Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin

Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin (born November 14, 1889 in London , † May 11, 1972 ) was a British politician ( Labor Party ). Among other things, he served as Minister for Urban Planning in the Attlee government from 1945 to 1950 .

Life and activity

Silkin was the son of Baltic emigrants. He attended the Central Foundation School, City Road, London and received a scholarship in mathematics at Worcester College, Oxford University, which he could not start due to the financially troubled circumstances of his family. Instead, he spent a year at London University and then took a position as a clerk in the Port of London before joining a law firm as a clerk, where he gradually worked his way up to a lawyer. He eventually went into business for himself with Lewis Silkin and Partners.

In 1925 Silkin was elected to public office for the first time: that year he became a member of the London County Council for the Labor Party . In this he temporarily chaired the Town Planning Committee and the Housing and Public Health Committee.

On the occasion of a by-election in the Peckham constituency in 1936, Silkin was elected for the first time as a member of the House of Commons , the British Parliament, to which he was a member for fourteen years until 1950.

After the Labor Party won the parliamentary elections in the summer of 1945, Silkin was appointed Minister of Town and Country Planning in the government of Clement Attlee . In this position he was responsible in particular for the supervision of the reconstruction of British cities devastated by the war. He was also responsible for the construction of the city of Stevenage , the first "test tube town" in Great Britain. In 1950 he retired. Hugh Dalton succeeded him as minister .

In 1950, as Baron Silkin , of Dulwich in the County of London, Silkin was raised to the hereditary nobility and thereby became a member of the House of Lords .

family

Silkin was married to Rosa Neft Silkin. The marriage resulted in three sons Arthur, Samuel and John. While the younger two sons, Samuel Silkin and John Silkin, like the father, became members of parliament, members of the British Privy Council and cabinet ministers, the eldest, Arthur Silkin, went through the civil service career.

Fonts

• Working-class Housing on the Continent and the Application of Continental Ideas to the Housing Problem in the County of London: Report , 1936.

predecessor	title	successor
New title created	Baron Silkin 1950–1972	Arthur Silkin