Denis Pritt
Denis Nowell Pritt | |
---|---|
Fielding Reginald West | |
Succeeded by | Frank Tomney |
Chairman of the Labour Independent Group | |
In office May 1949 – 23 February 1950 | |
Preceded by | Office Established |
Succeeded by | Office Abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | Harlesden, Middlesex | 22 September 1887
Died | 23 May 1972 Pamber Heath, Hampshire | (aged 84)
Nationality | British |
Political party | Labour (1918–1940) |
Other political affiliations | Labour Independent Group |
Alma mater | University of London |
Profession | Barrister |
Denis Nowell Pritt,
A member of the Labour Party from 1918, he was a defender of the Soviet Union. In 1932, as part of G. D. H. Cole's New Fabian Research Bureau's expert commission of enquiry, he visited the Soviet Union, and, according to Margaret Cole, "the eminent KC swallowed it all".[1] Pritt was expelled from the Labour Party in March 1940 following his support of the Soviet invasion of Finland.[2]
Pritt was characterised by George Orwell as "perhaps the most effective pro-Soviet publicist in this country".[2]
Early life
Pritt was born 22 September 1887 in London, the son of a metal merchant.[3] He was educated at Winchester College, which he left after four years so as to relocate to Geneva in order to learn French, with a view to joining his father's company.[3] Following his time in Switzerland, Pritt moved again to expand his linguistic knowledge, working in a bank in A Coruña, Spain, and improving his Spanish.[3] Pritt also added German to his repertoire of languages in subsequent years.[3]
Pritt was admitted to the
He married in July 1914, on the eve of World War I.[3] During the war, he joined the postal censorship department in the British War Office. Following the war, Pritt returned to legal practice as a successful lawyer working in the field of commercial law.[3]
Political career
A Conservative in his earliest years, Pritt moved steadily leftward politically, joining the Liberal Party in 1914 and the Labour Party in 1918.[3] Following a failed 1931 campaign for Parliament as a Labour candidate in Sunderland, Pritt was elected as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Hammersmith North in 1935.[3] Pritt was made a member of the Labour Party's executive committee in 1936, remaining in that role for over a year.[3]
In 1936, he attended the first
In 1940, Pritt was expelled from the Labour Party for defending the Soviet invasion of Finland.[6] His book Must the War Spread? sympathized with the Soviets and led him to be greatly disliked by the Labour Party elite during and after the war.[7] After 1940, he sat as an Independent Labour member, and at the 1945 general election was re-elected in Hammersmith North under that label gaining a 63% share of the vote against official Labour and Conservative candidates.[8] In 1949 he formed the Labour Independent Group with four other fellow travellers, including John Platts-Mills and Konni Zilliacus, who had also been expelled from the Labour Party for pro-Soviet sympathies. At the general election of 1950, all the members of the Labour Independent Group lost their seats. By this time, Pritt's opposition to the Cold War and NATO had made him an "unpopular figure" in Britain.[5]
Pritt was awarded the 1954
Legal career
In 1931, Pritt represented three
Pritt's most high-profile case, which he lost, was defending the Kapenguria Six, a group of Kenyan political figures accused in 1952 of links with the Mau Mau: Jomo Kenyatta, Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei and Achieng Oneko. In this case, Pritt worked with a team of African, Indian and Afro-Caribbean lawyers including Achhroo Ram Kapila, H. O. Davies, Dudley Thompson and Fitz Remedios Santana de Souza.[citation needed]
Pritt played a significant role in the Singaporean "Fajar trial" in May 1954. He was the lead counsel of the University Socialist Club with the assistance of Lee Kuan Yew as the junior counsel and helped the club to win the case eventually.[11] From 1965 to 1966, he was Professor of Law at the University of Ghana.[5]
Pritt was said to have encouraged Billy Strachan, a fellow communist activist and one of the pioneers of black civil rights in Britain, to study law.[12] Strachan then went onto be elected the President of Inner London Justices' Clerks' Society, and became an expert in laws regarding adoption, marriage, and drink driving.
Death and legacy
Pritt died in 1972 at his home in Pamber Heath, Hampshire.[5] Denis Pritt Road in Nairobi, Kenya is named after him.
Pritt is one of those on Orwell's list, a list prepared by George Orwell for the Information Research Department in 1949, after the start of the Cold War. The list was officially published in 2003, but had circulated before then. It listed notable writers and others whom Orwell considered to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union. In the document, Orwell noted that Pritt was "almost certainly underground Communist", but also a "Good MP (i.e. locally). Very able and courageous".[13]
Bibliography
- Light on Moscow (1939)
- Must the War Spread? (1940)
- Federal Illusion (1940)
- Choose your Future (1940)
- The Fall of the French Republic (1940)
- USSR Our Ally (1941)
- India Our Ally? (1946)
- Revolt in Europe (1947)
- A New World Grows (1947)
- Star-Spangled Shadow (1947)
- The State Department and the Cold War (1948)
- Spies and Informers in the Witness-box (1958)
- Liberty in Chains (1962)
- The Labour Government, 1945–1951 (1963)
- Neo-Nazis, the Danger of War (1966)
- Autobiography
- From Right to Left (1965)
- Brasshats and Bureaucrats (1966)
- The Defence Accuses (1966)
Footnotes
- ^ Contemporary letter to G. D. H. Cole cited in Kevin Morgan, The Webbs and Soviet Communism, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2006, pg. 77
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31570. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Colin Holmes, "Denis Nowell Pritt," in A. Thomas Lane (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of European Labor Leaders: Volume 2: M-Z. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995; pp. 779-780.
- ^ Williamson, J.B. (1937). The Middle Temple Bench Book. 2nd edition, p.295.
- ^ a b c d "Denis Nowell Pritt". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 28 August 2015.
- ^ David Caute The Fellow Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism, New Haven, NJ & London: Yale University Press, 1988, p.236
- ^ Bill Jones, The Russia Complex: The British Labour Party and the Soviet Union (Manchester University Press, 1977), p. 42
- ^ "UK General Election results July 1945" Archived 3 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine, pokliticsresource.net
- ^ Juss, Satvinder Singh (2020). The Execution of Bhagat Singh: Legal Heresies of the Raj. Amberley Publishing.
- ^ "Murder Appeal Dismissed". The Times. No. 49258. London. 10 June 1942. p. 2. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
- ISBN 9789833782864.
- ISSN 2055-7035. Retrieved 8 May 2023.
- ^ "Big Brother with a High Moral Sense" by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. The Independent, 28 June 1998]