Sydney Arnold, 1st Baron Arnold

Sydney Arnold

Sydney Arnold, 1st Baron Arnold (13 January 1878 – 3 August 1945) was a radical British Liberal Party politician who later joined the Labour Party and served as a government minister.

A son of W. A. Arnold, of Manchester, he was educated at Manchester Grammar School. As a member of the General Committee of the Manchester Liberal Federation, he served as Honorary Treasurer of the North-West Division of the Free Trade Union.^[1]

He unsuccessfully contested the Conservative seat of Holderness Division of the East Riding of Yorkshire at the December 1910 General Election. He was elected in 1912 as Member of Parliament for Holmfirth in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire at a by-election following the resignation of the long-serving Liberal MP Henry Wilson.

Holmfirth by-election, 1912^[2] Electorate 13,035
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Liberal	Sydney Arnold	4,749	42.0	-15.5
	Unionist	Robert Geoffrey Ellis	3,379	29.8	+2.2
	Labour	William Lunn	3,195	28.2	+13.3
Majority			1,370	12.2	-17.7
Turnout				86.9
	Liberal hold		Swing	-8.8

In 1914 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jack Pease, the President of the Board of Education. He was also appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Edwin Samuel Montagu the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.^[3] During the war he served as a captain in the South Staffordshire Regiment.^[1]

When his constituency was abolished for the 1918 general election, he was elected for the new Penistone constituency against a Coalition Government endorsed Unionist candidate. He supported a levy on capital and the nationalisation of the mines and railways.^[4] He resigned that seat due to ill-health in 1921.

General Election 1918: Penistone^[5] Electorate
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Liberal	Capt. Sydney Arnold	7,338	39.4
	Unionist	Maj. Phillip Gatty Smith	6,744	36.2
	Independent Labour	Frederick William Southern	4,556	24.4
Majority			594	3.2
Turnout				58.4
	Liberal win

Labour party

In 1922 he joined the Labour Party and was ennobled in 1924 as Baron Arnold, of Hale in the County of Chester,^[6] and served as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in Ramsay MacDonald's short-lived 1924 Labour Government, and as Paymaster-General from 1929 to 6 March 1931 in Macdonald's second government.

In the late 1930s he was a member of the Parliamentary Pacifist Group. He also served as a member of the council of the Anglo-German Fellowship.^[7] He resigned from the Labour Party, in 1938, on account of disagreement with its Foreign Policy.^[3]

Subsequently, his name was one of twenty-six attached to a letter printed in The Times supporting a policy of appeasement towards Germany. Because signatories included Barry Domvile and other leading members it was dubbed "The Link Letter" and its various signatories, including political moderates such as Arnold, William Harbutt Dawson, Smedley Crooke and Lord Londonderry, came under suspicion as far right supporters.^[7]

References

1 2 Debrett's House of Commons and Judicial Bench, 1916.
↑ British parliamentary election results 1885–1918
1 2 "ARNOLD", Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2012; online edn, October 2012; accessed 18 January 2014.
↑ Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935 (1966)
↑ British parliamentary election results 1918–1949
↑ "No. 32907". The London Gazette. 12 February 1924. p. 1266.
1 2 Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–39, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 185, 329–30

External links

Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sydney Arnold

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Henry Wilson	Member of Parliament for Holmfirth 1912–1918	Constituency abolished
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Penistone 1918–1921	Succeeded by William Gillis
Political offices
Preceded by William Ormsby-Gore	Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies 1924	Succeeded by William Ormsby-Gore
Preceded by The Earl of Onslow	Paymaster-General 1929–1931	Succeeded by (office vacant), then Tudor Walters
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation	Baron Arnold 1924–1945	Extinct

Paymasters General
Parnell Stanley Knatchbull Baring Macaulay Granville Stanley Colchester Stanley Pleydell-Bouverie Lowe Donoughmore Lovaine Wilson Cowper Hutt Goschen Monsell Cave Dufferin Childers Adam Cave Plunket Wolverton Beauchamp Thurlow Beauchamp Brownlow Jersey Windsor Seale-Hayne Hopetoun Marlborough Crossley Causton Ashby Strachie Newton Henderson Compton-Rickett Walters vacant Chamberlain Joynson-Hicks Boyd-Carpenter Gosling vacant Sutherland Onslow Arnold vacant Walters Rochester Hutchison Munster Winterton vacant Cranborne vacant Hankey Jowitt Cherwell vacant Greenwood Marquand Addison Macdonald Cherwell Selkirk vacant Monckton Maulding Mills H. Brooke Boyd-Carpenter Wigg vacant Shackleton Hart Lever Eccles Macmillan Dell Williams A. Maude Pym Parkinson J. Gummer Clarke P. Brooke Caithness Ryder Belstead Cope Heathcoat-Amory Willetts Bates Robinson Primarolo Jowell F. Maude Hancock B. Gummer Stride

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