Richard Stokes

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Richard Rapier Stokes MC (* 27. January 1897 in Balham , London , † 3. August 1957 in London) was a British politician of the Labor Party , who until his death in 1957 the 1938 constituency Ipswich as a member of the House of Commons represented and Among other things, was briefly Lord Seal Keeper in 1951 .

Life

Officer, economic manager and member of the House of Commons

Stokes, son of Barrister Phillip Folliot Stokes, trained as an officer at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich after attending Downside School . He served as an officer in the Royal Field Artillery between June 1916 and March 1919 and also took part in combat missions during the First World War on the Western Front . For his military merits and bravery, he was awarded the Military Cross and the French Croix de guerre and was promoted to major in 1917 at the age of 20 .

He was a nephew of the engineer Wilfred Stokes , who in 1915 developed the Stokes mortar named after him , a new type of high-speed gun . In the 1920s, after studying at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, he joined the company Ransomes & Rapier in Ipswich , which was run by his uncle and manufactured cranes as well as railway material. The activity there as one of the directors also took him on numerous trips abroad to the Middle East . In 1927 he became CEO of Ransomes & Rapier and Cochran & Co.

In the general election of November 14, 1935 , Stokes ran for a seat in the House of Commons as a Labor Party candidate in the Glasgow Central constituency , but was defeated by the constituency holder of the Conservative Tories , William Alexander , who received 16,707 votes (55.9 percent), while he got 13,186 votes (44.1 percent).

He was elected to the House of Commons for the first time in a by -election on February 16, 1938 in the constituency of Ipswich , after the previous constituency holder of the Conservative Party , Francis John Childs , shortly beforehand as 1st Baron Belstead in the hereditary nobility (Hereditary Peerage) and thereby became a member of the House of Lords . In his first election he was able to prevail with 27,604 votes against his opponent from the Conservative Party, Harry Willink, who received 24,443 votes.

As a member of parliament, he made further trips to the Near and Middle East and wrote reports on them to politicians such as in 1940 to the then Foreign Minister Edward Wood, 1st Viscount of Halifax after a meeting with the then ambassador of the German Reich in Turkey, Franz von Papen . At the same time he wrote several reports on British policy in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine from 1938 to 1947 .

He was one of the most determined opponents of the Second World War in Great Britain, who particularly tried to avoid war with the German Reich , and founded the Parliamentary Peace Aims Group . During the Second World War he was a critic of the war cabinets of Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill .

Post-war period and Minister in the Attlee Cabinet

On his intervention, the Bad Nenndorf interrogation center was closed in July 1947, which was operated by the British Army of the Rhine in the Wincklerbad in Bad Nenndorf within the British occupation zone from June 1945 to July 1947 immediately after the Second World War .

On February 28, 1950, Stokes was appointed by Prime Minister Clement Attlee to succeed Charles Key as Minister of Works , but was not a member of the Cabinet as such . He had previously criticized the Attlee government for its policies in the Near and Middle East.

In a government reshuffle he took over on April 26, 1951 from Ernest Bevin the office of Lord Privy Seal , which he also took over a cabinet office, while George Brown was his successor as Minister of Public Works. Attlee's government remained as Keeper of the Lord Seal until the end of his term on October 27, 1951. On July 4, 1951, he was head of a delegation to settle the Abadan crisis , which arose after the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry . At the same time he held from July to October 1951, the Office of the Minister of material (Minister of Materials) .

Opposition politician 1951 to 1957

In the early 1950s, Stokes distanced himself from the Labor Party's official stance on Africa and Rhodesia . During the last two weeks of Attlee's administration, two ministers, Commonwealth of Nations Minister Patrick Gordon Walker and Colonial Secretary James Griffiths , gave formal approval for the principles of a Central African Federation , including Southern Rhodesia , Northern Rhodesia and Nyassaland . The support took place against the resistance of Africa and was justified primarily by the fact that a federation could possibly represent an effective border against attacks from South Africa . The subsequent government of Prime Minister Churchill continued to plan for a federation, but weakened security measures for Africans. Against this, the Labor Party spoke out in a vote on March 24, 1953, with 16 right-wing parliamentarians under the leadership of Patrick Gordon Walker abstaining. This so-called Keep Right group also comprised the former ministers for public works George Brown, for nutrition Maurice Webb and the former war secretary Frederick Bellenger as well as the MPs George Hobson , Thomas Reid , Stanley Evans and William Coldrick , who between 1945 and 1955 chairman of the with Labor cooperating co-operative party was.

He was from 1951 to 1952 and again between 1955 and 1956 a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Labor Party. Most recently he was from 1955 to 1957 spokesman for the opposition Labor Group for Defense.

Stokes served in the House of Commons until his death on August 3, 1957 after suffering a myocardial infarction from the aftermath of a car accident on July 21, 1957. He was succeeded as a Member of the House of Commons by Dingle Foot .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Edgerton: Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War , 2011, ISBN 0-199-91150-9
  2. ^ Robert Crawford: 'What is Happening in Europe?' Richard Stokes, Fascism, and the Anti-War Movement in the British Labor Party during the Second World War and After , in: History , Volume 93, Issue 312, pp. 514-530, October 2008
  3. ^ John Buckley: British Armor in the Normandy Campaign , 2004, ISBN 1-13577-401-3 , p. 6
  4. ^ Bertrand Russell, Andrew G. Bone: Détente Or Destruction, 1955-57 , 2005, ISBN 0-41535-837-X , p. 285
personal data
SURNAME Stokes, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stokes, Richard Rapier (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Labor Party politician and member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Balham , London
DATE OF DEATH 3rd August 1957
Place of death London