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Edmund Emanuel Dell (15 August 1921 – ) was a British politician and businessman. He was a Labour MP and minister in the 1960s and 1970s, but after leaving parliament, joined the Social Democratic Party and its eventual successor, the Liberal Democrats.
Dell was one of the 69 rebel Labour MPs who sided with the Conservative government and voted for Britain's entry into the European Communities in 1971. He subsequently refused to take a frontbench role while in opposition and served as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. When Harold Wilson returned to 10 Downing Street as prime minister in 1974, Dell became Paymaster General, then Secretary of State for Trade and President of the Board of Trade between 1976 and 1978 in James Callaghan's government. He was tipped to become Chancellor of the Exchequer but resigned his seat, increasingly disillusioned by Labour's drift to the Left as he moved sharply to the Right. He had always been much more oriented toward free-market capitalism than his comrades in the Labour Party, and grew increasingly uncomfortable in a party that was growing increasingly dominated by advocates of a planned economy and corporatism.
Dell died from cancer at a hospice facility in Finchley in 1999, at the age of 78.
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SDP and Liberal Democrats
Dell joined the new Social Democratic Party and, following its merger with the Liberal Party in 1988, he was a member of the Liberal Democrats. He served as a trustee of both the SDP and the Liberal Democrats and served as one of SDP's three representatives during emergency negotiations with the Liberals in January 1988 when it appeared the two parties' merger might fall through after the failed launch by David Steel and Bob Maclennan of the joint manifesto, Voices and Choices.
Post-Parliament life
After Parliament, Dell had a career in business as chairman of Guinness Peat, founding chairman of Channel 4 and as a director of Shell Trading. In 1991-2 he was president of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 1996, he wrote The Chancellors: A History of Chancellors of the Exchequer 1945–90. His book, A Strange Eventful History, Democratic Socialism in Britain was published posthumously in 2000. It was a summation of his critique of the Labour Party's long history being attached to what he saw as "much Keynesianism and too much of the detritus of socialism." Although he had voted for Labour in 1992 and 1997, he still thought that New Labour ultimately "will not fully have entered the modern world until it learns to love capitalism with all its warts." He was especially angry with both parties in 1950–51 for refusing to join the European Community at an early stage when it could have a powerful voice.Peter Hennessy, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties (2007) pp 280–83. He said it represented, "the British abdication of leadership in Europe."Edmund Dell, The Schuman Plan and the British Abdication of Leadership in Europe (Oxford, 1995)
Personal life and death
In 1963, Dell married Susanne Gottschalk. The couple lived in Hampstead Garden Suburb.
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Categories: 1921 Births, 1999 Deaths, 20th-century English Businesspeople, Alumni Of The Queen's College, Oxford, British Army Personnel Of World War Ii, British Secretaries Of State, Businesspeople From The London Borough Of Hackney, Channel 4 People, Councillors In Manchester, Deaths From Cancer In England, English Jews, English Television Executives, Imperial Chemical Industries People, Jewish British Politicians, Labour Party Mps For English Constituencies, Liberal Democrats Politicians, Members Of The Privy Council Of The United Kingdom, Ministers In The Wilson Governments, 1964–1970, People Educated At Dame Alice Owen's School, People From Hackney, London, Politicians From The London Borough Of Hackney, Presidents Of The Board Of Trade, Royal Artillery Officers, Social Democratic Party Politicians, Uk Mps 1964–1966, Uk Mps 1966–1970, Uk Mps 1970–1974, Uk Mps 1974, Uk Mps 1974–1979, Paymasters General Of The United Kingdom
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