Patrick Chrestien Gordon Walker, Baron Gordon-Walker, CH, PC (7 April 1907 – 2 December 1980) was a British Labour Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years and twice a cabinet minister. He lost his Smethwick parliamentary seat at the 1964 general election in a bitterly racial campaign conducted in the wake of local factory closures.
The Lord Gordon-Walker | |
|---|---|
 Gordon Walker in 1969 | |
| Secretary of State for Education and Science | |
| In office 29 August 1967 – 6 April 1968 | |
| Prime Minister | Harold Wilson |
| Preceded by | Anthony Crosland |
| Succeeded by | Edward Short |
| Minister without Portfolio | |
| In office 6 April 1966 – 29 August 1967 | |
| Prime Minister | Harold Wilson |
| Preceded by | Peter Carington |
| Succeeded by | George Thomson |
| Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs | |
| In office 16 October 1964 – 22 January 1965 | |
| Prime Minister | Harold Wilson |
| Preceded by | Rab Butler |
| Succeeded by | Michael Stewart |
| Shadow Foreign Secretary | |
| In office 14 February 1963 – 16 October 1964 | |
| Leader | Harold Wilson |
| Preceded by | Harold Wilson |
| Succeeded by | Rab Butler |
| Shadow Home Secretary | |
| In office 13 May 1957 – 12 March 1962 | |
| Leader | Hugh Gaitskell |
| Preceded by | Kenneth Younger |
| Succeeded by | George Brown |
| Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations | |
| In office 28 February 1950 – 26 October 1951 | |
| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Philip Noel-Baker |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Ismay |
| Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations | |
| In office 7 October 1947 – 28 February 1950 | |
| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Arthur Bottomley |
| Succeeded by | Angus Holden |
| Member of Parliament for Leyton | |
| In office 31 March 1966 – 8 February 1974 | |
| Preceded by | Ronald Buxton |
| Succeeded by | Bryan Magee |
| Member of Parliament for Smethwick | |
| In office 1 October 1945 – 25 September 1964 | |
| Preceded by | Alfred Dobbs |
| Succeeded by | Peter Griffiths |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Patrick Chrestien Gordon Walker 7 April 1907 Worthing, Sussex, England |
| Died | 2 December 1980 (aged 73) London, England |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse |
Audrey Muriel Rudolf
(m. 1934) |
| Children | 5 |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
Early life
editBorn in Worthing, Sussex, Gordon Walker was the son of Alan Lachlan Gordon Walker, a Scottish judge in the Indian Civil Service. He was educated at Wellington College and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a second in modern history in 1928 and subsequently gained a B. Litt.[1] He was a student (fellow) in history at Christ Church from 1931[2] until 1941.[3]
From 1940 to 1944, Gordon Walker worked for the BBC's European Service, where from 1942 he arranged the BBC's daily broadcasts of the BBC German Service. In 1945, he worked as assistant director of the BBC's German Service working from Radio Luxembourg, travelling with the British forces. He broadcast about the liberation of the German concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, and wrote a book on the subject called The Lid Lifts.[4][5]
From 1946 to 1948, he was chairman of the British Film Institute.[6]
Political career
editHe first stood for parliament at the 1935 general election, when he was unsuccessful in the Conservative-held Oxford constituency.[4]
In 1938, he was selected to stand again in the Oxford by-election. The Liberal Party had selected Ivor Davies,[7] who offered to stand down from the by-election if Labour did the same and backed a Popular Front candidate against the Conservatives.[8] Eventually, Gordon Walker reluctantly stood down and both parties supported Sandy Lindsay as an Independent Progressive.[9] Quintin Hogg, the Conservative candidate, defeated Lindsay in the by-election.
Gordon Walker did not contest the 1945 general election, but was elected later in 1945 as member of Parliament (MP) for Smethwick in a by-election on 1 October 1945 after Labour's Alfred Dobbs was killed in a car accident the day after winning the seat at the 1945 general election.[4] After the by-election, Gordon Walker's support in the constituency gradually declined.
Once in parliament, Gordon Walker was promoted rapidly through the ranks of Clement Attlee's Labour government. In 1946, he was appointed a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to Herbert Morrison, the leader of the House of Commons. From 1947 to 1950, he was a parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Commonwealth Relations Office, and in 1950 he joined the cabinet as Secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, serving until Labour's defeat at the 1951 general election.[4]
As Commonwealth secretary in 1950, Gordon Walker persuaded the cabinet to agree to prevent Seretse Khama, the heir to the throne of the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, from becoming its king, on the grounds that he had married a white English woman, Ruth Williams, an inter-racial marriage that had upset Bechuanaland's neighbouring state, apartheid South Africa.
