Jo Grimond

Joseph Grimond, Baron Grimond CH, CBE, TD, PC (29 July 1913 – 24 October 1993) was a British politician, leader of the Liberal Party from 1956 to 1967 and again briefly on an interim basis in 1976.

Jo Grimond was a long-term supporter of Scottish home rule and it was due to his leadership that the party supported the abolition of Britain's nuclear arsenal.^[1]

Early life

Joseph Grimond, also known as "Jo Grimond", was born in St Andrews, Fife, and educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. He became a barrister.

Member of Parliament

After service in World War II, he entered Parliament in the 1950 general election as Liberal Member of Parliament for Orkney and Shetland, in Scotland, continuing to represent the constituency until he retired from politics in 1983.

Leader of the Liberal Party

The party Grimond inherited from former leader Clement Davies commanded barely 2.5% of the vote. Grimond proved to be a man of considerable personal charm and intelligence, with substantial gifts as public speaker and as author. Widely respected as well as trusted, he ensured that by the time he left the leadership in 1967, the Liberals had once again become a notable political force. It was during his tenure that the first post-war Liberal revival took place: under Grimond the Liberals doubled their seats and won historic by-elections at Torrington in 1958, Orpington in 1962, and Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles in 1965. In 1967, he made way for a younger, more dynamic leader, Jeremy Thorpe. In 1976, when Thorpe was forced to resign because of a scandal, Grimond stepped in as caretaker leader until the election of a replacement, David Steel.

Among other posts, Grimond was a barrister and publisher in the 1930s, an army major during World War II, Secretary of the National Trust for Scotland from 1947 to 1949, and held the Rectorships of the University of Edinburgh and the University of Aberdeen and the Chancellorship of the University of Kent at Canterbury (elected in 1970). His many books include The Liberal Future (1959, credited with reinvigorating radical liberalism as a coherent modern ideology), The Liberal Challenge (1963), and Memoirs (1979).

Retirement and death

On leaving the Commons, he was created a life peer as Baron Grimond, of Firth in the County of Orkney. He remained devoted to his former parliamentary constituency, and was buried on Orkney.

Marriage and children

In 1938 he married Laura Bonham Carter, the sister of another life peer (Mark Bonham Carter), the daughter of a life peeress (Violet Bonham Carter), and the granddaughter of a hereditary peer of first creation (H. H. Asquith).

The couple had four children:

• Grizelda "Gelda" Grimond (born 1942), who had a daughter by the film and stage director Tony Richardson.
• John Grimond, a foreign editor of The Economist who in 1973 married Kate Fleming (b. 1946), elder daughter of the writer Peter Fleming and actress Celia Johnson, and has three children with her. He is the main author of The Economist Style Guide
• Magnus Grimond, journalist and financial correspondent, married to travel author Laura Grimond (née Raison).
• Andrew Grimond (1939-1966), a sub-editor of The Scotsman, lived in Edinburgh until his suicide at the age of 26.

Writings

• The Liberal Future (Faber and Faber, London, 1959)
• The Liberal Challenge (Hollis and Carter, London, 1963)
• The Referendum (with Brian Nevel; Rex Collings, London, 1975)
• The Common Welfare (Temple Smith, London, 1978)
• Memoirs (Heinemann, London, 1979)
• A Personal Manifesto (Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1983)
• The St. Andrews of Jo Grimond (Alan Sutton, St. Andrew's, 1992)

Grimond was also a prolific writer of pamphlets: see the McManus biography (below) for a complete list of publications.

References

Further reading

• Peter Barberis, Liberal Lion: Jo Grimond, A Political Life (I.B. Taurus, London, 2005)
• Michael McManus, Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire (Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2001)

Sources

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Jo Grimond
• Jo Grimond (Lord Grimond) 1913–93 biography from the Liberal Democrat History Group