Albert Oram, Baron Oram

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Albert "Bert" Edward Oram, Baron Oram (born August 13, 1913 in Winchester , Hampshire (according to other information: Burgess Hill , Sussex ), † September 5, 1999 ) was a British politician of the Co-operative Party - Labor Party , the was a member of the House of Commons for around nineteen years and became a member of the House of Lords in 1976 when Life Peer was based on the Life Peerages Act 1958 . As a member of the left-wing London Co-operative Society , he was an opponent of nuclear weapons , but on the other hand, in 1971 he supported the group of EC-friendly Labor MPs who led the Conservative Party government under Prime Minister Edward Heath to join the European internal market . However, this support led to the fact that the London Co-Operative Society refused to support him and he did not run again in the general election on February 28, 1974 .

Life

University degree, World War II and Member of the House of Commons

Oram, the son of a blacksmith , studied at the London School of Economics (LSE) after attending the Grammar School in Brighton , from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with honors. After studying at the Institute of Education (IOE), he worked as a teacher from 1936 to 1942 .

During the Second World War , between 1942 and 1945 he did his military service in the Royal Artillery of the British Army and took part in combat operations in Normandy and Belgium . After the end of the war, he worked from 1946 to 1955 as a research assistant at the headquarters of the Co-Operative Party.

Oram ran in the elections on July 5, 1945 in the Lewes constituency for the first time for a seat in the lower house, but was defeated by his opponent from the conservative Tories , Tufton Beamish . While Beamish received 26,176 votes (51.26 percent), Oram received only 18,511 votes (36.25 percent).

In the general election of May 26, 1955 , he was then elected for the first time as a member of the House of Commons as a candidate for the Co-Operative Party-Labor Party in the constituency of East Ham South .

Oram was an early opponent of nuclear weapons and insisted that “the hydrogen bomb debate surpasses all other political and moral debates of our time and possibly human history ... for moral reasons, I consider the hydrogen bomb not to be used in this country for nine tenths as proven "('the H-bomb debate transcends all other political and moral debates in our lifetime and perhaps in human history ... on moral grounds I find the case for this country renouncing the H-bomb proven about nine-tenths of the way' ). Although he advocated the expansion of supporters of disarmament within the Labor Party, he spoke out against a division of the party into supporters and opponents after the party congress held in Scarborough in 1960 .

In 1961 he attended the Leipzig Autumn Fair with a delegation of Labor Party MPs, which consisted of Leslie Plummer , Barbara Castle , Frederick Lee and Arthur Lewis alongside him . The delegation held talks with Vice Foreign Minister Johannes König and Trade Minister Heinrich Rau about trade relations with the GDR .

He was a member of the House of Commons until he renounced his candidacy in the general election on February 28, 1974. The reason for his resignation was that his local club, the London Co-Operative Society, refused to support him after he led the group of EC-friendly Labor MPs that led the Conservative Party government under Prime Minister Edward Heath to join the European internal market had supported.

Junior Minister and Member of the House of Lords

During the tenure of Prime Minister Harold Wilson , he served as Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Overseas Development from 1964 to 1969 , making him one of the closest collaborators to then Ministers Barbara Castle, Anthony Greenwood , Arthur Bottomley and Reg Prentice .

During this time, in November 1965, he made his most important trip to Salisbury , accompanying Prime Minister Wilson , in order to prevent Ian Smith , the leader of the white minority and then Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia , from making a unilateral declaration of the country's sovereignty . However, this did not succeed, so that on November 11, 1965, Rhodesia was founded, which, however, was not recognized internationally. At the same time he worked with from Germany originating economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher together to put together appropriate technologies to develop that for developing countries are suitable.

After leaving the government, Oram served as development program coordinator for the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) from 1971 to 1973 , an independent, non-governmental organization that unites, represents and serves cooperatives around the world .

After leaving the House of Commons in 1974, Oram worked until the beginning of 1976 as a development aid manager at the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) founded in 1966 , from which today's development aid organization Practical Action emerged .

By a letters patent dated January 22, 1976 Oram was raised as a life peer with the title Baron Oram , of Brighton in the County of East Sussex, to the nobility and was a member of the House of Lords until his death. During his membership in the House of Lords between 1976 and 1978 he acted as a so-called Lord-in-Waiting and thus as Parliamentary Director of the ruling Labor Group ( Government Whip ). He was then chairman of the Co-operative Development Agency from 1978 to 1981 .

Publications

  • Battle for output: a consumer view. A Co-operative commentary on the Economic Survey for 1947 , Reynolds News, 1947
  • Changes in China , co-author Nora Stettner, 1987

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Henning Hoff: Great Britain and the GDR 1955-1973: Diplomatie auf Umwege , 2003, ISBN 3-48656-7-373 , p. 269
  2. ↑ JRT Wood: So Far and No Further !: Rhodesia's Bid for Independence During the Retreat from Empire 1959-1965 , 2012, p. 511 with further references
  3. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 46765, HMSO, London, December 16, 1975, p. 16079 ( PDF , accessed November 18, 2013, English).
  4. ↑ London Gazette . No. 46805, HMSO, London, January 23, 1976, p. 1147 ( PDF , accessed November 18, 2013, English).
  5. ↑ Proof of publication ( Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Oram, Albert, Baron Oram
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oram, Albert Edward, Baron Oram (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British teacher, politician and official
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Winchester , Hampshire or Burgess Hill , Sussex
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 1999