Richard Acland

Sir Richard Thomas Dyke Acland, 15th Baronet (born November 26, 1906 in Broadclyst , Devon, † November 24, 1990 in Exeter ) was a British politician ( Liberal Party , British Common Wealth Party, Labor Party ).

Life and activity

Acland was the son of Sir Francis Dyke Acland, 14th Baronet , a longtime Liberal MP in the British Parliament. In his youth he attended rugby school and then studied at Balliol College, Oxford University . He then became a lawyer. In 1939 he inherited the title of nobility Baronet , of Columb John in the County of Devon, created in 1644 in the Baronetage of England from his father .

In the general election of 1935, Acland was elected as a candidate for the Liberal Party in the Barnstaple constituency in the House of Commons , the British Parliament. He was a member of this board for ten years until the general election in the summer of 1945. Previously, he had already applied for a seat in the House of Commons in the elections of 1929 (in the Torquay constituency) and 1931 (in the Barnstaple constituency), but had always defeated his conservative opponents. In 1942 he left the Liberals and joined the Common Wealth Party, which he co-founded. In the election of the summer of 1945 - which was linked to a general collapse of the Common Wealth Party, which lost all but one parliamentary seat - Acland lost his seat to the conservative candidate Christopher Peto .

Politically, under the impression of the success of the fascist systems on the European continent in the 1930s, Acland moved further and further to the left, so that inwardly he ultimately largely alienated himself from the Liberal Party. When the Second World War broke out, he professed his support for socialism. In his book Our Struggle , which appeared in February 1940, he advocated the establishment of a Christian socialist system as the basis for the political future of Great Britain and all of Europe. In the Common Wealth Party he founded together with J. Priestley in July 1942 after his official resignation from the Liberal Party - which achieved successes in some by-elections during the war and seats in the House of Commons previously occupied by the established parties, could conquer - Acland was considered the dominant figure, so that he was at times traded as one of the coming men of British politics. His public appearances as a speaker during the war years were very well received by the population, so that he almost always spoke in front of full houses. Acland politically established the Common Wealth Party as a force on the left of the Labor Party but on the right of the Communists. The party called for the socialization of production facilities and resources as well as the products of agricultural and industrial production themselves, as well as a general reduction of private property and a communalization of large property. She also advocated the release of the British colonies to independence.

At the end of the 1930s, the National Socialist police officers classified Acland 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 the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be in the case A successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special SS commandos with special priority.

In the wake of the general dissolution of the Common Wealth Party, Acland joined the Labor Party in 1945. On the occasion of a by-election in November 1947 in the constituency of Gravesend, he then succeeded in returning to parliament as a candidate for the Labor Party, which this time he was a member of until 1955.

In 1955, Acland resigned in protest at the Labor Party's support for the Conservative government's decision to nuclear arm Britain. In his attempt to defend his lower house in the parliamentary election of the same year as a non-party candidate, he was defeated by the Conservative candidate.

In September 1955 Acland took a position as a math teacher (maths master) at the Wandsworth Grammar School in Sutherland Grove, London. Politically, he emerged again in 1957 when he participated in the founding of the Camapgin for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the largest British organization promoting a policy of nuclear disarmament.

From 1959 until his retirement in 1974, Acland taught at St. Luke's College of Education in Exeter.

In 1944, in keeping with his socialist beliefs, Acland signed over his inherited country estate near Killerton in Devon (6,880 hectares) to the National Trust. It was the largest donation to land that this foundation received to date.

family

Acland was married to the architect Anne Stella Alford. The two had four sons, including his heir Sir John Dyke Acland, 16th Baronet .

Fonts

• Only one battle , 1937.
• What Really Happened in Berlin. An analysis of the diplomatic correspondence immediately preceding the outbreak of war , 1939.
• Our Struggle , Penguin Books, 1940.
• The Forward March , Allen & Unwin, 1941.
• What It Will Be Like in the New Britain , Victor Gollancz, 1942.
• How It Can Be Done. A Careful Examination of the Ways in which we can, and cannot, advance to the Kind of Britain for which many hope they are fighting , MacDonald, 1943.
• Public Speaking , 1946.
• Keeping Left , 1950.
• Waging Peace. The Need for a Change in British Policy , 1954.
• We Teach Them Wrong. Religion and the Young , 1963.
• A Move to Integrated Curriculum , 1967.

Web links

• Mr Richard Acland at Hansard (English)
• Newspaper article about Richard Acland in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Baronetage: ACLAND of Columb John, Devon at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
2. ↑ The Conservatives and the Labor Party had agreed in a truce in 1940 to set up by-elections during the war to fill vacant lower house seats that had previously been held up by representatives of the other party. Accordingly, the Common Wealth Party was often the only alternative voters could support when sending a signal to the ruling parties, v. a. the Conservatives wanted to send by not occupying a vacant parliamentary seat with a party colleague of the resigned mandate holder, which a v. a. was a widespread practice during 1943 and 1944, which from the point of view of the British people were full of frustration and disappointment.
3. ^ Entry on Acland on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum) .

predecessor	title	successor
Francis Acland	Baronet, of Columb John 1939-1990	John Acland