Harry Nathan, 1st Baron Nathan

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Harry Louis Nathan, 1st Baron Nathan (born February 2, 1889 in London - † October 23, 1963 ) was a British politician ( Liberal Party , Labor Party ). Among other things, he held the office of Minister for Civil Aviation.

Life and activity

Nathan was a son of Justice of the Peace Michael Henry Nathan and his wife Constance. He attended St Paul's School . He then embarked on a legal career as a solicitor and worked for the law firm Herbert Oppenheimer Nathan and Vandyk. He volunteered to run the Brady Working Lads' Club , London's oldest and largest club for young people of the Jewish faith.

As a participant in the First World War , in which he was used in Gallipoli, Egypt and France, Nathan achieved the rank of major.

In the 1920s Nathan became a consultant for the British Zionist Organization and various Jewish bodies in Palestine .

In the elections of 1924 Nathan ran for the first time for the British House of Commons . He ran for the Liberal Party in the constituency of Whitechapel and St. George, but was not elected. In 1929 he finally succeeded in moving into the lower house for the constituency of Bethnal Green North East. In the election of 1931 he was able to defend his seat.

In 1934 Nathan left the Liberal Party and joined the Labor Party. In the elections of 1935 he ran for the Labor Party in the constituency of Cardiff South and missed his re-entry into parliament with 541 votes.

In 1937, Nathan finally managed to return to the House of Commons as the Labor Party representative for that constituency in a by-election in Wandsworth Central. In 1940 he resigned from his lower house in order to enable Ernest Bevin to move up to the same.

On June 28, 1940 Nathan was raised to hereditary peer as Baron Nathan , of Churt in the County of Surrey . Accordingly, he moved from the lower house to the upper house . During World War II, he served as Chairman of the National Defense Public Interest Committee.

In the period after the Second World War, Nathan held various high government offices: from October 4, 1946 to May 31, 1948 he was Minister for Civil Aviation in the government of Clement Attlee ; before that, from 1945 to 1946 he was State Secretary in the War Ministry for a few months ( Under-Secretary of State for War). Since 1946 he was also a member of the Privy Council , the British Privy Council .

Nathan was attacked by the German National Socialists as one of the most famous Jews in public life in Great Britain. In the spring of 1940 he was placed on the special wanted list by the Reich Main Security Office , a directory of persons who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British island by the Wehrmacht, were to be located and arrested by this subsequent SS special command with special priority.

In the 1950s he assumed duties such as chairing the governmental committee on the law of customs and chairing the committee to investigate the law and practice of charitable trusts ), which resulted in an amendment to the law.

In 1960 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy .

family

Nathan married Eleanor Joan Stettauer in 1919. She was the second woman to preside over London County Council from 1947 to 1948. With her he had a daughter, Joyce Constance Ina Nathan (1920–2013), who in 1943 married Sir Bernard Waley-Cohen, 1st Baronet, and a son, Roger Nathan (1922–2007), who inherited his title of nobility in 1963.

Fonts

  • Liberal Points of View (with Harold Heathcote Williams)
  • Liberalism and Some Problems of To-day , 1929 (with Harold Heathcote Williams)
  • Free Trad To-day , 1929.
  • Medical Negligence , 1957.

literature

  • Greville Janner, Derek Taylor: Jewish Parliamentarians , 2008.
  • Harford Montgomery Hyde: Strong for service: the life of Lord Nathan of Churt , 1968.
  • Fred Sklonik, Michael Berenbaum : Encyclopaedia Judaica. Volume 15, p. 9.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Nathan on the special wanted list GB (reproduction of the list on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London). .
  2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 10, 2020 .
predecessor Office successor
New title created Baron Nathan
1940–1963 		Roger Nathan
personal data
SURNAME Nathan, Harry, 1st Baron Nathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nathan, Harry Louis, 1st Baron Nathan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician (Liberal Party, Labor Party)
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1963
Place of death London