Louis Beel
Louis Joseph Maria Beel was a Dutch politician and diplomat of the defunct Roman Catholic State Party and later co-founder of the Catholic People's Party now merged into the Christian Democratic Appeal party and jurist who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 3 July 1946 until 7 August 1948 and from 22 December 1958 until 19 May 1959.
Beel worked as an civil servant for the municipality of Eindhoven from September 1920 until June 1924. Beel applied at the Radboud University Nijmegen in June 1923 majoring in Law and obtaining an Bachelor of Laws degree in July 1925 before graduating with an Master of Laws degree in July 1928 and later returned to the Radboud University Nijmegen where worked as a researcher and got doctorate as an Doctor of Law on 1 July 1935. Beel worked as an civil servant for the provinces of Overijssel from June 1924 until April 1929 and again for the municipality of Eindhoven from April 1929 until May 1942 as director of the Social Service from August 1930 until August 1934 and as municipal clerk from August 1934 until May 1942. Beel also worked as a legal educator at schools in Tilburg, Breda and Eindhoven from July 1927 until May 1942. On 1 May 1942 Beel resigned as municipal clerk following the appointment of National Socialist :nl:Hub Pulles|Hub Pulles as Mayor of Eindhoven. During World War II Beeld worked as a lawyer in Eindhoven from May 1942 until January 1945.
On 27 January 1945 the Cabinet Gerbrandy II fell and continued to serve in a demissionary capacity until it was replaced by the Cabinet Gerbrandy III with Beel appointed as Minister of the Interior, taking office on 23 February 1945. Following the end of World War II Queen Wilhelmina ordered the formation of a cabinet of national unity to reorganize the state and make preparations for new elections with Beel continuing as Minister of the Interior in the Cabinet Schermerhorn–Drees, taking office on 25 June 1945. On 22 December 1945 the Roman Catholic State Party was renamed as the Catholic People's Party, Beel was one of the co-founders and became one of the unofficial Deputy Leaders of the Catholic People's Party. After the election of 1946 Beel was elected as a Member of the House of Representatives, taking office on 4 June 1946. After the election Beel was appointed as Formateur to form a new cabinet. The following cabinet formation of 1948 resulted in a coalition agreement between the Catholic People's Party and the Labour Party which formed the Cabinet Beel I with Beel becoming Prime Minister of the Netherlands and remaining Minister of the Interior, taking office on 3 July 1946. Beel served as acting Minister of Colonial Affairs from 30 August 1947 until 3 November 1947 during a medical leave of absence Jan Jonkman. On 15 September 1947 Beel resigned as Minister of the Interior following reestablishment of the Ministry of General Affairs the cabinet department for the Prime Minister, taking office on 13 October 1947. After the election of 1948 Beel returned as a Member of the House of Representatives, taking office on 27 July 1948. Following the cabinet formation of 1948 Beel not giving a cabinet post in the new cabinet, the Cabinet Beel I was replaced by the Cabinet Drees–Van Schaik on 7 August 1948 and he continued to serve in the House of Representatives as a frontbencher. In September 1948 Beel was nominated as the High Commissioner of the Dutch East Indies, he resigned as a Member of the House of Representatives on 7 September 1948 and was installed as High Commissioner, serving from 29 October 1948 until 18 May 1949.
Beel worked as a distinguished professor of Administrative law and Public administration at the Radboud University Nijmegen serving from October 1949 until December 1951 and as a distinguished professor of Administrative law and Public administration at the Catholic Economic University serving from March 1950 until December 1951. Beel was appointed again as Minister of the Interior in the Cabinet Drees I following the death of Johan van Maarseveen, taking office on 6 December 1951. After the election of 1952 Beel continued as Minister of the Interior and also becoming Deputy Prime Minister in the Cabinet Drees II, taking office on 2 September 1952. Beel served as acting Minister of Social Work from 2 September 1952 until 9 September 1952 before the appointment of Frans-Jozef van Thiel and served as acting Minister of Justice from 4 February 1956 until 15 February 1956 following the death of Leendert Antonie Donker. On 7 July 1956 Beel resigned after he was appointed as Chairman of the :nl:Commissie-Beel|Beel Commission, a special commission that was tasked with the investigation into the influence of Greet Hofmans a friend and informal adviser to Queen Juliana. Beel was granted the honorary title of Minister of State on 21 November 1956. In February 1958 Beel was nominated as a Member of the Council of State, taking office on 1 April 1958. On 11 December 1958 the Cabinet Drees III fell and continued to serve in a demissionary capacity with Beel appointed as Formateur to form a new cabinet. The following cabinet formation of 1958 resulted in the continuation of the coalition agreement between the Catholic People's Party, the Anti-Revolutionary Party and the Christian Historical Union which formed the caretaker Cabinet Beel II with Beel becoming Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Minister of General Affairs and Minister of Social Affairs and Health, taking office on 22 December 1958. Shortly thereafter Beel announced that he wouldn't not stand for the election of 1959. Following the cabinet formation of 1959 Beel per his own request asked not to be considered for a cabinet post in the new cabinet, the Cabinet Beel II was replaced by the Cabinet De Quay on 19 May 1959. In May 1959 Beel was nominated again as a Member of the Council of State, taking office on 1 June 1959 and in July 1959 he was nominated as Vice-President of the Council of State, serving from 1 August 1959 until 1 July 1972.
