The Lord Morrison of Lambeth | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.jpg) Herbert Morrison in 1947 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leader of the Opposition | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 25 November 1955 – 14 December 1955 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monarch | Elizabeth II | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | Anthony Eden | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Clement Attlee | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Hugh Gaitskell | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Deputy Leader of the Labour Party | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 25 May 1945 – 2 February 1956 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leader | Clement Attlee | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Arthur Greenwood | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Jim Griffiths | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Member of theHouse of Lords Lord Temporal | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Life peerage 2 November 1959 – 6 March 1965 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Member of Parliament | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 14 November 1935 – 18 September 1959 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Marjorie Graves | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Carol Johnson | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Constituency | Hackney South (1935–1945) Lewisham East (1945–1950) Lewisham South (1950–1959) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 30 May 1929 – 7 October 1931 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | George Garro-Jones | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Marjorie Graves | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Constituency | Hackney South | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 6 December 1923 – 9 October 1924 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Clifford Erskine-Bolst | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | George Garro-Jones | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Constituency | Hackney South | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Herbert Stanley Morrison (1888-01-03)3 January 1888 London, England | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 6 March 1965(1965-03-06) (aged 77) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Political party | Labour | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouses | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Relatives | Peter Mandelson (grandson) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth (3 January 1888 – 6 March 1965) was a British politician who held a variety of senior positions in theCabinet as a member of theLabour Party. During the inter-war period, he was Minister of Transport during theSecond MacDonald ministry, then after losing his parliamentary seat in the1931 general election, he became Leader of theLondon County Council in the 1930s. After returning to the Commons, he was defeated byClement Attlee in the1935 Labour Party leadership election but later served asHome Secretary in the wartime coalition.
Morrison organised Labour's victorious 1945 election campaign, and was appointedLeader of the House of Commons and acted as Attlee's deputy prime minister in theAttlee ministry of 1945–51. Attlee, Morrison,Ernest Bevin,Stafford Cripps, and initiallyHugh Dalton formed the "Big Five" who dominated those governments. Morrison oversaw Labour's nationalisation programme, although he opposedAneurin Bevan's proposals for a nationalised hospital service as part of the setting up of theNational Health Service. Morrison developed his social views from his work in local politics and always emphasised the importance of public works to deal with unemployment. In the final year of Attlee's premiership, Morrison had an unhappy term asForeign Secretary. He was hailed as "Lord Festival" for his successful leadership of theFestival of Britain, a critical and popular success in 1951 that attracted millions of visitors to fun-filled educational exhibits and events in London and across the country.
Morrison was widely expected to succeed Attlee as Labour leader but Attlee, who disliked him, postponed stepping down until 1955. Morrison, who was by then nearing 70 and considered too old, came a poor third in the1955 Labour leadership election.[1]
Morrison was born in Stockwell,Lambeth, London, youngest child (there being three boys and four girls) of police constable Henry Morrison (died 1917) and Priscilla Caroline, née Lyon (died 1907), daughter of an East End carpet fitter. Henry Morrison had a "weakness for the bottle", and held Conservative political opinions with which his son would later come to disagree strongly.[2]
As a baby, he permanently lost the sight in his right eye due to infection. He attended Stockwell Road Primary School and, from the age of 11, St Andrew's Church of England School. He left school at 14 to become an errand boy and then a shop assistant. He recalled in 1949 in a foreword toP C Hoffman's history of shop worker trades unionism, how hard his life had been: "I started at eight in the morning. I finished at half past nine in the evening, ten on Fridays and midnight on Saturdays. It was years before we got an early closing day, and then it was five o'clock. I enjoyed the work...but it was a dog's life, especially as I was trying to read and study in my spare time". His early politics were radical, and he briefly flirted with theSocial Democratic Federation over theIndependent Labour Party (ILP). As aconscientious objector, he worked in a market garden inLetchworth in World War One.[3]
Morrison eventually became a pioneer leader in the London Labour Party. He was elected to theMetropolitan Borough of Hackney in 1919 when the Labour Party won control of the Borough, and he was Mayor in 1920–21. Morrison was a follower ofClapton Orient FC and became a shareholder in the club. He was elected to theLondon County Council (LCC) in 1922 and at the1923 general election he becameMember of Parliament (MP) forHackney South, but lost that seat the following year whenRamsay MacDonald's first administration lost the general election.[3]
Morrison returned to Parliament in the 1929 general election, and MacDonald appointed himMinister of Transport. Morrison, like many others in the party, was deeply disheartened by MacDonald's national government, and he lost his seat again in 1931.
