Denis Nowell Pritt

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Denis Nowell Pritt (usually known as D.N. Pritt 22 September 1887 in Harlesden, Middlesex — 23 May 1972 in Barn End, Basingstoke, Hampshire was a British barrister and Labour Party politician. He was educated at Winchester College and London University.

A member of the Labour Party from 1918, he was infamous as a defender of the Soviet Union under Stalin. In 1932 as part of the Cole's New Fabian Research Bureau's 'expert commission of enquiry' he visited the Soviet Union, and according to Margaret Cole "the eminent KC swallowed it all".^[1]

Pritt was an MP for Hammersmith North from 1935 to 1940, when he was expelled for defending the Soviet invasion of Finland. In 1945 Pritt was returned as an Independent Labour MP, and in 1949 formed the Labour Independent Group with several other 'Fellow travelers' including John Platts-Mills and Konni Zilliacus, who had both also been expelled from the Labour Party for pro-Soviet sympathies. In 1950 Pritt lost his seat in that year's General Election.

Pritt was awarded the 1954 International Stalin Peace Prize and in 1957 became an honorary citizen of Leipzig, which then in East Germany.

[edit] Works

Light on Moscow (1939)
Must the War Spread? (1940)
Federal Illusion (1940)
Choose your Future (1940)
The Fall of the French Republic (1940)
USSR Our Ally (1941)
India Our Ally? (1946)
Revolt in Europe (1947)
A New World Grows (1947)
Star-Spangled Shadow (1947)
The State Department and the Cold War (1948)
Spies and Informers in the Witness-box (1958)
Liberty in Chains (1962)
The Labour Government, 1945-1951 (1963)
Neo-Nazis, the Danger of War (1966)
Autobiography
- From Right to Left (1965)
- Brasshats and Bureaucrats (1966)
- The Defence Accuses (1966)