Frederick Lee, Baron Lee of Newton

Frederick Lee, Baron Lee of Newton (* 3. August 1906 , † 4. February 1984 ) was a British trade union functionary and politician of the Labor Party , which for 29 years member of the House of Commons was, during the first government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson held several ministerial posts and became a member of the House of Lords in 1974 when Life Peer under the Life Peerages Act 1958 .

Life

Member of the House of Commons and Junior Minister

After finishing school, Lee trained at the Langworthy Road School of Engineering and was later chairman of the works council at the electrical company Metropolitan-Vickers in Manchester . He was also 1944-1945 chairman of the National Committee of the union AEU ( Amalgamated Engineering Union ) and a member of the City Council of Salford ( Salford City Council )

As a candidate for the Labor Party in the general election of July 5, 1945 in the Manchester Hulme constituency, he was elected for the first time as a member of the House of Commons and represented this constituency until it was dissolved in the general election on February 23, 1950 . In his first election, he was able to prevail with 12,034 votes against the candidate of the Conservative Party , JC Currie, who only got 9600 votes. During this time, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1948 to 1950 ( Parliamentary Private Secretary ) of Chancellor of the Exchequer ( Chancellor of the Exchequer ) Stafford Cripps .

In the general election of February 23, 1950, he ran as the successor to his no longer- standing party friend Robert Young in the Newton constituency and was able to assert himself with 31,832 votes (59.1 percent) clearly against his challenger K. Lewis of the conservative Tories , who on 22,068 votes (40.1 percent) came in. Lee represented the constituency until he renounced another candidacy in the elections on February 28, 1974 in the House of Commons and was confirmed in the interim elections with an absolute majority as constituency holder. After the election in 1950 he became Prime Minister Clement Attlee to the Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Labor and National Services ( Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labor and National Service appointed) and served in that role until the end of the term Attlee's post-election defeat in the general election on October 25, 1951 one of the closest associates of the then Ministers for Labor and National Services George Isaacs , Aneurin Bevan and Alfred Robens .

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

Minister and Member of the House of Lords

After the Labor Party's victory in the general election on October 15, 1964 , Prime Minister Harold Wilson appointed Lee to Minister of Power in his first government on October 18, 1964 . At the same time he was appointed Privy Councilor . In this capacity, he presented the government's The Second Nuclear Program in 1964, a white paper on energy policy that provided for the construction of new power plants with a capacity of 5000 megawatts between 1970 and 1976. This marked the beginning of the era of the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) type of nuclear reactor , after other designs were rejected. In the House of Commons he described this in a debate on May 25, 1965 with the words: “We have won the main prize this time - we have the greatest breakthrough of all time” ('We have won the jackpot this time - we have the greatest breakthrough of all times. ')

As energy minister, he also submitted a bill to nationalize the steel industry, which ultimately led to the founding of thirteen private companies in 1967, the state-owned company British Steel . In a speech about it he stated:

“The steel barons themselves did nothing to keep the British steel industry competitive with the large steel industries in Japan, the USA or Europe. The steelworkers have failed to do what is fundamental to the British public. There is no alternative but to take it now and make it an instrument of our own economy. No government, neither the Conservative Party nor the Labor Party, can organize the economy as long as steel is a game of gamblers on the stock exchanges. You can't get a modern steel industry as long as you have a majority of competing small steel companies, none of which have tried to organize the industry. "

As part of a cabinet reshuffle after the general election of March 31, 1966 , he was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies on April 6, 1966 as the successor to Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford , while Richard Marsh was the new Secretary of Energy. As colonial minister, he laid the foundation stone for Malapoa College on Vanuatu on August 2, 1966 . In October 1966 he paid a working visit to Gibraltar , during which £ 600,000 was pledged for development projects.

When the ministerial responsibilities were redesigned on August 1, 1966, and the previous colonial ministry was merged into the ministry for affairs of the Commonwealth of Nations , Herbert Bowden became the first minister in this department ( Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs ), while Lee was the last Colonial Minister initially resigned from the government.

It was not until January 7, 1967 that he took over from George Thomson the - rather insignificant - function of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster , but was not again a member of the cabinet until he was replaced by George Thomson on October 6, 1969.

After leaving the House of Commons, Lee was appointed to the nobility on July 1, 1974 as a life peer with the title Baron Lee of Newton , of Newton in Merseyside, and was a member of the House of Lords until his death.

literature

• Frederick Lee , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 22/1967 of May 22, 1967, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

• Frederick Lee at Hansard (English)
• Entry in Cracroft's Peerage
• Entry in Leigh Rayment Peerage
• Frederick Lee, Baron Lee of Newton, on thepeerage.com , accessed September 12, 2016.
• Entry in They Work For You

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Henning Hoff: Great Britain and the GDR 1955-1973: Diplomatie auf Umwege , 2003, ISBN 3-48656-7-373 , p. 269
2. ^ Key Government Officials: Wilson Government, 1964-1970
3. ↑ NUCLEAR POWER (DUNGENESS B STATION) (House of Commons, Hansard, May 25, 1965)
4. ^ Timeline: Nuclear power in the United Kingdom. Key events in the history of nuclear power in Britain . In: The Guardian, May 27, 2008
5. ↑ A real energy revolution needs us to look beyond sound bites . In: Financial Times, July 24, 2013
6. ↑ Walter C. Patterson: GOING CRITICAL. An Unofficial History of British Nuclear Power ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 1985, ISBN 0-586-08516-5 
7. ↑ Steel Must Be Nationalized - Mr. Lee . In: The Glasgow Herald, July 4, 1966
8. ↑ China assures Malapoa College of Vt1 billion buildings . In: Vanuatu Daily Post, August 7, 2013
9. ↑ Political Development-History ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Homepage of the Government of Gibraltar) 
10. ^ Secretary of State for the Colonies (Hansard)
11. ↑ Tony Benn: Office Without Power: Diaries 1968-72 , 2012, ISBN 1-44649-374-1
12. ↑ Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Hansard)