John Strachey (politician)

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Evelyn John St Loe Strachey PC (21 October 1901 – 15 July 1963) was a British Labour politician and writer.

The son of John St Loe Strachey, editor of The Spectator, he was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. At Oxford, he was editor, with Robert Boothby, of the Oxford Fortnightly Review. He later joined The Spectator.

He joined the Labour Party in 1923 and was editor of the Socialist Review and The Miner.

He unsuccessfully contested the Aston Manor Division of Birmingham in 1924 and was elected as Member of Parliament for Aston from 1929-31 and was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Oswald Mosley. He resigned from the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1931 for Mosley's New Party. Following the New Party's drift towards fascism he resigned to become a supporter of the Communist Party, contesting the Aston constituency as an independent. He assisted the publisher Victor Gollancz in founding the Left Book Club in 1936. As the author of The Coming Struggle for Power (1932), and a series of other significant works, Strachey was one of the most prolific and widely read British Marxist-Leninist theorists of the 1930s.

He broke with the Communists in 1940 and joined the Royal Air Force. He transferred to the Air Ministry and made a reputation as an air commentator for the BBC. He was adopted as Labour Candidate for Dundee in 1943 and was again elected to Parliament as Labour MP for Dundee from 1945-50. He served as Under-Secretary of State for Air in 1945, and is widely credited as having been responsible for ignoring Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris and, by implication, Bomber Command from the Victory Honours List. This may have been retaliation for Harris' request to have Strachey removed from his wartime post within the Directorate of Bombing Operations due to Strachey's changeable political persuasions. As Minister of Food in 1946, he was involved in the abortive Tanganyika groundnut scheme. He became a Privy Counsellor in 1946. On the division of the Dundee constituency, he was elected as Labour MP for Dundee West in 1950, holding the seat until 1963. He was Secretary of State for War, 1950-51. He supported Hugh Gaitskell as successor to Clement Attlee in 1955.

Strachey died in 1963. His death caused a by-election in his Dundee West constituency, won by Labour's Peter Doig.

[edit] Publications

• Revolution by Reason (1925)
• Workers' Control in the Russian Mining Industry, (1928)
• The Coming Struggle for Power (1932)
• The Menace of Fascism (1933)
• The Nature of Capitalist Crisis (1935)
• The Theory and Practice of Socialism (1936)
• What Are We to Do? (1938)
• Why You Should be a Socialist (1938)
• A Programme for Progress (1940)
• A Faith to Fight For (1941)
• Post D (1941/1942)
• Arise to Conquer (1944)
• Contemporary Capitalism (1956)
• The End of Empire (1959)
• On the Prevention of War (1962)
• The Strangled Cry (1962)

[edit] See also

• Strachey Baronets

[edit] References

• International Who's Who, 1945-1946 ("Strachey, Evelyn John St. Loe, M.P.")

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Evelyn Cecil	Member of Parliament for Aston 1929–1931	Succeeded by Arthur Hope
Preceded by Florence Horsbrugh Dingle Foot	Member of Parliament for Dundee with Thomas Cook 1945–1950	Succeeded by Constituency abolished
Preceded by New constituency	Member of Parliament for Dundee West 1950–1963	Succeeded by Peter Doig
Political offices
Preceded by Ben Smith	Minister of Food 1946–1950	Succeeded by Maurice Webb
Preceded by Emanuel Shinwell	Secretary of State for War 1950–1951	Succeeded by Anthony Head