Beel retired after spending 27 years in national politic and became active in the public sector and occupied numerous seats as a corporate director and nonprofit director on several boards of directors and supervisory boards and served on several :nl:Staatscommissie|state commissions and as an diplomat and lobbyist for several economic delegations on behalf of the government.
Beel was known for his abilities as a manager and negotiator. During his premiership, his cabinets was responsible for introducing pensions, continuing the decolonization and reforms to social security. Beel continued to comment on political affairs as a statesman until his death from leukemia at the age of 74. He holds the distinction as the only Prime Minister after World War II that served two non-consecutive terms.
Biography
Early life
Louis Joseph Maria Beel was born on 12 April 1902 in Roermond, a town with a Bishop's see in the province of Limburg, in the very south of the Netherlands. He grew up in a predominantly Roman Catholic community and went to school at the famous Bisschoppelijk College of Roermond. He graduated in 1920 and found work as clerk-volunteer at the municipality of Roermond. Two years later he became secretary to the Educational Religious Inspector of the Roermond diocese, Monsignor Petrus van Gils. When in 1923 the Roman Catholic University was founded in Nijmegen, Monsignor van Gils insisted on his secretary becoming a part-time law-student in Nijmegen. In 1924 Beel began commuting between Roermond and Nijmegen. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in 1925 he found a new job as an administrative assistant in the government of the eastern province of Overijssel. He moved to its capital, the town of Zwolle, and left his place of birth Roermond. During the time he lived in Zwolle Beel got married and his first child, a son, was born. In addition to being a provincial civil servant Beel accepted a part-time lectureship at an institute for professional training, Katholieke Leergangen, and he wrote his first articles on legal subjects.In 1928 Beel obtained his master's degree in law at Radboud University Nijmegen. Subsequently, he applied for a better job, and managed to find one as a clerk in the municipality of Eindhoven, also in the South of The Netherlands at that time a booming city as a result of the establishment of the Philips group. With his wife, his son and his mother-in-law he moved to Eindhoven in 1929 and lived there for more than fifteen years. Three daughters were born there. Beel's professional career progressed rapidly and in less than one year he became a principal clerk. As he had in Zwolle, Beel proved to be an industrious man. He continued his part-time lecturing at the Katholieke Leergangen, he published regularly in the legal press and in 1935 he obtained his doctorate in law at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
World War II
At the time of his resignation as a municipal Civil servant in 1942, Beel was Director of Social Affairs and Deputy Town Clerk. Beel resigned because he opposed the German Occupation of the Netherlands. To avoid being taken prisoner by the German occupational forces he frequently had to go in hiding. Eindhoven was liberated on 18 September 1944 at the time of the World War II military offensive known as Operation Market Garden. Dutch resistance fighters, massively manifesting themselves immediately after the Germans had gone, saw Beel as one of them. He became the spokesman of a group of prominent citizens in Eindhoven, who had resisted the Germans during the war. The group was not in favour of a continuation of the pre-war political party-lines, with the ever-dominant Anti-Revolutionary Party. In this vein they sent an Address, drafted by Beel, to Queen Wilhelmina, who still resided in London. Beel was urged to accept the function of adviser to the Military Administration, the temporary government in the liberated southern part of The Netherlands under Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. In this capacity Beel was invited by the Dutch government in exile to travel to London and to advise on dealing with the war victims. He arrived in London on 1 January 1945. On 10 January he visited at her request Queen Wilhelmina in her English mansion Mortimer. This visit gave a decisive turn to Beel's life.Leopold Figl at The Hague Central railway station on 21 October 1952.
during the announcement following the birth of Prince Willem-Alexander on 2 May 1967.
Politics
The Queen intuitively saw in Beel, a Roman Catholic from the South who ostentatiously had rejected Nazism, the prototype of the patriot and of the sort of "renewed" person she was looking for to replace the members of her war-cabinet, of whom she no longer wholeheartedly approved. Beel was promptly appointed Minister of the Interior in the third Gerbrandy cabinet. This cabinet resigned immediately after the end of the war, in May 1945, to free the path for a new one to be formed by two a liberal, Wim Schermerhorn, and social democrat, Willem Drees. They invited Beel to remain as Minister of the Interior in their cabinet. According to his own words, Beel reluctantly agreed. He moved with his family from Eindhoven in the South to Wassenaar in the West, a villadom close to The Hague, the government's residence.Post-war parliamentary elections could finally be held in May 1946. In the election campaign Beel voiced the political resistance from the religious and liberal parties against the economic planning and socialism favoured by Prime Minister Schermerhorn and his political supporters. Unlike the British elections of the previous year where the Labour Party gained a decisive victory, in the Netherlands the 'Socialist breakthrough' which had been expected did not materialise in these first post-war elections. The Catholic People's Party) was the big winner, though no party had an overall majority. Queen Wilhelmina requested Beel to form a new cabinet. He became Prime Minister of a 'red-Roman coalition', which he called the 'New Truce', since it was the first cabinet in Dutch history of socialists and Roman Catholics. This Beel-cabinet set the course for the political and economic development of the post war Netherlands.