Morrison continued to sit on the London County Council and in 1933 was elected to lead the Labour Group. He wrote a bookSocialisation and Transport : the Organisation of Socialised Industries with Particular Reference to the London Passenger Transport Bill which encapsulated his ideas on nationalisation. Managers would be appointed to run monopoly industries in the public interest. He did not, however, envisage democratic control by the workers.[4] Unexpectedly, Labour won the 1934 LCC election and Morrison became Leader of the council. This gave him control of almost all local government services in London. His main achievements here included the unification of bus, tram and trolleybus services with the Underground, by the creation of theLondon Passenger Transport Board (colloquially known as London Transport) in 1933, and creating theMetropolitan Green Belt around the suburbs. He confronted the Government over its refusal to finance the replacement ofWaterloo Bridge, and eventually they agreed to pay 60% of the cost of the new bridge.[3]
In the 1935 election, Morrison was once again elected to theHouse of Commons and immediatelychallenged Attlee for the leadership of the party. He was defeated by a wide margin in the final ballot, a defeat ascribed to his unfamiliarity with the MPs who had served in the previous Parliament. Both he and his supporter Hugh Dalton put some of the blame on the MasonicNew Welcome Lodge, who, they claimed, backed the third-place leadership candidateArthur Greenwood and then switched their votes to Attlee.[5] After losing, Morrison concentrated on his LCC work. He convinced Labour to adopt the new electioneering techniques that opponents had been using, especially using advertising agencies in the 1937 local elections.[6] For example, he stressed housing, education and his own leadership with posters featuring Morrison alongside children and with a backdrop of new LCC flats above slogans such as "Labour Puts Human Happiness First", "Labour Gets Things Done" and "Let Labour Finish the Job."[7]
In 1939, Conservative MPs defeated Herbert Morrison's bill introducing "site value rating", a tax on similar lines toland value tax, in the old London County Council area.[8][9]
In 1945 he attended theWorld Trade Union Conference atCounty Hall.[10]
By the late 1960s, long after Morrison had left the leadership of the London County Council, London Conservatives frequently accused him of seeking to "build the Tories out of London",[11] the implication being that the LCC would deliberately build council houses in order to affect local voting patterns. His biographers,Bernard Donoghue andGeorge W. Jones, have written that "Morrison never said or wrote" the words attributed to him.[12]
In 1940, Morrison was appointed the firstMinister of Supply byWinston Churchill, but shortly afterwards succeededJohn Anderson as Home Secretary. Morrison's London experience in local government was particularly useful duringthe Blitz, and theMorrison shelter was named after him. He made radio appeals for more fire guards in December 1940 ('Britain shall not burn').[13]
Morrison had to take many potentially unpopular and controversial decisions by the nature of wartime circumstances. On 21 January 1941, he banned theDaily Worker for opposing war with Germany and supporting the Soviet Union. The ban lasted for a total of 18 months before it was rescinded.
The arrival of black American troops caused concern in the government, leading Morrison, the Home Secretary, to comment "I am fully conscious that a difficult social problem might be created if there were a substantial number of sex relations between white women and coloured troops and the procreation of half-caste children." That was in a memorandum for the cabinet in 1942.[14] In 1942, Morrison was confronted with an appeal from the Central British Fund for German Jewry (nowWorld Jewish Relief) to admit 350 Jewish children fromVichy France.[15] AlthoughCase Anton ensured the scheme's failure, Morrison had been reluctant to accept it beforehand, wanting to avoid provoking the 'anti-foreign and anti-semitic feeling which was quite certainly latent in this country (and in some isolated cases not at all latent)'.[16]
In 1943, he ran for the post ofTreasurer of the Labour Party but lost a close contest toArthur Greenwood.[17]
Following the end of the war, Morrison was instrumental in drafting the Labour Party's 1945 manifestoLet us Face the Future.[3] He organised the general election campaign and enlisted the help of left-wing cartoonistPhilip Zec, with whom he had clashed during the early stages of the war when, as Minister of Supply, he took exception to an illustration commenting on the costs of supplying the country with petrol.[18][19] Labour won a massive and unexpected victory, and Morrison was appointed Leader of the House of Commons, having switched his own seat toLewisham East. He was the chief sponsor of theFestival of Britain.
Morrison supervised the major Labour programme of nationalising large sectors of industry. As Lord President he chaired the committee on the Socialization of Industries, and followed the model that was already in place of setting up public corporations, such as theBBC in broadcasting (1927). The owners of corporate stock were given government bonds, and the government took full ownership of each affected company, consolidating it into a national monopoly. The management remained the same, only now they became public servants working for the government. For the Labour Party leadership, nationalisation was a method to consolidate national planning in their own hands. It was not designed to modernise old industries, make them efficient, or transform their organisational structure.[20][21]
In July 1946, Morrison, together with US ambassadorHenry F. Grady proposed "TheMorrison-Grady Plan", intended to resolve thePalestine conflict, calling for federalisation under overall British trusteeship. Morrison was a longtime sympathizer withZionism, but the plan was ultimately rejected by bothPalestinians and Zionists.
