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90 Review Dutton Wyburn-Powell Political Wings REviEWS of Grimond’s economic policies full, clearly set out bibliography of a payphone in order not to waste were support for Common Mar- the sources used is most helpful and money. That home, incidentally, ket membership, increased public a pleasure to read. It will prove of once described by the political investment, improved educational great value for future research. The journalist Michael Crick as the and training facilities, and a more book is not always an easy read, family’s ‘ancestral home’, was in competitive private sector. but it is unfailingly scholarly, con- fact a prefabricated building, cho- A short conclusion gathering tains a wealth of most valuable and sen from a catalogue and built together the main themes and find- informative material which will largely of wood. Benn’s parsimony ings of the research is appended. Dr repay detailed study and stimulate later cost him dear. In October 1940 Sloman’s overarching conclusion the interested reader to research his London home on Grosvenor is ‘that it was ideological and gen- further. It is a most valuable contri- Road, later the site of Labour’s erational changes in the early 1960s bution to this field of study. Millbank Tower, caught fire dur- that cut the party’s links with the ing an air raid. The blaze seems to New Right, opened up common Dr J. Graham Jones was formerly Sen- have resulted from an electrical ground with revisionist social dem- ior Archivist and Head of the Welsh fault, the consequence of employ- ocrats, and re-established its pro- Political Archive at the National ing the inadequate DIY skills of his gressive credentials’ (back cover). A Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. son, Michael, in a further attempt at economy. Wyburn-Powell is less convinc- ing in his efforts to establish the intrinsic significance of his subject. In his foreword, Benn’s surviv- Tony Benn’s father ing son, David, concedes that his father was ‘never a key player’ (p. Alun Wyburn-Powell, Political Wings: William Wedgwood ix). Wyburn-Powell agrees. Benn Benn, First Viscount Stansgate (Pen & Sword Aviation, 2015) was ‘a natural deputy managing director, an adjutant, the second Review by David Dutton in command’ (p. 14). Further- more, ‘he never really developed t is a curious fact that two of State for Air under Clement Attlee the intermediate skill of detailed the most prominent post-war (1945–6). policy-making’, though ‘he thor- Ifigures on the Labour Left Benefitting from the reminis- oughly enjoyed debating and polit- – Michael Foot and Tony Benn – cences of members of the Benn ical intrigue’ (p. 33). Not much had fathers who sat in parliament family, including the late Tony scope here then for a ‘Great Man’ as Liberal MPs. The two fathers Benn, Wyburn-Powell draws a approach to history. The conclu- were almost exact contemporaries. convincing picture of this, in some sion that he was ‘a good adminis- Born three years apart, they both ways, rather eccentric individual. trator and a good party manager’ died in 1960. But whereas Isaac His life followed a repeated pat- Foot served out his political career tern of overwork resulting in spells within the Liberal ranks, William of near-exhaustion. Benn did not Wedgwood Benn, the subject of marry until he was 43 and must this very readable biography by have thrilled his bride by deciding Alun Wyburn-Powell, was among that their honeymoon should be the many prominent Liberals of spent attending the first session of his generation who defected to the League of Nations in Geneva! Labour. Wedgwood Benn, enno- His quest for an appropriate work/ bled in 1941 as Viscount Stansgate life balance was much influenced in order to enhance Labour’s ranks by Arnold Bennett’s book How to in the House of Lords – though he Live on 24 Hours a Day. Benn’s time privately likened the debates of the was not to be wasted and, to chart upper chamber to ‘old gentlemen’s his use of it, he divided his day political croquet’ – served as Liberal into half-hour units. For almost MP for Tower Hamlets, St George’s half a century, he kept a record (1906–18) and for Leith (1918–27). of how each day had been spent, Rather than represent his constitu- drawing up a daily graph of his ency under false political colours, activities. Born into a family of he resigned his parliamentary seat Congregationalist radicals whose upon his conversion to Labour, but circumstances were comfortable then secured election for Aberdeen rather than genuinely wealthy, he North (1928–31) and Manchester, was constantly, if usually need- Gorton (1937–41). As a Labour poli- lessly, worried about his personal tician, Benn enjoyed two periods finances. When he managed in of cabinet office, as Secretary of the summer of 1933 to purchase State for India throughout Ram- the house at Stansgate which his say MacDonald’s second govern- father had bought, but soon sold, ment (1929–31) and as Secretary of thirty years earlier, he installed Journal of Liberal History 90 Spring 2016 39 A Liberal Democrat History Group evening meeting ThE LEGACY OF ROY JENKins Roy Jenkins is best remembered in Liberal Democrat circles as one of the ‘Gang of Four’ who established the Social Democratic Party, as the SDP’s first leader, and then as a staunch supporter of merger with the Liberal Party. But even as a Labour politician he had a liberal record. In his first two years as Home Secretary (which began just over fifty years ago), he abolished theatre censorship, passed the first effective legislation to outlaw racial discrimination and delivered government support for private members’ bills on the legalisation of homosexuality and on abortion. In 1972 he led the major Labour rebellion that saved the Conservative government’s legislation to take Britain into the European Community. John Campbell (author of Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life) and Lord David Steel (Leader of the Liberal Party 1976-88) discuss how much liberalism in Britain owes to Roy Jenkins. 6.30pm Monday 27 June Committee Room 4A, House of Lords, Westminster, SW1 (please allow 20 minutes to get through security) scarcely makes the reader’s having on the legislation on with Benn’s transition from to Liberal Nationalism.) Benn, pulse race (p. 205). That same peerages’ may be technically Liberalism to Labour. Here however, made a relatively reader will sometimes sense correct (p. 201). But, almost the author calls upon his ear- painless transition to Labour. It that Wyburn-Powell is having by definition, that influence lier research into Liberal defec- ‘did not involve him in a signif- to pad out his narrative. This could only become apparent tors to place Benn’s move into a icant abandonment of old poli- is most obvious in a fifteen- with his own death and would wider context. His conclusion is cies, nor the adoption of many page chapter entitled ‘Sum- have meant nothing without that Benn left the Liberal Party new ones’ (p. 99). He found ‘an mer of 1931’. Benn’s name is the determined campaign of primarily because of ‘person- acceptable home’ at the centre largely absent from the chap- his son Tony to renounce his ality clashes’ (p. 95). He was a of Labour politics, ‘or if any- ter itself and, indeed, from the inherited title. Even less com- loyal supporter of Asquith, but thing even slightly to the left dramatic events it describes. In pelling is the argument that his commitment to the party of centre’ (p. 100). These inter- reality, he was no more than a Benn’s failure to renegotiate waned once the latter gave up esting points might have been bit-player in the fall of Mac- the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty its leadership. By contrast, he developed further. Donald’s government and its in 1946 led indirectly to the declared that Lloyd George This life of William Wedg- replacement by an all-party ‘festering problems between did ‘not possess the qualifica- wood Benn will be read with National administration. Else- the two countries which ulti- tions required as leader of the pleasure, not least by those where, the impression is that mately ended in the Suez Cri- Liberal Party’ (p. 88). Granted interested in the formative Wyburn-Powell strains too sis and Eden’s downfall’ (p. the positions occupied by these influences shaping the more sig- hard to establish Benn’s impact. 199). These contrived points two Liberal heavyweights in nificant figure of Tony Benn. The suggestion that his deci- aside, Wyburn-Powell gener- the mid-1920s, most of those The author’s problems derive sion to decline the offer of the ally does as well as he can with Asquithians who chose to leave more from his subject and the position of chief whip on the the material available. At the the party’s ranks drifted to the loss to fire of much of the Stans- death of Percy Illingworth end of the day, however, a cabi- political right. (Wyburn-Pow- gate archive than from any in January 1915 ‘changed the net career totaling three years, ell’s statistical analysis should, shortcomings in his skills as a course of Liberal Party his- four months and eighteen days however, be viewed with cau- biographer. tory’ is interesting but ulti- (Wyburn-Powell provides this tion; only those readers famil- mately entirely speculative (p. degree of exactitude) offers the iar with his earlier work will David Dutton is co-author of a new 50). The statement that Benn author somewhat limited fare. know that he has taken the A-level textbook, The Making ‘has a significance beyond his Perhaps the most interesting illogical methodological deci- of Modern Britain, 1951–2007 own achievements’ because section of this book for readers sion to exclude from his calcu- (Cambridge University Press, of ‘the influence he ended up of the JLH is the section dealing lations the majority of defectors forthcoming)..
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