George Lansbury

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George Lansbury

George Lansbury (born February 21, 1859 in Halesworth , Suffolk , England , † May 7, 1940 in London ) was a British politician , pacifist and theosophist , member of the British Parliament and from 1932 to 1935 chairman of the Labor Party .

life and work

Childhood, professions, marriage

Lansbury was born in Halesworth on February 21, 1859 , to a railway entrepreneur. In 1868 the family moved to the East End of London , where Lansbury worked in an office for a year in 1870 and then attended school until 1874. Odd jobs followed as a clerk, grocer and in a coffee house, before he tried his hand at self-employed for the Great Eastern Railway , which turned out to be a failure. Meanwhile married and father of three children, he emigrated to Australia with his family in 1884 . The hope of finding better working conditions there was not fulfilled and so he returned to Great Britain in 1885.

One of his granddaughters is the actress Angela Lansbury who admired him in her youth.

As a politician

Lansbury believed that the British emigration authorities lured him to Australia with exaggerated promises, and he publicly protested against what he believed to be a failed practice. In the course of these activities he came into contact with politics and joined the Liberal Party in the 1886 elections . After the failure of a legislative proposal for shorter working hours, he stepped out of this party disaffected in 1892 and joined the Social Democratic Federation (1884-1911). This organization oriented itself under Henry Hyndman (1842-1921) increasingly on Marxism , whereupon Lansbury also resigned in 1903 and became a member of the Independent Labor Party (1893-1975). This party joined the Labor Party in 1906 , but remained an independent part in this.

In the general election elected in 1910, Lansbury was until 1912 a deputy of his party in the House of Commons . After his entry for women's suffrage was unsuccessful, he resigned his lower house and did not run again until 1922. Once again he reached a seat in parliament, which he held until his death in 1940. As the successor to Arthur Henderson , Lansbury was chairman of the Labor Party from 1932 to 1935 . His successor in this position was Clement Attlee .

Lansbury was in 1912 co-founder and editor of the newspaper Daily Herald as a party journal of the Labor Party, today - without party affiliation - is succeeded by The Sun .

As a pacifist and esotericist

Lansbury was considered a pacifist , he campaigned for sanctions against Italy because of the Italian-Ethiopian war . In 1937 he visited Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in an effort to prevent the looming Second World War . From 1937 to 1940 he was President of War Resisters International .

In 1914 Lansbury joined the Theosophical Society Adyar (Adyar-TG), he remained connected to theosophy until the end of his life. With Annie Besant he shared the commitment to more social justice.

Works (selection)

  • To Admirer of Lenin . Boswell Printing & Publishing Co., London 1929.
  • London for Labor . Publication Department, London 1909.
  • Looking backwards and forwards . Blackie & Son, London and Glasgow 1935.

literature

  • Bob Holman: Good old George, the Life of George Lansbury . Lion Publishing, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0745915744 .
  • Raymond William Postgate: The Life of George Lansbury . Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1951.
  • Jonathan Schneer: George Lansbury . Manchester University Press, Manchester 1990, ISBN 0719021707 .
  • John Shepherd: George Lansbury, at the Heart of Old Labor . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 0198201648 .

Web links

Commons : George Lansbury  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Margaret Wander Bonanno: Angela Lansbury: A Biography . New York, 1987, St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0312005610 .
  2. ^ Rob Edelman, Audrey E Kupferberg: Angela Lansbury: A Life on Stage and Screen . Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Publishing Corporation, 1996.
  3. ^ Martin Gottfried: Balancing Act: The Authorized Biography of Angela Lansbury . New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1999. ISBN 0-316-32225-3 .
personal data
SURNAME Lansbury, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician (Labor), member of the House of Commons, pacifist and theosophist
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Halesworth , Suffolk , England , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 1940
Place of death London , England , UK