Frederick Bellenger
Frederick John Bellenger (born July 23, 1894 in Bethnal Green , London , † May 11, 1968 ) was a British politician of the Conservative Party and later the Labor Party , who for more than 32 years until his death as a member of the constituency of Bassetlaw House of Commons and served as Secretary of War from October 4, 1946 to October 7, 1947 . Bellenger was married to a daughter of the Cologne chocolate manufacturer Carl Stollwerck .
| Frederick John Bellenger |
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| Photographer: Howard Coster , 1942 |
| Photography ("quarter-plate film negative, 1942; transferred from Central Office of Information, 1974") |
| © National Portrait Gallery, London
Link to the picture |
Life
Origin, First World War and local politician of the Conservative Party
Frederick Bellenger, son of the milkman Eugene Bernard Bellenger, worked in a tea trading house after attending primary school, as a delivery boy and in various commercial professions, and also attended evening school. At the beginning of the First World War he began voluntary military service in 1914 and served as a gunner in the Royal Artillery on the Western Front in 1915 . After the Battle of the Somme , he was promoted to lieutenant in 1917 and wounded twice in combat missions.
After the end of the war he was transferred to the occupation forces in Cologne, where he met Maria Theresa Stollwerck, the daughter of the Cologne chocolate manufacturer Carl Stollwerck, and married in 1922. He then worked as a land surveyor and real estate agent in West London.
At the beginning of the 1920s Bellenger began his political engagement in the local branch of the Conservative Party in East Fulham, although the council of the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham was ruled by the Labor Party since November 1919. In the elections that followed in November 1922, the conservative Tories, known as Municipal Reformers, won a majority in the local council, while the Labor Party only got three seats. He himself was elected a member of the local council in the constituency of Barons Court Ward and was re-elected in the subsequent elections in November 1925. The Conservative Party candidates referred to their economic competence and criticized the Labor candidates' “wild and visionary plans” which would lead to “economic chaos and financial ruin”. In November 1928, however, Bellenger declined to run again in the local council elections because he had not been nominated for a candidacy for the London County Council (LCC).
Moved to the Labor Party and MP
Waiver of candidacy in the Bethnal Green South West constituency in October 1931
Shortly thereafter, Bellenger joined the Labor Party as a member and was already named in June 1930 as a possible candidate in the general election of October 27, 1931 for the constituency of Bethnal Green South West , which had been held by Percy Harris of the Liberal Party since 1922 . Despite the Labor Party's losses in the previous elections on May 30, 1929 , Bellenger had the prospect of a good vote in this one of the last London strongholds of liberalism , although there was a strong influence of a Communist wing within the local Labor Party organization .
Although Bellinger was involved in local politics for around a year, he ultimately decided not to run for general election in mid-1931 for health reasons, and Percy Harris was able to stand up to the Labor candidate, WJ Humphreys, with 10,176 votes (59.6 percent) , which received only 3923 votes (23 percent).
Election campaign November 1935 in the constituency of Bassetlaw
After the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) vice-general secretary W. R. Squance declined to run for MP in the Bassetlaw constituency because his union would have demanded that union activities be terminated, Bellenger, who at the time he was honorary secretary of the Labor Candidates' Association, nominated as a Labor candidate for that constituency in November 1933. In the election campaign for the general election of November 14, 1935 , he spoke out against rearmament and Britain's entry into the war because of the Italian-Ethiopian War . Shortly before the Labor Party leader George Lansbury had resigned because of his pacifist stance at the party conference in Brighton and was replaced by Clement Attlee . Although Bellinger showed sympathy for Lansbury's stance, he advocated collective protection by the League of Nations in security policy . On the other hand, he supported the party congress resolution passed in 1932 to nationalize the banks and was convinced that state property could reduce rural poverty if it could improve the efficiency of agriculture.
