Thomas Lewis Horabin (1896 – 26 April 1956)[1] was a British Liberal Party politician who defected to the Labour Party. He sat in the House of Commons from 1939 to 1950.
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Horabin was born in Merthyr Tydfil[2] and educated at Cardiff High School, and during the First World War he served from 1914 to 1918 with the Cameron Highlanders.[3] After the war he went into business, and became chairman of Lacrinoid Ltd, which made buttons and other synthetic products.[2] Later he worked as a business consultant,[3] and worked with a company formed in 1948 to develop trade with Yugoslavia.[2]
Following the death of Liberal Member of Parliament (MP), Sir Francis Acland in 1939, Horabin was selected by North Cornwall Liberals to defend the marginal seat at the resulting by-election. Along with his party leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, he was a vocal opponent of Chamberlain's Nazi appeasement policy. This issue was central to the debate in the by-election, which he won with an increased majority of 1,464 in a straight fight with the Conservatives.[4] He was also a strong advocate, along with Sir Stafford Cripps, of a Popular Front of left-of-centre parties coming together to defeat the Conservative led National government. He continued to hold the seat until 1950.[1]
In 1944 he authored Politics Made Plain. What the next general election will really be about, a book published by Penguin which urged voters to reject Churchill and the Conservatives at the general election. He was re-elected in 1945 and appointed Liberal Chief Whip by the new Liberal leader, Clement Davies.[3] However, he became frustrated with some of the pro-Conservative sympathies of some of his colleagues. He resigned his post and his party's whip in 1946 to sit as an Independent.[3]
In January 1947, he was seriously injured when a BOAC aircraft in which he was a passenger crashed in Kent.[5] He later sued BOAC for damages, and after hearings in the High Court, the case was settled in November 1952 when he accepted £3,017 in damages.[6]
In November 1947 Horabin took the Labour whip.[7] The North Cornwall Liberals wanted him to resign the seat and seek re-election, but he refused, saying that the principles for which he stood had been set out clearly in his address to voters at the general election.[8]
At the 1950 election, Labour invited him to defend North Cornwall as a Labour candidate, but he refused on the grounds that he would then be campaigning against people who had previously campaigned for him.[2] A further factor was that his injuries in the crash had been severe, keeping him away from Parliament for a year,[7] and a campaign in the scattered North Cornwall constituency might have been too great a strain.[2] Instead he fought Exeter as the Labour candidate, but lost to the sitting Conservative MP John Cyril Maude.[9]
Horabin died in Folkestone on 26 April 1956, aged 60.[2] Having married in 1920, he left a widow, two sons and a daughter.[2]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir Francis Dyke Acland |
Member of Parliament for North Cornwall 1939–1950 |
Succeeded by Sir Harold Roper |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by Percy Harris |
Liberal Chief Whip 1945–1946 |
Succeeded by Frank Byers |