Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence

Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence (1945)

Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence PC (birth name: Frederick William Lawrence ; born December 28, 1871 in London , † September 10, 1961 in Hendon , London) was a British Labor Party politician who , with interruptions, was 18 For years he was a member of the House of Commons and in 1945, when Baron Pethick-Lawrence was raised to hereditary peer , he was a member of the House of Lords until his death . He was Minister for India and Burma in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Clement Attlee from 1945 to 1947 .

Life

Origin, studies and lawyer

Lawrence, whose father Alfred Lawrence was Commissioner at the Lord Lieutenant of London, came from a family politically active in the Liberal Party . His grandfather William Lawrence was among other Councilor (Alderman) and Sheriff of London . His uncle William Lawrence was Lord Mayor of London between 1863 and 1864 and represented the constituency of London in the House of Commons for 14 years with interruptions . His uncle James Clarke Lawrence was also Lord Mayor of London from 1868 to 1868 and from 1868 to 1885 Member of the House of Commons for the constituency of Lambeth . In addition, another brother of his father, Edwin Durning-Lawrence , was also a member of the lower house between 1895 and 1906, where he represented the constituency of Truro .

He graduated after school education at the prestigious Eton College to study at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge , which he in 1894 with a Bachelor of Arts graduated (BA). A subsequent postgraduate course at Trinity College, he finished in 1896 with a Master of Arts (MA) and then studied law . After his admission to the bar with the Inner Temple Bar Association , he took up a position as a barrister in 1899 . In 1900 he was the holder of the Dunkin Professorship and then between 1901 and 1906 chairman of the board of the Consolidated Newspaper publishing house .

Marriage and commitment to women's rights

On October 2, 1901, he married Emmeline Pethick and both spouses took the double name "Pethick-Lawrence" as a family name. His wife campaigned for women's rights , working closely with Mary Neal and Emmeline Pankhurst , who they met in 1906.

In the following years he became involved in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst , and in the Labor Party. In 1912 he was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment for a political action for the WSPU that resulted in property damage. However, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst excluded him from the WSPU shortly afterwards because he refused to pursue political goals with the help of crimes such as damage to property.

Later Pethick-Lawrence was responsible for advocacy Union of Democratic Control active (UDC) and had to because of conscientious objection during the First World War on a farm in Sussex to work.

Member of the House of Commons

In the general election of December 6, 1923 , Pethick-Lawrence was elected as a Labor Party candidate for the first time to the House of Commons, where he represented the constituency of Leicester West until his defeat in the October 27, 1931 elections .

After the election of the Labor Party in the general election of 30 May 1929 he was selected by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Financial Secretary to the Treasury ) called and held that post until August 24, 1931 from.

In the general election of November 14, 1945 , he was again elected as a member of the House of Commons and represented the constituency of Edinburgh East until he renounced a new candidacy in the general election of July 5, 1945 . In 1937 he was appointed Privy Counselor (PC).

As the successor to Hastings Lees-Smith , Pethick-Lawrence was chairman of the parliamentary group and thus leader of the opposition (Leader of the opposition) in the lower house. However, he only held this position for a short time and handed it over to Arthur Greenwood in 1942 .

House of Lords and Minister

Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1946)

After the Labor Party won the general election on July 5, 1945, Pethick-Lawrence was appointed Secretary of State for India and Burma by Prime Minister Clement Attlee on August 3, 1945 in his cabinet and held this ministerial office until his replacement by William Hare, 5th Earl of Listowel on April 17, 1947. During this time he held talks with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, among others, about the future of British India .

Shortly after his appointment as minister, he was raised to the hereditary nobility by a letters patent dated August 16, 1945 as Baron Pethick-Lawrence , of Peaslake in the County of Surrey, and was thus a member of the House of Lords until his death.

Since Baron Pethick-Lawrence died without heirs, the title of nobility expired with his death.

Web links

• Mr Frederick Pethick-Lawrence at Hansard (English)
• Extinct United Kingdom Baronies in Cracroft's Peerage
• Peerage: Pethick-Lawrence in Leigh Rayment Peerage
• Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st and last Baron Pethick-Lawrence on thepeerage.com

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Pethick-Lawrence 1945–1961	Title expired