Percy Harris

Sir Percy Alfred Harris, 1st Baronet (born March 6, 1876 in Kensington , London , † June 28, 1952 ) was a British politician of the Liberal Party .

Life and activity

Harris was the second son of Wolf Harris (1833-1926), who came to Great Britain as an immigrant from Poland. He attended Harrow School and then studied at Trinity Hall at Cambridge University . In 1899 he was admitted to the bar.

In the British general election in 1906, Harris ran for a seat in the House of Commons for the first time: He ran in the Ashford constituency, but was narrowly defeated - with less than 400 votes behind - against the conservative Laurence Hardy . A candidacy in the January 1910 general election in Harrow constituency also ended in defeat.

On the occasion of a by-election in Harborough constituency in 1916, Harris finally managed to move into the House of Commons , the British Parliament, on the third attempt as a member of the Liberal Party , of which he initially belonged for almost two years until the end of the First World War. In the general election of December 1918, in which he was defeated by the candidate Keith Alexander Fraser, Harris lost his seat in the House of Commons again for the time being. The background to this was that in the internal split in the Liberal Party that occurred in the last phase of the First World War, he sided with the minority group around Herbert Henry Asquith , which opposed the coalition government formed in 1915 between the Liberals and the Conservatives , while the majority of the party around its majority leader David Lloyd George , who also served as Prime Minister since 1916, considered this coalition government to be the right one and wanted to continue it beyond the end of the war. Accordingly, in the general election held shortly after the end of the war, two liberal candidates (but not a conservative one) competed against each other in Harris' constituency: a unionist, i.e. H. the coalition with the Conservatives in favor, candidate, Fraser, as well as Harris as opponent of this cooperation. Since Harris 'opponent had the support of the coalition government as well as the majority group of the Liberals around Lloyd George, and he also had strong backing in the newspapers in Harris' constituency, which are largely controlled by supporters of the coalition government, he was able to prevail against him as the holder of the mandate.

Four years later, in the 1922 general election, Harris was finally able to return to the House of Commons as a Liberal candidate in London's Bethnal Green South West constituency. He was a member of this electoral district for twenty-three years without interruption until the general election in summer 1945. In this election, which ended in a landslide victory for the Labor Party, he lost his seat to Labor candidate Percy Holman . An attempt by Harris in the general election of 1950 to recapture his old parliamentary seat (or the seat for the new Bethnal Green constituency created by amalgamating his previous constituency and another constituency) failed: In this election, the last to the when he took office, he lagged behind the mandate holder with more than 10,000 votes. Harris' mandate was re-elected five times in the 1923, 1924, 1929, 1931 and 1935 general elections during the twenty-three years of his membership in the UK Parliament. Harris was a member of the British Parliament for a total of twenty-nine years (1916-1945) for a total of twenty-five years (1916-1918 and 1922-1945).

On January 14, 1932, he was given the hereditary title of Baronet , of Bethnal Green in the County of London .

On the occasion of the split in the Liberal Party in 1931, due to differences of opinion on the question of free trade, Harris joined Herbert Samuel's group, which advocated that the Liberals in the all-party government should consist of Conservatives, Labor and Liberals should remain to fight to maintain free trade, while the opposing group advocated an exit. When the all-party government finally turned against free trade, and the group around Samuel left the government, Harris also went into the opposition.

In 1935, Harris was appointed to succeed Walter Rea as chief whip of the liberal faction in the lower house. In this position he was tasked with enforcing parliamentary group discipline. In the same year he was appointed to the British Privy Council.

During the Second World War, Harris was given the post of Deputy Leader (Deputy Leader) of the Liberal Group in Parliament in 1940 in addition to his role as chief whip of the Liberal parliamentary group. He held both offices until 1945. Reason for Harris' appointment as deputy leader of the Liberals was that the chairman of the Liberal Party Archibald Sinclair had entered the Churchill war government in 1940 as minister, so that there were corresponding shifts in the leadership of the faction .

At the end of the 1930s, the National Socialist police authorities classified Harris as an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin placed him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who would be removed from the British Isles in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Occupation troops following special SS commandos should be located and arrested with special priority.

In addition to his membership in the House of Commons, Harris was also a member of the London City Council from 1907 to 1934 as a member of the Bethnal Green Southwest district. After he was first elected in these in 1907, his mandate was confirmed in seven subsequent city council elections (1913, 1919). In 1915 he was appointed deputy chairman of the city council ( deptuy chairman ). In 1946 and 1949 he was elected twice to the London City Council, to which he belonged as the only Liberal MP during the following term of office.

family

Since 1901 Harris was married to Marguerite Frieda Bloxam (1877–1962), with whom he had two sons. Harris's great-grandson is former MP Matthew Taylor .

Fonts

• Forty Years In and Out of Parliament , 1947.

Literature and web links

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . 2004.
• Sir Percy Harris at Hansard (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Harris on the special wanted list GB .

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baronet, of Bethnal Green 1932-1952	Jack Harris