The main issue in the election campaign, however, was the status of the mining industry, for which the miners 'union MFGB ( Miners' Federation of Great Britain ) demanded wage increases. Although the constituency of Bassetlaw was in Nottinghamshire , there were several union interest groups in the area. At Harworth , the local Nottinghamshire Miners' Industrial Union was supported by the mine owner Barber Walker. As in other parts of the county, the MFGB's local sister union, the Nottinghamshire Miners' Association (NMA), was not recognized by the mining companies. For example, in Harworth only six of the 2,355 employees in the NMA were unionized. In other parts of the constituency such as Manton, Shireoaks and Firbeck Main, the miners were organized in the Yorkshire Miners 'Association , while the miners in Warsop Main were mainly represented by the Derbyshire Miners' Association . The general election in November 1935 was preceded by three-month work stoppages in Manton and five-month strikes in Firbeck.
Bellenger, who actually saw himself as a representative of the industry, in this situation became a symbol of the dislike of the miners towards the mine operators, the National Government of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald of the National Labor Organization and the local government representatives. This became clear, among other things, as the former general secretary of the rail union ONLY (National Union of Railwaymen) and then Minister of affairs of the Dominions (Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs) , James Henry Thomas was booed at campaign appearances in Worksop and Retford.
In the general election of November 14, 1935, Bellenger ran in the constituency of Bassetlaw against the son of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, Malcolm MacDonald , who had been a member of this constituency since 1929 and in his father's cabinet since June 7, 1935, the office of Secretary of the Colonies (Secretary of State for the Colonies) .
Bellenger succeeded in defeating MacDonald with a majority of 1,139 votes: While he received 21,903 votes (51.3 percent) as a candidate for the Labor Party, MacDonald received 20,764 votes (48.7 percent).
Criticism of Prime Minister Chamberlain and officer in the Battle of Dunkirk
Less than a week after the election, on November 20, 1935, Bellenger, along with other newly elected MPs such as Ellen Wilkinson , was invited by Hugh Dalton to a meeting with the left-wing Labor politician Konni Zilliacus . In fact, the Dalton meeting served to gather support for Herbert Stanley Morrison in his candidacy against Clement Attlee for party leadership. But like Aneurin Bevan, Bellenger was one of Morrison's critics.
At the beginning of his membership in the House of Commons, he continued to deal with the mining crisis, as the problems at the Harworth colliery remained unsolved and the conflict between the Nottinghamshire Miners 'Industrial Union and Nottinghamshire Miners' Association continued. On the other hand, he also dealt with foreign policy issues, and admitted, among other things, the German Reich to have legitimate complaints against the Peace Treaty of Versailles . On the other hand, he criticized Germany's aggressive policy in Europe and criticized Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for its policy of appeasement and the signing of the Munich Agreement . His rejection of Chamberlain was also expressed in the support of the parliamentary Labor Party (PLP) against the introduction of compulsory training in the spring of 1939. On the other hand, he did not reject the draft law for military training during the parliamentary debates on April 27 and May 8, 1939.
As a member of the officer reserve reserve, Bellenger was called up for military service in October 1939 and was promoted to captain of the Royal Artillery in February 1940 and as such transferred to France as a staff officer in April 1940 .
In May 1940 he returned to Great Britain to take part in the parliamentary debate that ultimately led to Chamberlain's resignation as Prime Minister on May 10, 1940, and which formed the basis for the formation of the coalition government of Prime Minister Winston Churchill . Shortly thereafter, Bellinger returned to France for deployment and took part in the Battle of Dunkirk until June 5, 1940 . Two months later, in August 1940, he finished his military service to concentrate on his parliamentary work.
Parliamentary private secretary, backbencher in World War II and criticism of the war cabinet
Although Bellinger supported Churchill's criticism of Chamberlain's policy of appeasement and welcomed the formation of the coalition government, he subsequently also became a critic of the Churchill government.
After he was between August 1940 and late 1940 the private parliamentary secretary of George Hicks , a trade union functionary who at that time was parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Public Works, he was a member of the lower house as a backbencher . As a speaker, he took part in numerous debates on war policy issues such as the airborne battle of Crete .