FollowingErnest Bevin's resignation as Foreign Secretary, Morrison took over his role, but did not feel at ease in the Foreign Office. He took an aggressive stance againstIran's nationalist Prime MinisterMohammed Mosaddeq and approved his overthrow.[22] His tenure there was cut short by Labour's defeat in the 1951 general election, and he was appointed aMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour in November that year.[23]
Morrison lacked a deep concern for foreign affairs, but he was an enthusiastic leader of a major domestic project, theFestival of Britain. Starting in 1947, he was the prime mover of the 1951 fair. The original goal was to celebrate the centenary of theGreat Exhibition of 1851.[24] However, the plans were changed. It was not to be anotherWorld Fair, and international themes were absent; even the Commonwealth was ignored. Instead, the Festival focused entirely on Britain and its achievements; it was funded chiefly by the government, with a budget of £12 million. The Conservatives gave little support. The Labour government was losing support, and the implicit goal of the festival was to give the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation, as well as promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts.[25] HistorianKenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" as thousands:
Although Morrison had effectively been Attlee's heir presumptive since the 1930s, Attlee had always distrusted him. Attlee remained as Leader through the early 1950s and fought the 1955 election, finally announcing his retirement after Labour's defeat. Morrison was then 67, and was seen to be too old to embark on a new leadership role. During the leadership election, he was the interimLeader of the Labour Party. Although he stood, he finished last, by a wide margin, of the three candidates, with many of his supporters switching toHugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell won the election, and Morrison resigned as Deputy Leader. Ironically, Gaitskell's early death in 1963 meant he predeceased Morrison by two years.
During theSuez Crisis, Morrison advocated unilateral action by the United Kingdom against Egypt, following Colonel Nasser's seizure of the Suez Canal. Morrison stood down at the 1959 general election and was made alife peer asBaron Morrison of Lambeth, ofLambeth in theCounty of London on 2 November 1959.[27] He was appointed President of theBritish Board of Film Censors.[3]
During 1961–65, Morrison was Director of the FCI News Agency,[28] an organisation reporting on events behind theIron Curtain and run by exiles from Marxist regimes such as the journalistJosef Josten.
While working in a market garden inLetchworth during World War One, Morrison met his first wife, Margaret Kent (1896–1953), a secretary and daughter of a railway clerk. The couple married on 15 March 1919. His total involvement in politics, however, meant that theirs was not a happy marriage; his later autobiography made no mention of Kent or their daughter, Mary.[3] Morrison had a protracted affair with Labour MP and MinisterEllen Wilkinson, who died in 1947, although views differ as to whether this was a platonic or sexual relationship.[29]
Following Kent's death in July 1953, Morrison married Edith Meadowcroft (b. 1908), a businesswoman of Conservative politics. The pair married on 6 January 1955 and their relationship appeared much more successful.[3]
Morrison's grandsonPeter Mandelson was a cabinet minister in the Labour governments ofTony Blair andGordon Brown, and held an ambassadorial office underKeir Starmer.
Morrison died from a stroke atQueen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, on 6 March 1965, aged 77.[3][30] His death occurred the same month the London County Council was abolished, and he had advocated against its replacement.[3]
Morrison was Foreign Secretary at the time of the defection of the double agentsGuy Burgess andDonald Maclean. In the 1977 Granada TV playPhilby, Burgess and Maclean by Iain Curteis,Arthur Lowe appeared as Morrison – glowering to the camera in his final shot to show the opaque right lens of his spectacles.[31]
Herbert Morrison published hisAutobiography in 1960. His other publications included:
The main biography is:
Biographical essays include:
Scholarly studies:
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forHackney South 1923–1924 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forHackney South 1929–1931 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forHackney South 1935–1945 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forLewisham East 1945–1950 | Constituency abolished |
| New constituency | Member of Parliament forLewisham South 1950–1959 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Secretary of theLondon Labour Party 1914–1947 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the Labour Party onLondon County Council 1925–1929 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theLabour Party 1928–1929 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the Labour Party onLondon County Council 1933–1940 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Deputy Leader of the Labour Party 1945–1955 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Minister of Transport 1929–1931 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of theLondon County Council 1933–1940 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Supply 1940 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Home Secretary 1940–1945 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Home Security 1940–1945 | Office abolished |
| Preceded by | Lord President of the Council 1945–1951 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the House of Commons 1945–1951 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Foreign Secretary 1951 | Succeeded by |
| Media offices | ||
| Preceded by Sidney Harris | President of theBritish Board of Film Censors 1960–1965 | Succeeded by |
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