Stafford Cripps
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2024) |
Walter John Baker | |
---|---|
Succeeded by | Tony Benn |
Personal details | |
Born | Richard Stafford Cripps Charles Cripps Theresa Potter |
Relatives | Kwame Anthony Appiah (grandson) |
Alma mater | University College London |
Sir Richard Stafford Cripps
A wealthy lawyer by background, he first entered Parliament at a
During World War II (1939-1945), he served from May 1940 to January 1942 as
Cripps rejoined the Labour Party in February 1945, and after the war he served in the 1945-1951 Attlee ministry, first as President of the Board of Trade and between 1947 and 1950 as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Labour Party member and historian Kenneth O. Morgan claimed of his role in the latter position that he was "the real architect of the rapidly improving economic picture and growing affluence from 1952 onwards".[3]
The economy improved after 1947, benefiting from American money given through grants from the Marshall Plan as well as from loans. However, the pound had to be devalued in 1949. Cripps kept the wartime rationing-system in place to hold down consumption during an "age of austerity", promoted exports and maintained full employment with static wages. The public especially respected "his integrity, competence, and Christian principles".[2]
Early life
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2023) |
Cripps was born in
Cripps was a member of the Church of England and in the 1920s became a leader in the World Alliance to Promote International Friendship through the Churches, as his father had been. From 1923 to 1929 Cripps was the group's treasurer and its most energetic lecturer.[6]
Joining the Labour Party
At the end of the 1920s, Cripps moved to the left in his political views, and in 1930 he joined the Labour Party. The next year, he was appointed
In the 1931 general election, Cripps was one of only three former Labour ministers to hold his seat, alongside George Lansbury, who subsequently became party leader, and Clement Attlee, deputy leader.
In 1932, Cripps helped found and became the leader of the Socialist League, which was composed largely of intellectuals and teachers from the Independent Labour Party who rejected its decision to disaffiliate from Labour. The Socialist League put the case for an austere form of democratic socialism. He argued that on taking power the Labour Party should immediately enact an Emergency Powers Act, allowing it to rule by decree and thus "forestall any sabotage by financial interests", and also immediately abolish the House of Lords.[6]
In 1936, Labour's
- "Money cannot make armaments. Armaments can only be made by the skill of the British working class, and it is the British working class who would be called upon to use them. To-day you have the most glorious opportunity that the workers have ever had if you will only use the necessity of capitalism in order to get power yourselves. The capitalists are in your hands. Refuse to make munitions, refuse to make armaments, and they are helpless. They would have to hand the control of the country over to you."[8]
Cripps was an early advocate of a united front against the rising threat of fascism[9] and he opposed an appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany. In 1936, he was the moving force behind a Unity Campaign, involving the Socialist League, the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain, designed to forge electoral unity against the right. Opposed by the Labour leadership, the Unity Campaign failed in its intentions. Rather than face expulsion from Labour, Cripps dissolved the Socialist League in 1937. Tribune, set up as the campaign's newspaper by Cripps and George Strauss, survived. In early 1939, however, Cripps was expelled from the Labour Party for his advocacy of a Popular Front with the Communist Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and anti-appeasement Conservatives.
In 1938, Cripps visited Jamaica to investigate violence which took place during mass strikes. During one of the political meetings he spoke at, the audience included the future pioneer of black civil rights in Britain, Billy Strachan, who had been taken by his father to hear Cripps speak. During this same meeting, the People's National Party was formed.[10]
Second World War
When Winston Churchill formed his wartime coalition government in 1940 he appointed Cripps Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the view that Cripps, who had Marxist sympathies, could negotiate with Joseph Stalin who had a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Cripps became a key figure in forging an alliance between the western powers and the Soviet Union.[11]
In 1942, Cripps returned to Britain and made a broadcast about the Soviet war effort. The popular response was phenomenal, and Cripps rapidly became one of the most popular politicians in the country, despite having no party backing. He was appointed a member of the War Cabinet, with the jobs of Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons, and was considered for a short period after his return from Moscow as a rival to Churchill in his hold on the country.[12]
Mission to India
