Herbert Morrison

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Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, CH PC (3 January 1888–6 March 1965) was a British Labour Party politician and Cabinet minister. Morrison held various cabinet posts, including Foreign Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Secretary. Morrison was very close to attaining the leadership of the party at various points in his career.

Morrison was the son of a police officer and was born in Lambeth, London. He lost the sight in his right eye at an early age. Morrison, like many early Labour leaders, had little in the way of formal education and left school at 14 to become an errand boy. Morrison's early politics were radical, and he briefly flirted with the Social Democratic Federation over the Independent Labour Party (ILP). However, Morrison eventually returned to the fold and became a pioneer leader in the London Labour Party.

Morrison was elected to the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney in 1919 when the Labour Party won control of the Borough. He was Mayor in 1920-21. Morrison was also elected to the London County Council (LCC) in 1922 and the following year he became MP for South Hackney in the 1923 General Election, but lost that seat the following year when Ramsay MacDonald's first administration lost the general election.

Morrison returned to Parliament in the 1929 general election, and MacDonald appointed him Minister of Transport. Morrison, like many others in the party, was deeply disheartened by MacDonald's national government. Morrison lost his seat again in 1931.

Morrison continued to sit on the London County Council and in 1933 was elected to lead the Labour Group. Unexpectedly, Labour won the 1934 LCC election and Morrison became Leader of the Council. This gave him control of almost all local government services in London. Morrison's main achievements in London included the unification of the transport system and creating a 'green belt' around the suburbs. He confronted the Government over its refusal to finance the replacement of Waterloo Bridge, and eventually they agreed to pay 60% of the cost of the new bridge.

In the 1935 election Morrison was once again elected to the House of Commons and immediately challenged Clement Attlee for the leadership of the party. He lost badly, a defeat ascribed to his unfamiliarity with the MPs who had served in the previous Parliament. Morrison concentrated on his LCC work.

In 1940 Morrison was appointed as first Minister of Supply by Winston Churchill, but shortly afterwards succeeded Sir John Anderson as Home Secretary. Morrison's London experience in local government was particularly useful during the Blitz, and the Morrison shelter was named after him. However, Morrison had to take many potentially unpopular and controversial decisions by the nature of wartime circumstances.

After the end of the war, Morrison was instrumental in drafting the Labour Party's 1945 manifesto Let us Face the Future. He was the organiser of the general election campaign. Labour won a massive and unexpected victory. Morrison was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons. After Ernest Bevin's resignation as Foreign Secretary, Morrison took over his role, but did not feel at ease in the Foreign Office. His tenure there was cut short by Labour's defeat in the 1951 general election.

Although Morrison had effectively been Attlee's heir apparent since the 1930s, Attlee had always distrusted him. Attlee remained as Leader through the early 1950s, and fought the 1955 election, finally announcing his retirement after Labour's defeat. Morrison was 67 and was seen to be too old to embark on a new leadership. Although he stood, he finished bottom of the three candidates and Hugh Gaitskell won the election.

Morrison stood down at the 1959 general election and was made a life peer as Baron Morrison of Lambeth, of Lambeth in the County of London. He was appointed President of the British Board of Film Censors. He died in 1965, symbolically in the same month as the London County Council was abolished. His grandson Peter Mandelson was a cabinet minister in the Labour government of Tony Blair.

[edit] Further Reading

Herbert Morrison published his Autobiography in 1960.

His other publications included:

Socialisation and Transport, 1933;

Looking Ahead (wartime speeches), 1933;

Parliamentary Government in Britain, 1949.

The main biography is:

Herbert Morrison - Portrait of a Politician, by Bernard Donoughue and George Jones. (Reprinted by Orion with an introduction by Peter Mandelson 2001). ISBN-10: 1842124412

Biographical essays include:

'Herbert Morrison' by John P. Mackintosh in the original Dictionary of National Biography (supplement).

'Herbert Morrison' by Greg Rosen in Kevin Jefferys (ed) Labour Forces IB Taurus, 2003.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Clifford Charles Alan Lawrence Erskine-Bolst	Member of Parliament for Hackney South 1923–1924	Succeeded by George Garro-Jones
Preceded by George Garro-Jones	Member of Parliament for Hackney South 1929–1931	Succeeded by Frances Marjorie Graves
Preceded by Frances Marjorie Graves	Member of Parliament for Hackney South 1935–1945	Succeeded by Herbert William Butler
Preceded by Sir Assheton Pownall	Member of Parliament for Lewisham East 1945–1950	Succeeded by constituency abolished
Preceded by new constituency	Member of Parliament for Lewisham South 1950–1959	Succeeded by Carol Alfred Johnson
Political offices
Preceded by Wilfrid Ashley	Minister of Transport 1929–1931	Succeeded by James Pybus
Preceded by Sir William Ray	Leader of the London County Council 1933–1940	Succeeded by Lord Latham
Preceded by Leslie Burgin	Minister of Supply 1940	Succeeded by Andrew Duncan
Preceded by Sir John Anderson	Home Secretary 1940–1945	Succeeded by Sir Donald Bradley Somervell
Preceded by Arthur Greenwood	Deputy Leader of the Labour Party 1945–1955	Succeeded by Jim Griffiths
Preceded by Lord Woolton	Lord President of the Council 1945–1951	Succeeded by Viscount Addison
Preceded by Anthony Eden	Leader of the House of Commons 1945–1951	Succeeded by James Chuter Ede
Preceded by Clement Attlee As part of the Wartime Coalition, 1942-1945	Deputy Prime Minister 1945–1951	Succeeded by Sir Anthony Eden (1951-1955)
Preceded by Ernest Bevin	Foreign Secretary 1951	Succeeded by Sir Anthony Eden