Khama had been brought to Britain by the government under false pretences, ostensibly to talk about his future, and at Gordon Walker's behest he was then prevented from returning to his homeland for five years, subsequently increased to a lifetime ban (although eventually rescinded by a later, Conservative, government). Khama said the unexpected and earth shattering news of his exile was given to him by Gordon Walker in an "unemotional" and "unfeeling" manner. "I doubt that any man has been asked to give up his birthright in such cold, calculating terms," he said.[10]
After the 1964 general election, following a successful career in opposition, Gordon Walker became foreign secretary in the Labour government; he had held the shadow role for the previous year.
Although Labour did win that election to end 13 years of Conservative rule, Gordon Walker was defeated in controversial circumstances by the Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths. Smethwick had been a focus of immigration from the Commonwealth but the economic and industrial growth of the years following the Second World War were coupled with local factory closures, an ageing population and a lack of modern housing. Griffiths ran a campaign critical of the opposition's, and the government's, policies, including immigration policies. Griffiths' supporters made wide use of the slogan "If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour". Griffiths did not accept that he had invented the slogan, but steadfastly refused to condemn it.[4][11]
Despite, therefore, not being an MP or peer able to answer to Parliament, Gordon Walker was appointed to the Foreign Office by Harold Wilson. To resolve this unusual situation, he stood for the normally "safe" Labour constituency of Leyton in the Leyton by-election in January 1965; however, he lost, and was finally forced to resign as foreign secretary.[4] After a sabbatical conducting research in Southeast Asia,[citation needed] he finally won Leyton in the 1966 general election. Following this election, he sat in the cabinet in 1967–68, first as minister without portfolio, then as secretary of state for education and science. On his retirement from the cabinet in 1968, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour.[4]
Gordon Walker retired from the House of Commons at the February 1974 general election. On 4 July that year, he was made a life peer as Baron Gordon-Walker, of Leyton in Greater London,[12] in 1974 and was briefly a member of the European Parliament.[4]
Personal life
editIn 1934 he married Audrey Muriel Rudolf. They subsequently had twin sons and three daughters. Lord Gordon-Walker died in London in 1980, aged 73.[4]
Bibliography
edit- Gordon Walker, P. C. (1937). "Capitalism and the Reformation". Economic History Review.
- Gordon Walker, P. C. (1939). An Outline of Man's History. London: N.C.L.C. Publishing Society.
- Restatement of Liberty. London: Hutchinson. 1951.
- The Lid Lifts: An Account of the Author's Experiences During Two Visits to Occupied Germany in the Spring of 1945. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1945.
- The Commonwealth. London: Secker & Warburg. 1962.
- The Cabinet. London: Cape. 1970. ISBN 0-224-61819-9.
- Robert Pearce, ed. (c. 1991). Patrick Gordon Walker: Political Diaries 1932–1971. London: Historians' Press. ISBN 1-872273-05-X.
References
edit- ^ Oxford University Calendar 1932, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1932, pg.268, 817.
- ^ Oxford University Calendar 1932, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1932, pg.541.
- ^ The Times, 3 December 1980, p.19 col.6
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Pearce (2004)
- ^ Celinscak, Mark (2015). Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442615700.
- ^ BFI Annual Reports, London: BFI
- ^ Liberal History, spring 2002 Archived 24 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ By-Elections in British Politics
- ^ Eaden, James; Renton, David (2002). The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920. Palgrave. p. 67. ISBN 0-333-94968-4.
- ^ Williams, Susan. 2006. Colour Bar. Allen Lane. p 125-126
- ^ Buettner, Elizabeth (2014). "'This is Staffordshire not Alabama': Racial Geographies of Commonwealth Immigration in Early 1960s Britain". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Publication Details, Including Instructions. 42 (4): 710-740. doi:10.1080/03086534.2014.962929. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
- ^ "No. 46352". The London Gazette. 24 September 1974. p. 7918.
Sources
edit- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
- Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
- Griffiths, P. (1966). A Question of Colour. The Smethwick Election of 1964. London: Leslie Frewin.
- Pearce, R. (2004) "Gordon Walker, Patrick Chrestien, Baron Gordon-Walker (1907–1980)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 26 August 2007 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- Prem, D. R. (1965). Parliamentary Leper: A History of Colour Prejudice in Britain. Metric Publications/Aligarh University Press.