Churchill responded by sending Cripps to India on a mission ("the Cripps Mission") to negotiate an agreement with the nationalist leaders that would keep India loyal to the British war effort in exchange for self-government after the war. Cripps designed the specific proposals himself, but they were too radical for Churchill and the Viceroy, and too conservative for Mahatma Gandhi and the Indians, who demanded immediate independence. No middle way was found and the mission was a failure.[13][14]
Minister of Aircraft Production
In November 1942, Cripps stepped down from being Leader of the House of Commons and was appointed Minister of Aircraft Production, a position outside the War Cabinet in which he served with substantial success until May 1945, when the wartime coalition ended.[15] A supporter of Air Chief Marshal Harris's strategic bombing campaign against Germany, Cripps stated in a July 1943 broadcast that "the more we ... can destroy from the air the industrial and transport facilities of the Axis, the weaker will become his resistance. ... The heavier our air attack, the lighter will be the total of our casualties".[15]
Cripps was unhappy with the British
In February 1945, Cripps rejoined the Labour Party.[17]
After the war
When Labour won the 1945 general election, Clement Attlee appointed Cripps President of the Board of Trade, the second most important economic post in the government. Although still a strong socialist, Cripps had modified his views sufficiently to be able to work with mainstream Labour ministers. In Britain's desperate post-war economic circumstances, Cripps became associated with the policy of "austerity". As an upper-class socialist, he held a puritanical view of society, enforcing rationing with equal severity against all classes. Together with other individuals, he was instrumental in the foundation of the original College of Aeronautics, now Cranfield University, in 1946. The Stafford Cripps Learning and Teaching Centre on Cranfield's campus is named after him.[18]
In 1946, Soviet jet engine designers approached Stalin with a request to buy jet designs from Western sources to overcome design difficulties. Stalin is said to have replied: "What fool will sell us his secrets?" However, he gave his assent to the proposal, and Soviet scientists and designers travelled to the United Kingdom to meet Cripps and request the engines. To Stalin's amazement, Cripps and the Labour government were willing to provide technical information on the
Also in 1946, Cripps returned to India as part of the "
In 1947, amid a growing economic and political crisis, Cripps tried to persuade Attlee to retire in favour of
Amid financial problems from 1948 to 1949, Cripps maintained a high level of social spending on housing, health, and other welfare services, while also maintaining the location of industry policy. Personal incomes and free time continued to rise, as characterised by cricket and football enjoying unprecedented booms, together with the holiday camps, the dance hall, and the cinema.[21] In his last budget as Chancellor (1950), the housebuilding programme was restored to 200,000 per annum (after having previously been reduced due to government austerity measures), income tax was reduced for low-income earners as an overtime incentive,[22] and spending on health, national insurance, and education was increased.[23]
During the period Cripps imposed harsh foreign currency restrictions on private and commercial travellers, he was paying for his grandchildrens' swiss boarding school and for both his daughter's and his own swiss sanitorium.[24][25]
Cripps had suffered for many years from
Personal life
Cripps was the sororal nephew of
- Sir John Stafford Cripps[26] (1912–1993), journalist and campaigner, who was a conscientious objector in the Second World War [27] and in 1937 married Ursula Davy, having four sons and two daughters.
- Isobel Diana Cripps (1913–1985) who died unmarried
- (Anne) Theresa Cripps[26] (1919–1998), who was married 1945 to Sir Robert Cornwallis Gerald St. Leger Ricketts, 7th Bt, and had two sons and two daughters. The elder son Sir Tristram Ricketts, 8th Bt.[28] succeeded his father, died in 2007, and has been succeeded by his own son, Sir Stephen Ricketts, 9th Bt.
- Laurance S. Rockefeller professor of philosophy at Princeton University. Her three daughters live in Namibia, Nigeria, and Ghana and have eight children among them.[29] One of them is the actor Adetomiwa Edun.
Cripps was a
Death
Cripps died aged 62 of cancer on 21 April 1952 while in Zürich, Switzerland. He was cremated at Sihlfeld Crematorium in Zürich. His ashes are buried in the churchyard in Sapperton, Gloucestershire, and his wife is buried beside him.
See also
References
- ^ JSTOR 769240.
- ^ ISBN 0198601344. p. 176
- ISBN 9780521563178.
- ISBN 978-0743450256.
- ^ Busch, Noel F. (8 March 1948). "Sir Stafford Cripps". Life. p. 134.
- ^ a b Keesing's Contemporary Archives, Volume VIII-IX, (April 1952) p. 12158
- ISBN 052101929X. p. 215
- ^ The Times (15 March 1937), p. 21.
- ^ David Marquand, "Sir Stafford Cripps" in Michael Sissons & Philip French, Age of Austerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 157–175.
- ISSN 2055-7035.
- ^ Cooke, Colin (1957). The Life of Richard Stafford Cripps. Hodder & Stoughton, London. pp. 270–279.
- ISBN 9781446424216.
- ISBN 9780224011594
- ISBN 9781845113476.
- ^ ISBN 0-713-99390-1.
- ^ Richards, Lee (2007) Sir Stafford Cripps and the German Admiral's Orgy Archived 17 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine, PsyWar.Org
- ^ Estorick, Eric (1949). Stafford Cripps. A biography. William Heinemann, London. p. 326.