In social policy, temporary measures were introduced in December 1946 entitling wage-earners to an allowance for the first and second child under the age of 18. The Old Age Pensions Emergency Provisions Act of May 1947 provided means-tested pensions for all persons over the age of 65 regardless of the previous employment record, and the Pensioners’ Family Allowances Act of July 1948 introduced family allowance for those in receipt of invalidity, old age, or survivors’ benefits "according to the Invalidity Insurance Act 1919."
In 1948 parliamentary elections were again required for a constitutional renewal, which was thought necessary to solve the problems emerging in the Dutch East Indies, where the nationalists Sukarno and Hatta had proclaimed the independence of their country immediately after the Japanese surrender. The KVP won again and Beel was asked to form a new cabinet. He might again have become Prime Minister, but he failed to form the broad based cabinet of socialists, Catholic parties and liberals, which he deemed necessary to secure the corrections in the Constitution. Josef van Schaik, a fellow KVP politician, took over and succeeded in forming a broad based cabinet by offering the socialist Willem Drees the function of Prime Minister, Josef van Schaik himself being satisfied with the function of Deputy Prime Minister. Drees appointed Beel High Commissioner of the Crown in the Dutch East Indies, as a successor to Lieutenant Governor General Hubertus van Mook, a man of proven managerial abilities, who had to resign unwillingly.
The Dutch government in The Hague made several attempts to reach an agreement with the Republic of Indonesia. Beel, stationed in Batavia, was not in favour of such an agreement because of his suspicions - later proven to be right - that the new Republic did not want the establishment of a Federal State of Indonesia, as was planned in the Dutch decolonisation policy. Under the auspices of the Security Council of the United Nations an agreement was achieved in May 1949 to hold a Round Table Conference in The Hague in order to prepare the transfer of sovereignty. Beel made efforts to thwart the agreement. However he was unsuccessful and he resigned from his Office of High Commissioner of the Crown.
Beel returned to his home at the end of May 1949 and a few months later he accepted a professorate in administrative law at his Alma Mater in Nijmegen, one of his early ambitions.
On 7 November 1951, Johannes Henricus van Maarseveen, Minister of the Interior, suddenly died. Prime Minister Drees appealed to Beel to return to office. Again reluctantly, Beel accepted Prime Minister Drees' offer. He also held the function of Minister of the Interior in the next Drees-cabinet after the elections of 1952. In July 1956 Beel asked that he be allowed to resign from government to become, as a private citizen, chairman of a committee of three wise men that was requested by Queen Juliana and the Consort Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld to help solve problems pertaining to the Royal Family. The problems were related to faith healer Greet Hofmans, whom the Queen had invited to the royal palace in order to cure her youngest daughter, who had been born half blind in 1947. The renowned German magazine Der Spiegel had accused Mrs. Hofmans of playing a 'Rasputin' role in the Royal Family. Within a month the committee had fulfilled its task by writing a secret report, which banished the sensitive affair from publicity. Three months later Beel was appointed Minister of State, a prestigious title of honour.
In 1958 after an interlude of eighteen months without a public office, Beel was appointed member of the Council of State. Soon afterwards however he was called upon to form his second cabinet - a rump cabinet from December 1958 until May 1959, that had to dissolve parliament and call new elections. After these elections Beel assisted the Roman Catholic politician Jan de Quay in forming a Catholic-liberal cabinet, ending for the time being the 'red-Roman coalition', which had been Beel's own initiative in 1946. The Cabinet de Quay appointed Beel as Vice-President of the Dutch Council of State, the most prestigious office in the Dutch administration, the head of state being the honorary President of the Dutch Council of State
Whereas other political leaders, who had come forward after the war, one by one left the political scene and the 'participation-democracy' of the New Left movement created a new type of politician, Beel retained in the authority of the Council of State a great influence on government. He owed his role to the way he performed his high office as well to his position of confidence with the Royal Family. In various affairs the royals faced, Beel's taciturn way of acting on behalf of the monarchy and his prudent pulling the strings behind the scene as Vice-President of the Dutch Council of State gave him the nickname 'The Sphinx'. The power he derived from both positions christened him "Viceroy of the Netherlands". The authority of Beel and his controlling influence in political circles became manifest when new cabinets had to be formed or cabinet crises had to be warded off. Through the thirteen years of his vice-presidency Beel had a steering hand in nearly every cabinet-formation - including the dramatic formation of the cabinet of the social democrat Joop den Uyl in 1973.