He was one of the participants in the most important revolt against the coalition government. The fall of Tobruk to the German armed forces after the company Theseus in June 1942 had the consequence that the lower house no longer reached agreement on the question of the basic war strategy. As a result, on July 1, 1942, the conservative backbencher, John Wardlaw-Milne , introduced a motion of no confidence in the Churchill government. On the following day, Labor MP Aneurin Bevan made a high-profile counter-speech against this request. Ultimately, only 25 MPs, including eight members of the lower house of the Parliamentary Labor Party , supported the motion. Bellenger was one of the Labor MPs who spoke in favor of the motion and voted for it. In the debate, he also criticized the lack of military equipment, incorrect strategic planning and the incompetence of the ministers in the war cabinet . A short time later, he gave a speech in his constituency together with Labor MP Emanuel Shinwell, who was also critical .
He then took part in other debates critical of the government, such as on April 28, 1944, when he was one of the 16 Labor MPs who voted against the introduction of regulations against people who called for unofficial strikes. The background was widespread work stoppages in the mining regions in the weeks before the so-called Operation Overlord , the Allied landing in Normandy . He also supported a statement with 22 other Labor MPs criticizing the British government's treatment of the left-wing resistance movement in Greece . Although Greece was an issue within the left wing of the Labor Party in the postwar period, the declaration also received support from other areas of the PLP.
While Bellinger earned himself a reputation as a constant critic, he also demonstrated his ideological differences with the left wing of his party. For example, when the House of Commons debated the White Paper on Employment Policy in June 1944 and Aneurin Bevan argued that "socialism would be unnecessary if the arguments of the White Paper were valid," Bellenger declared that he was never a Marxist and believed in private companies would. However, his standing within the PLP remained modest, and he was not elected to the Parliamentary Labor Party's administrative committee in any of the elections . However, he spoke as chairman of the party's military and alternative service committee at party and parliamentary sessions.
During the Second World War he finally wrote a weekly column with the title 'The Voice of the Army' or later 'Voice of the Services' for the weekly newspaper Sunday Pictorial and thereby earned the reputation as a “friend of the soldiers”.
Re-elected in 1945 and finance secretary in the War Ministry from 1945 to 1946
In the first general election after the Second World War on July 5, 1945, which was also the first election in almost ten years, Bellenger was re-elected in the Bassetlaw constituency with 30,382 votes (62.8 percent), and was thus able to stand up to his challenger RE Laycock from the Conservative Party, which received only 18,005 votes (37.2 percent).
Although he has so far only played a subordinate role within the hierarchy of the PLP, after the Labor Party's victory in the general election, his expertise in military matters meant that he was eligible for a position in the government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee. Few Labor politicians even dealt with military-political issues and most ministerial posts were filled with long-term MPs, so that new MPs with little military experience had little chance of a government office.
Bellenger was then on August 4, 1945 the junior ministerial posts as financial secretary in the Ministry of War (Financial Secretary to the War Office ) appointed, although his previous columns , the Sunday Pictorial of senior military personnel as Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery were criticized. The war minister responsible for him, Jack Lawson , held the post of finance secretary in the war ministry during the tenure of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1924.
Minister of War 1946 to 1947
After Lawson fell seriously ill in the summer of 1946, he was replaced on October 4, 1946 by Bellenger as Secretary of State for War . At the same time, however, there was an extensive change in the military ministries: the previous First Lord of the Admiralty Albert Victor Alexander took over the office of Defense Minister in the Attlee cabinet , while the three previous independent functions of War Minister, First Lord of the Admiralty and Aviation Minister became part of this redesigned Ministry of Defense and so that since October 1946 no longer had cabinet rank. Nevertheless, this appointment represented the high point of Bellenger's career, who was also appointed Privy Counselor (PC) and attended cabinet meetings on military-political issues. As Minister of War, he was also concerned with the aftermath of World War II, the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials .
The Muar Mutiny
Right at the start of his appointment, he had to deal with the first crisis, the Muar mutiny. On May 14, 1946, members of the 13th Lancashire Battalion of the 6th Airborne Division at the Muar site on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula had disobeyed orders. Their protest was directed against the conditions in the battalion's barracks that took part in Operation Overlord, the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine and was placed under the Southeast Asia Command after the end of the war . After an interim deployment on Java after the surrender of Japan , the unit was relocated to Muar. The conditions and living conditions there were so pathetic that 258 soldiers mutinied and were charged for it. The trial then began on August 12, 1946 and ended on September 19, 1946. Originally, three defendants were acquitted, while eight were sentenced to five years 'imprisonment with hard labor and the remainder to three years' imprisonment with hard labor. Then twelve sentences were overturned and the remaining 243 defendants were each sentenced to two years.
This led to widespread protests in Great Britain, particularly from the labor movement . On October 8, 1946, inquiries were received from the House of Commons and the House of Lords to the Secretary of War, while two backbenchers from the Labor Party petitioned the verdicts. He then informed MPs that he had requested an opinion from the Judge Advocate-General on the legality of the trial. The intervention of the military attorney general defused the sometimes difficult situation for the new minister. His first replies to Question Time made it clear that he was taking the view of the military when he stated that "there could be no shadow of a doubt that the men were rightly charged with mutiny ... mutiny cannot be excused" ( 'There can be no shadow of doubt that these men were rightly charged with mutiny ... mutiny cannot be excused'). However, when he later compared the conditions in Muar with his experiences on the Western Front, he had to admit that the current conditions were seen under peace conditions.
Budget debate in 1947 and the beginning of the Cold War
Bellenger's commitment to the concerns of the military leadership was also evident in his justification for their demand for personnel. Contrary to an explanation to the well-known military historian Basil Liddell Hart that he would "capture this nettle", he did not. As a result, he was the target of Labor backbenchers in the debate on the military budget in March 1947. At that time, the left wing of the party ( Keep Left Group) was discussing a more radical economic and foreign policy strategy for the government. A reduction in defense spending was a fundamental part of this alternative. Members of this Keep Left Group criticized Bellenger for his failure to control the generals in the War Department and for the lack of transparency. George Wigg , Woodrow Wyatt , James Callaghan , Stephen Swingler and Richard Crossman supported the need for cuts in defense spending in the debate.
As the threat to the start of the Cold War grew, the Minister of War's work became increasingly difficult. This was particularly evident a few weeks later when he became the ministers responsible for drafting the peacetime convocation bill. This National Service Bill sparked resistance not only from the Labor backbenchers who were dissatisfied with the government's foreign policy, but also from those parliamentarians whose vision of socialism was incompatible with militarism . The government responded to the widespread and varied criticism by reducing the length of service from 18 to 12 months.
Furthermore, the opposition Tories attacked him because of the slow clearing up of the full extent of the loss of assets through corporate speculation by British troops in the Netherlands , Austria and especially in Germany. Speculation prevented in the second half of 1946 by the introduction of a sterling voucher system in lieu of cash payments to troops after a total loss of £ 58 million in assets. His ignorance became particularly evident during the debate on the supplementary army budget on February 18, 1947, when he was only able to quantify the total loss on February 26, 1947. The Conservative Party accused him in a later debate in the Public Accounts Committee on July 21, 1947, that he did not understand the scope of the case.
Dismissed as Minister of War in October 1947
Such allegations were part of the usual opposition work in the case of misconduct by ministers, but were more serious in the difficult time for the Labor government in the summer of 1947. The fuel crisis in the winter of 1946/47 had already destroyed confidence in the Labor Party and was now aggravated by a financial crisis that began in July 1947, which was preceded by the introduction of an exchange rate for the pound. Accusations between the ministers and deepening pessimism among the backbenchers fueled expectations of a government reshuffle, which ultimately took place on October 7, 1947.
Bellenger was then dismissed as Minister of War and replaced by Emanuel Shinwell, whose change as Minister of Fuel and Power (Minister of Fuel and Power) became a political necessity. Shinwell's successor was the previous Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fuel and Power , Hugh Gaitskell . Attlee himself ultimately supported the replacement of Bellenger, who still had little support in his own parliamentary group.
Backbencher and re-elections 1947 to 1968
1947 to 1958
In the following more than 20 years, Bellenger was no longer a government office, but was a backbencher in the House of Commons until his death, taking part regularly in debates in parliament and the parliamentary group. However, his support within the group remained low, which was due to his extreme right-wing position within the party, especially on foreign policy issues. When the Labor Party only had a majority of five MPs after the general election of February 23, 1950 , when asked by Churchill, he abstained from a vote on a defense-political issue, so that the government ultimately only won this vote with a majority of one vote. However, he denied the expectation that he would leave the Labor Party like Raymond Blackburn .
His results in the constituency of Bassetlaw remained certain, however, and the subsequent re-elections were no longer as close as in 1935. These results were largely based on support from the constituency's mining towns. In the February 23, 1950 election, he received 31,589 votes (57.6 percent) and defeated his opponent J. J. C. Irving of the Conservative, who received 17,622 votes (32.2 percent), with a majority of 13,967 votes. After the defeat of the Labor Party in the elections of October 25, 1951 , which led to the end of Attlee's reign, he ran in November 1951 for a seat on the parliamentary committee of his party (PLP Parliamentary Committee) . However, with only ten votes, he only reached the last place among 52 candidates and never applied for such a position again. In the defeat in the elections of October 25, 1951, which was devastating for the Labor Party, he was even able to expand his result and got 32,850 votes (66.7 percent) in his constituency, whereas the opponent of the conservative Tories WA Sime won despite a gain 21,257 votes (34.3 percent) continued to lose.
However, the outstanding election results meant that Bellenger - due to his parliamentary work, his military functions and his residence in Barnby Moor - increasingly distanced himself from the electorate and visited the constituency less often. His campaign manager in the 1951 general election, Harry Dunn, told him because of Bellenger's frequent trips to Germany, his wife's homeland, that he would be in the lower house for Bassetlaw and not for Germany. When factionalism formed within the Labor Party in the mid-1950s , Bellenger became one of the first supporters of Hugh Gaitskell in his candidacy for party leadership. Bellenger particularly supported Gaitskell's positions regarding the Anglo- American Alliance, the Soviet Union and the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany .
In the early 1950s, Bellenger distanced himself from the Labor Party's official stance on Africa and Rhodesia . During the last two weeks of Attlee's administration, two ministers, Commonwealth of Nations Minister Patrick Gordon Walker and Colonial Secretary James Griffiths , gave formal approval for the principles of a Central African Federation , including Southern Rhodesia , Northern Rhodesia and Nyassaland . The support took place against the resistance of Africa and was justified primarily by the fact that a federation could possibly represent an effective border against attacks from South Africa . The subsequent government of Prime Minister Churchill continued to plan for a federation, but weakened security measures for Africans. Against this, the Labor Party spoke out in a vote on March 24, 1953, with 16 right-wing parliamentarians under the leadership of Patrick Gordon Walker abstaining. This so-called Keep Right group also comprised the former minister for public works George Brown , for nutrition Maurice Webb and the former Lord Seal Keeper Richard Stokes as well as the MPs George Hobson , Thomas Reid , Stanley Evans and William Coldrick , who between 1945 and 1955 chairman of the with Labor cooperating co-operative party was. Bellenger did not take part in the vote, as he did in another vote on July 23, 1953. The party dissenters were optimistic about the feasibility of a multiracial partnership and believed that any credible counterbalance to South Africa's influence was acceptable. The Keep Right Group was also optimistic about the federation's ability to improve economic growth.