- ^ "Venue Cranfield Stafford Cripps Centre".
- ISBN 1857801059
- ^ Cooke, Colin (1957). The Life of Richard Stafford Cripps. Hodder & Stoughton, London. pp. 350–365.
- ISBN 0192851500
- ISBN 0333363566
- Pritt, Denis Nowell(1963) The Labour Government 1945–51. Lawrence & Wishart
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/97035. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Stafford Cripps | Making Britain".
- ^ a b "Confirmed Swithinbank as maiden name of John S Cripps from ancestry.co.uk.
- ^ Hayes, Denis (1949), Challenge of Conscience, p 76
- ^ "Sir Tristram Ricketts, Bt". The Telegraph. 17 November 2007. Retrieved 6 June 2010.[dead link]
- ^ Brozan, Nadine (16 February 2006) "Peggy Appiah, 84, Author Who Bridged Two Cultures, Dies". The New York Times
- ^ Twigg, Julia (1981). The Vegetarian Movement in England, 1847–1981: A Study of the Structure of Its Ideology (Ph.D.). London School of Economics. pp. 247, 292.
- ^ "English Heritage Blue Plaques scheme". Retrieved 30 January 2019.
Further reading
- Addison, Paul. The Road To 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (1977) pp 190–210.
- Burgess, Simon. Stafford Cripps: a political life (1999)
- Byant, Chris. Stafford Cripps: the first modern chancellor (1997)
- Clarke, Peter (2002). The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps. ISBN 0-713-99390-1.
- Clarke, Peter and Richard Toye, "Cripps, Sir (Richard) Stafford (1889–1952)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 accessed 14 June 2013 doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32630
- Cooke, Colin (1957). The Life of Richard Stafford Cripps. Hodder & Stoughton, London. OCLC 221274659.
- Dell, Edmund. The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945–90 (HarperCollins, 1997) pp 94–134, covers his term as Chancellor.
- Estorick, Eric (1949). Stafford Cripps. A biography. William Heinemann, London. OCLC 400539.
- Frame, William. "'Sir Stafford Cripps and His Friends': The Socialist League, the National Government and the Reform of the House of Lords 1931–1935," Parliamentary History (2005) 24#3 pp 316–331
- Gorodetsky, Gabriel. Stafford Cripps' Mission to Moscow, 1940–42 (1985) 361pp
- Hanak, Harry. "Sir Stafford Cripps as British Ambassador in Moscow May 1940 to June 1941." English Historical Review 94.370 (1979): 48–70. online
- Hanak, Harry. "Sir Stafford Cripps as Ambassador in Moscow, June 1941–January 1942." English Historical Review 97.383 (1982): 332–344. online
- Kitchen, Martin. British Policy Towards the Soviet Union During the Second World War (Springer, 1986).
- Lytton, Avram. "In the House of Rimmon: British Aid to the Soviet Union, June–September 1941." Journal of Slavic Military Studies 26.4 (2013): 673–704.
- Moore, R. J. Churchill, Cripps and India (Oxford UP, 1979) chapters 3–5
- Moore, R. J. "The mystery of the Cripps mission," Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies Volume 11, Issue 3, 1973, pages 195–213 online
- Morgan, Kenneth O. Labour in Power 1945–51 (1984)
- Owen, Nicholas. "The Cripps mission of 1942: A reinterpretation." Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 30.1 (2002): 61–98.
- Pelling, Henry. The Labour Government 1945–51 (1984)
- Piirimäe, Kaarel. Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Baltic Question (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014). pp 57–80 on "The British-Soviet Treaty, 1942." .
- Robbins, Keith. "Stafford Cripps" in Kevin Jefferys, ed., Labour Forces: From Ernie Bevin to Gordon Brown (2002) pp 63–80
Primary sources
- Cripps, Richard Stafford, and Gabriel Gorodetsky. Stafford Cripps in Moscow, 1940–1942: diaries and papers (Vallentine Mitchell, 2007).
- British War Cabinet; Sir Stafford Cripps. "Assessment On Soviet German Relations By British War Cabinet 16 July 1941" Cripps' assessment of possible war between Germany and the USSR. online
- Mansergh, Nicholas, ed. Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power, 1942–1947: Vol 1. The Cripps Mission (1970), contains all the key documents.
External links
- "Archival material relating to Stafford Cripps". UK National Archives.
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Stafford Cripps
- Blue plaque to Sir Stafford Cripps at Filkins
- Portraits of Sir Stafford Cripps at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- Newspaper clippings about Stafford Cripps in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW