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Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, (3 January 1888 β 6 March 1965) was a British politician who held a variety of senior positions in the Cabinet as a member of the Labour Party. During the inter-war period, he was Minister of Transport during the Second MacDonald ministry, then after losing his parliamentary seat in the 1931 general election, he became Leader of the London County Council in the 1930s. After returning to the Commons, he was defeated by Clement Attlee in the 1935 Labour Party leadership election but later served as Home Secretary in the wartime coalition.
Morrison organised Labour's victorious 1945 election campaign, and was appointed Leader of the House of Commons and acted as Attlee's deputy in the Attlee ministry of 1945β51. Attlee, Morrison, Ernest Bevin, Stafford Cripps, and initially Hugh Dalton formed the "Big Five" who dominated those governments. Morrison oversaw Labour's nationalisation programme, although he opposed Aneurin Bevan's proposals for a nationalised hospital service as part of the setting up of the National 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 as Foreign Secretary. He was hailed as "Lord Festival" for his successful leadership of the Festival 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 the 1955 Labour leadership election.Laybourn, Keith (2002). "Morrison, Herbert Stanley". In Ramsden, John (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century British Politics. Oxford University Press. pp. 443β444. .
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 to P 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 the Social Democratic Federation over the Independent Labour Party (ILP). As a conscientious objector, he worked in a market garden in Letchworth in World War One.
Morrison returned to Parliament in the 1929 general election, and MacDonald appointed him Minister 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.
In the 1935 election, Morrison was once again elected to the House of Commons and immediately challenged 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 Masonic New Welcome Lodge, who, they claimed, backed the third-place leadership candidate Arthur Greenwood and then switched their votes to Attlee. This cites as note number 2 H. Morrison, Herbert Morrison: An Autobiography by Lord Morrison of Lambeth, London, Odhams, 1960, p. 164 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.Dominic Wring, ""Selling socialism"-The marketing of the "very old" British Labour Party." European Journal of Marketing 35#9/10 (2001): 1038β1046. online 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."Donoughue and Jones, 1972, pp. 209β11
In 1939, Conservative MPs defeated Herbert Morrison's bill introducing "site value rating", a tax on similar lines to land value tax, in the old London County Council area.Wetzel, Dave (20 September 2004) The case for taxing land. New Statesman.
In 1945 he attended the World Trade Union Conference at County Hall.
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",Ken Young, John Kramer, Strategy and conflict in metropolitan housing (Heinemann Educational, 1978), p. 262. the implication being that the LCC would deliberately build council houses in order to affect local voting patterns. His biographers, Bernard Donoghue and George W. Jones, have written that "Morrison never said or wrote" the words attributed to him.Donoghue and Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician. p. xxxi
Morrison had to take many potentially unpopular and controversial decisions by the nature of wartime circumstances. On 21 January 1941, he banned the Daily 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. Marc Blitzstein, Roland Hayes and the 'Negro Chorus' at the Royal Albert Hall in 1943. nickelinthemachine.com. May 2011 In 1942, Morrison was confronted with an appeal from the Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief) to admit 350 Jewish children from Vichy France.Gottlieb, Amy Zahl. Men of Vision: Anglo-Jewry's Aid to Victims of the Nazi Regime, 1933β1945. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998, p.175 Although Case 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)'.Gottlieb, Amy Zahl. Men of Vision: Anglo-Jewry's Aid to Victims of the Nazi Regime, 1933β1945. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998, p.17
In 1943, he ran for the post of Treasurer of the Labour Party but lost a close contest to Arthur Greenwood.Whiting, R. C. (2004) "Greenwood, Arthur (1880β1954)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
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 the BBC 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.Sked, Alan and Cook, Chris (1979) Post-War Britain: A Political History. . pp 31β34Beer, Samuel H. (1965) British Politics in the Collectivist Age. pp 188β216
In July 1946, Morrison, together with US ambassador Henry F. Grady proposed "The Morrison-Grady Plan", intended to resolve the Palestine conflict, calling for federalisation under overall British trusteeship. Morrison was a longtime sympathizer with Zionism, but the plan was ultimately rejected by both Palestinians and Zionists.
Following Ernest 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 against Iran's nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and approved his overthrow. His tenure there was cut short by Labour's defeat in the 1951 general election, and he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in November that year.
During the Suez 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 a life peer as Baron Morrison of Lambeth, of Lambeth in the County of London on 2 November 1959. He was appointed President of the British Board of Film Censors.
During 1961β65, Morrison was Director of the FCI News Agency, an organisation reporting on events behind the Iron Curtain and run by exiles from Marxist regimes such as the journalist Josef Josten.
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.
Morrison's grandson Peter Mandelson was a cabinet minister in the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Morrison died from a stroke at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, on 6 March 1965, aged 77. His death occurred the same month the London County Council was abolished, and he had advocated against its replacement.
The main biography is:
Biographical essays include:
Scholarly studies:
Personal life
While working in a market garden in Letchworth during World War One, Morrison met his first wife, Margaret Kent (1896β1953), 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. Morrison had a protracted affair with Labour MP and Minister Ellen Wilkinson, who died in 1947, although views differ as to whether this was a platonic or sexual relationship.Rachel Reeves (2020) Women of Westminster
TV portrayal
Morrison was Foreign Secretary at the time of the defection of the double agents Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. In the 1977 Granada TV play Philby, Burgess and Maclean by Iain Curteis, Arthur Lowe appeared as Morrison β glowering to the camera in his final shot to show the opaque right lens of his spectacles.
Further reading
Herbert Morrison published his Autobiography in 1960. His other publications included:
External links
Categories: 1888 Births, 1965 Deaths, British Secretaries Of State For Foreign Affairs, British Conscientious Objectors, British Politicians With Disabilities, Chairs Of The Labour Party, Councillors In Greater London, Hackney Members Of Parliament, Labour Party Mps For English Constituencies, Labour Party Life Peers, Leaders Of The House Of Commons Of The United Kingdom, Lord Presidents Of The Council, Members Of London County Council, Members Of The Order Of The Companions Of Honour, Members Of The Privy Council Of The United Kingdom, Ministers In The Churchill Wartime Government, 1940β1945, Ministers Of Supply, People Associated With Transport In London, People From Lambeth, Secretaries Of State For Transport, Secretaries Of State For The Home Department, Uk Mps 1923β1924, Uk Mps 1929β1931, Uk Mps 1935β1945, Uk Mps 1945β1950, Uk Mps 1950β1951, Uk Mps 1951β1955, Uk Mps 1955β1959, Uk Mps Who Were Granted Peerages, Ministers In The Attlee Governments, 1945β1951, Life Peers Created By Elizabeth Ii, Leaders Of The Labour Party
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