Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway

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Fenner Brockway (photography around 1910)

Archibald Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway (born November 1, 1888 in Calcutta , † April 28, 1988 in Watford , Hertfordshire ) was a British journalist , publicist , politician of the Independent Labor Party (ILP) and the Labor Party , who served sixteen years with interruptions was a member of the House of Commons for a long time and became a member of the House of Lords in 1964 when Life Peer under the Life Peerages Act 1958 . The pacifist and anti-nuclear weapon was one of the founding members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) peace movement in 1958 .

Life

School education, liberal and socialist

Brockway, son of a Christian missionary working in India , completed his education at the School for the Sons of Missionaries in Blackheath . He was already interested in political issues as a schoolboy and was active in the election campaign team of the Liberal Party in the 1905 elections to London County Council . After completing his schooling, he worked in the office of the published monthly magazine Quiver published by Cassell and in 1906 in the general election of 1906 as a campaign assistant for the Liberal Party in Tunbridge Wells .

It was during this time that Brockway began reading the works of authors on the political left such as William Morris , Robert Blatchford , George Bernard Shaw , HG Wells and Edward Carpenter . Shortly thereafter, he took a job as a journalist at the daily newspaper Daily News and led a 1907 interview with the founders of the Labor Party, Keir Hardie . This interview was so formative for him that he went from a liberal to a socialist and described this with the words: 'I went to Hardie as a Young Liberal and left him as a Young Socialist'. He then joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), but left it a few months later following a speech by Harry Quelch , one of the leaders of the SDF.

Political journalist, pacifist and opponent of the First World War

He then became a member of the Independent Labor Party (ILP) and also attended meetings of the Fabian Society , where he also took part in readings by George Bernard Shaw. During this time he worked as a reporter for The Christian Commonwealth newspaper , for which he conducted weekly interviews with radical thinkers of the time. As a result, in addition to Shaw, he also came into personal contact with personalities such as Edward Carpenter, HG Wells and William Crawford Anderson . He was so impressed by the young journalist's writing style that he appointed him deputy editor-in-chief of The Labor Elector , the party newspaper of the ILP.

In 1913, at the age of 25, Brockway became editor-in-chief of The Labor Elector . As such, he supported pacifism and strictly refused entry of Great Britain into the First World War . Despite the material problems during this time, the newspaper managed to increase the circulation from 40,000 to 80,000 copies.

After the outbreak of World War I, he and Clifford Allen founded the No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF), an organization to support conscientious objection among young men. Other well-known supporters of the NCF included Bertrand Russell , Philip Snowden , Robert Smillie , CH Norman , William Mellor , Arthur Ponsonby , Guy Aldred , Alfred Salter , Duncan Grant , Wilfred Wellock , Maude Royden , Max Plowman , John Clifford , Cyril Joad , Alfred Mason , Winnie Mason , Alice Wheeldon , William Wheeldon , John S. Clarke , Arthur McManus , Hettie Wheeldon and Margaret Storm Jameson .

Arrests and imprisonments during the First World War

In August 1915 the offices of the labor movement in Manchester were searched . Brockway himself was charged with publishing inflammatory writings. Although the government was unsuccessful, bookstores in London and Manchester were searched soon afterwards, resulting in the confiscation of ILP-produced works such as Brockway's The Devil's Business .

In 1916 Brockway and Clifford Allen were arrested for distributing a flyer against the introduction of the draft . After both refused to pay a fine, she was sentenced to two months in Pentonville Prison . Shortly after his release, he was arrested again under the Military Service Act and served his sentence in the Tower of London , Chester Castle and most recently in Walton Prison in Liverpool . During his imprisonment he continued his literary activity and wrote a depiction of the Battle of Passendale during the Third Battle of Flanders after he had met a deserted soldier in prison. After the discovery of this script, he was sentenced to six days of water and bread.

Brockway, like many other military opponents, was only released from prison six months after the end of the war in early 1919.

First election time as a member of the House of Commons

Katharine Glasier had now taken over as editor-in-chief of The Labor Leader , so that he could concentrate on his work as the organizer of the India League , an organization promoting India's independence , and as chairman from 1926 until his replacement by Arthur Ponsonby in 1934 the anti-war movement ( War Resisters' International ).

During the general strike in 1926 he became editor-in-chief of The British Worker , the newspaper of the umbrella organization of the trade unions TUC ( Trades Union Congress ). In 1926 he also succeeded HN Brailsford as editor-in-chief of The Labor Leader newspaper, renamed New Leader , and held this position until he was replaced by John Paton in 1931.

In the general election of May 30, 1929 Brockway was elected to the House of Commons for the ILP in the constituency of Leyton East, which had meanwhile joined the Labor Party . However, he was one of the opponents of the National Government formed by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald on August 25, 1931 , so that he lost his lower house mandate in the elections on October 27, 1931 . A few months later, the ILP separated from the Labor Party and he served as chairman of the ILP from 1931 until his replacement by James Maxton in 1933, before he was subsequently general secretary of the ILP between 1933 and 1939.

Opponent of Fascism, Spanish Civil War and World War II

With the beginning of fascist dictatorships in Europe in the early 1930s, he began to think about the political possibilities of pacifism and in the following years supported the resistance against Francisco Franco in Spain and Adolf Hitler in Germany . 1936 was one of the supporters of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and paid a visit to Barcelona in the summer of 1937 . He met George Orwell , who took part in the civil war for the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM), but also Spanish politicians such as Francisco Largo Caballero .

Brockway's experiences during the Spanish Civil War also influenced his pacifist stance, and he took the following view:

“A society will have far greater freedom after an anarchist victory as in the case of the Spanish Civil War than after a fascist victory. This is not due to the sum of the violence of good or bad results, but rather to the ideas, the meaning of human values, and above all, to the social forces behind them. With this realization, although my nature rebels against the killing of human beings just as much as the nature of these Catalan farmers, the fundamental basis of my old philosophy disappears. "
“ There is no doubt that the society resulting from an anarchist victory (during the Spanish Civil War) would have far greater liberty and equality than the society resulting from a fascist victory. Thus I came to see that it is not the amount of violence used which determines good or evil results, but the ideas, the sense of human values, and above all the social forces behind its use. With this realization, although my nature revolted against the killing of human beings just as did the nature of those Catalonian peasants, the fundamental basis of my old philosophy disappeared. ”

These changes in his previously pacifist way of thinking ultimately also led to his support for the entry and participation of Great Britain during the Second World War . To this end he stated:

“Everything in my nature was against war. I could never see myself kill anyone else and I never had a gun in my hands. But I saw that Hitler and Nazism were mainly responsible for bringing about the war and I could never contemplate their victory. In a sense, the Spanish Civil War created this dilemma for me; I could no longer justify pacifism as long as there was a fascist threat. "
“ It was opposed to in all my nature. I could never see myself killing anyone and had never held a weapon in my hands. But I saw that Hitler and Nazism had been mainly responsible for bringing the war and I could not contemplate their victory. In a sense, the Spanish Civil War settled this dilemma for me; I could no longer justify pacifism when there was a fascist threat. ”

During this time he also campaigned for the release of political prisoners of the Communist Party opposition and, in the post-war period, of people like the union official Josef Bergmann .

Post-war MP and member of the House of Lords

Statue of Fenner Brockway in London

After the end of the war Brockway re-joined the Labor Party and was re-elected as a member of the House of Commons as its candidate in the general election of February 23, 1950 in the constituency of Eton and Slough . In the House of Commons, he joined the left-wing Tribune Group led by Health Minister Aneurin Bevan , but disagreed with Bevan, who later became Foreign Minister in the shadow cabinet and deputy chairman of the Labor Party, on the issue of nuclear weapons policy .

In 1958 Brockway was one of the co-founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) peace movement along with Bertrand Russell, Victor Gollancz , John Boynton Priestley , John Collins and Michael Foot .

His left-wing views also contributed to the loss of his electorate, so that, contrary to the national trend, he lost his lower house mandate in the lower house elections on October 15, 1964 to the candidate of the Conservative Party , Anthony Meyer .

Shortly thereafter, on the proposal of the new Prime Minister Harold Wilson , Brockway was raised to the nobility by a letters patent dated December 17, 1964 under the Life Peerages Act 1958 as a life peer with the title Baron Brockway , of Eton and Slough in the Royal County of Berkshire and was thus a member of the House of Lords until his death.

In the following years he was chairman of the Movement for Colonial Freedom and organized a campaign against apartheid in South Africa with Barbara Castle , Anthony Greenwood and Tony Benn, for example . He was also committed to world peace, for example as President of the British Council for Peace in Vietnam and, between 1979 and his death in 1988, as a World Disarmament Campaign .

Publications

Brockway, who died a few months before his hundredth birthday, wrote numerous books on political subjects and four autobiographical works.

  • Is Britain blameless? , 1915
  • Can Britain disarm? , 1920
  • India and its government , 1921
  • Lloyd George and the traffic in honors , 1923
  • A new way with crime , 1928
  • The Indian crisis , 1930
  • Hands off the railmen's wages! , 1931
  • Hungry England , 1932
  • The bloody traffic , 1933
  • Will Roosevelt succeed? , 1934
  • Purple plague , 1935
  • Workers' front , 1938
  • Inside the Left , autobiography, 1942
  • The way out , 1942
  • Death pays a dividend , co-author Frederic Mullally, 1944
  • German diary , 1946
  • Socialism over sixty years , 1946
  • Bermondsey story , 1949
  • Bermondsey story; the life of Alfred Salter , 1951
  • Why Mau Mau? , 1953
  • African journeys , 1955
  • 1960, Africa's year of destiny , 1960
  • Red liner , 1962
  • African socialism , 1963
  • Outside the Right , autobiography, 1963
  • This shrinking explosive world: a study of race relations , 1967
  • A great hope for peace , 1973
  • Peace within reach , 1973
  • The colonial revolution , 1973
  • Towards Tomorrow , autobiography, 1977
  • Britain's first socialists , 1980
  • 98 Not Out , autobiography, 1986
in German language
  • India , Kaden, Dresden 1931
  • On the left , Hamburg 1947

Web links and sources

Life

Publications

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theodor Bergmann: In the century of catastrophes. Autobiography of a critical communist . 1st edition. VSA: Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, ISBN 978-3-89965-688-6 , p. 60 f .
  2. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 43506, HMSO, London, December 4, 1964, p. 10317 ( PDF , accessed October 10, 2013, English).
personal data
SURNAME Brockway, Fenner, Baron Brockway
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brockway, Archibald Fenner, Baron Brockway (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist and politician, Member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Calcutta
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1988
Place of death Watford