In the election of May 26, 1955 , his election result deteriorated to 26,873 votes (58.1 percent), but he was still well ahead of his challenger KV Maiden from the Conservative Party, who received 19,375 votes (41.9 percent) accounted for. The cause of the deterioration, however, was that the electoral district boundaries were cut again and the constituency of Bassetlaw had only 58,203 eligible voters instead of 64,139, i.e. around 6,000 fewer voters.
Unlike Gaitskell, Bellenger rejected the position of the Transport and General Workers' Union under its general secretary Frank Cousins during the London bus driver strike in the spring of 1958 .
1959 to 1968
In the elections of October 8, 1959 , Bellenger beat the later well-known historian Maurice Cowling with 27,875 votes (58 percent) , who ran for the conservative Tories and received 20,162 votes (42 percent). At the time, he expanded his political work to include economic policy and criticized his party's retention of public property after the Labor Party received poor results for the third consecutive year in the 1959 elections.
He was able to keep his election result in the elections of October 15, 1964 , which led to the first Labor government in thirteen years under Prime Minister Harold Wilson : he received 27,612 votes (59 percent) and his current challenger from the conservative Tories, RWM Orme, 19,167 votes (41 percent).
At the beginning of the 1960s, Bellenger dealt again with the Central African Federation, which disintegrated in 1963. As a result, Northern Rhodesia as Zambia and Nyassaland as Malawi became independent states within the Commonwealth of Nations, while Southern Rhodesia initially continued to exist as a colony. Bellenger visited Rhodesia and returned with an appreciation of the views and positions of the minority white settlers living there. This recognition was praised by backbenchers of the Conservative Party and the election success of the Labor Party in 1964 and the unilateral declaration of independence of South Rhodesia as the Republic of Rhodesia by South Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith in November 1965 did not change his views.
He was last confirmed in the general election of March 31, 1966 with 27,623 votes (61.6 percent), while Orme, who ran again for the Conservative, deteriorated to 17,195 votes (38.4 percent).
Bellenger's support for the white Rhodesians reached its peak during the House of Commons debate after the failure of the so-called Tiger negotiations in early December 1966. He expressed his skepticism about sanctions and joined the concerns of the settlers. He abstained in the subsequent vote, while Labor MP Reginald Paget resigned as Parliamentary Secretary ( Whip ) and voted against the government.
Web links
- Biography → Bellenger, Frederick John (1894–1968) at Verlag Palgrave Macmillan (English; on www.palgrave.com; PDF, 378 kB)
- Entry in Hansard (English)
- Entry in They Work For You (English)
- Entry in the National Portrait Gallery (English; with a portrait photo from 1942)
- Cameron Hazlehurst: A Guide to the Papers of British Cabinet Ministers 1900-1964 , pp. 50, 1996, ISBN 0-52158-743-3
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds : Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan , pp. 101 f., 2014, ISBN 0-85773-499-7
- ^ Susan D. Pennybacker: From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain , p. 141, 2009, ISBN 0-691-14186-X
- ↑ Susan R. Grayzel: At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Lightning , p 216, 2012, ISBN 1-13950-250-6
- ↑ Donald Bloxham: Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory , p. 44, 2001, ISBN 0-19154-335-7
- ^ Richard Vinen: National Service: Conscription in Britain, 1945-1963 , 2014, ISBN 1-84614-388-8
- ↑ Norbert Frei (editor): Transnational Past Policy: Dealing with German War Criminals in Europe after the Second World War , p. 154, note 41, 2006, ISBN 3-89244-940-6
- ^ Scott L. Bills: The Libyan Arena: The United States, Britain, and the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1945-1948 , pp. 70, 1995, ISBN 0-87338-511-X
- ↑ JRT Wood: A Matter of Weeks Rather Than Months: The Impasse Between Harold Wilson and Ian Smith. Sanctions, Aborted Settlement and War 1965-1969 , pp. 260, 2012, ISBN 1-46693-409-3
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bellenger, Frederick |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bellenger, Frederick John (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British politician and officer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 23, 1894 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bethnal Green , London |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 11, 1968 |