the University of Westminster, Jonathon Hopkins,[47] who prepared a catalogue of them and wrote a short biography of Joynson-Hicks as part of his thesis.

[50] In 2023, historian Max Hastings wrote a Times article suggesting that those who consider some current Tory ministers and ex-ministers[51] to be the "worst ever" to revisit Joynson-Hicks' career and perhaps conclude that "more than a few of our past politicians make the present ones look ... not as awful as Jix".