Labour politician, who was leader of the Labour Party from 1931-1935, politician

Archive Obituary, The Times, May 8, 1940

<MR. G. LANSBURY: FORMER LEADER OF THE LABOUR PARTY>

Mr. George Lansbury, Labour M.P. for the Bow and Bromley Division of Poplar since 1922 and Leader of the Opposition from 1932 to 1935, who had been ill for some time in Manor House Hospital, died last night at the age of 81.

For nearly 50 years he was prominently associated with the Labour movement and was widely known as an ardent propagandist, but his pronounced 'Left Wing' sympathies kept him in his position of a detached critic among the movement's official representatives until his inclusion in the second Labour Government as First Commissioner of Works. After the fall of the second Labour Government he became, as the only member of the Cabinet to survive the General Election, the chairman of the much reduced party in Parliament, and was elected as the party's leader when Mr. Henderson resigned that position in 1932. The appointment, although dictated by circumstances, was cordially accepted by the movement at large.

After some years as a Liberal agent Lansbury joined in 1892 the Social Democratic Federation, which later became affiliated to the Labour Party. Under his leadership the Labour Party in Poplar gained widespread notoriety. The policy he followed, which came to be known as 'Poplarism,' was severely criticised, and in 1921 he and other councillors went to prison for refusing to collect rates. He entered national politics in 1895, when he contested Walworth as an S.D.F. candidate for Parliament. He polled only 207 votes. At the General Election of December, 1910, he won Bow and Bromley, holding the seat until 1912. In that year he challenged re-election by resigning his seat, without consultation with the leaders of the Labour Party, in order to test the policy of refusing to allow Parliamentary business to go on until the question of woman suffrage had been settled satisfactorily.

For the next 10 years Lansbury was out of Parliament and devoted himself to Labour journalism and platform activities as chief spokesman of Labour's 'Left Wing'. He helped to found, and for a short time edited, the Daily Herald, which was launched as an unofficial journal in opposition to the Labour Party's organ, the Citizen. During the War Lansbury converted his paper into a weekly, but in 1919 he succeeded in restarting it as a daily newspaper, and edited it as 'Left Wing' journal until 1923, when it was taken over by the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress, Lansbury remaining as general manager but resigning the editorship. He was always a vigorous advocate of friendship with Soviet Russia. He regained the representation of Bow and Bromley in the House of Commons in 1922. He was passed over in the selection of Ministers in the first Labour Government in 1924, but in the second Cabinet formed by Mr. MacDonald in 1929 he held a position as First Commissioner of Works. He was a member of the Central Unemployed Body for London, and served for a number of years on the L.C.C. When he became a Minister in 1929 he was sworn a Privy Councillor.

In 1880 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Isaac Brine. She died in 1933. He left two sons and six daughters.

END

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George Lansbury (1859 - 1940) was a British politician, socialist, Christian pacifist and newspaper editor. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1910 to 1912 and from 1922 to 1940, and leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935.

He was a campaigner for social justice and improved living and employment conditions for the working class, especially in London's East End.

Early years

George Lansbury was born 21 February 1859 in a tollhouse located between the towns of Lowestoft and Halesworth in Suffolk, England. His father, George Lansbury, Sr., was a migrant laborer employed at the time for a contractor engaged in the construction of railroads throughout the eastern part of England. The family lived in a series of hastily-constructed temporary dwellings abandoned as soon as construction in an area was completed. His mother, Anne Lansbury, was of Welsh heritage, married at an early age. Both of his parents drank fairly heavily, a fact which Lansbury's son-in-law and biographer indicates may have influenced George Junior's lifelong abstinence from alcohol.

Lansbury's maternal grandmother and mother were both religiously nonconformist — being strict Sabbatarians — and politically radical. George was brought into politics at a young age, being taught to read with the pages of a newspaper. Lansbury was formally educated in the rural one-room schoolhouses of the day, with the family never staying in one place for long — Sydenham and Greenwich were among the towns which the family called home.

Late in 1868 the Lansbury family moved again, this time to Bethnal Green and later Whitechapel in London's East End.

Entry into politics

His earliest political involvement was with the Liberal Party, which he joined in 1886. He acted as electoral agent for Samuel Montagu in Whitechapel at the General Election of 1886, and for Jane Cobden, who stood for election to the London County Council as a Liberal candidate in 1889. That year Lansbury took up the issue of pressing for a legal eight-hour day, but after failing to secure the support of the National Liberal Federation at their 1889 conference he became increasingly disillusioned by the Liberals. He came into contact with the Social Democratic Federation and, in support of the famous 1889 Dock Strike, joined the recently formed Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union.

Lansbury left the Liberal Party in 1892 and, with friends, formed the Bow and Bromley branch of the Social Democratic Front (SDF). He became a prominent member of that organisation, standing twice as a parliamentary candidate for the SDF in the 1890s, before leaving to join the Independent Labour Party around 1903. In 1910, he became MP for Bow and Bromley, when the sitting Conservative MP retired and the Liberals supported his candidature. Two years later he clashed with Asquith in the House of Commons over the issue of women's suffrage and resigned his seat in order to stand in a by-election in support of the Suffragette movement. However he was unsuccessful, and did not return to the House of Commons for ten years. Continuing to support the campaign for women's suffrage, Lansbury was charged with sedition in 1913 and jailed in Pentonville, during which time he hunger-struck and was temporarily released under the Cat and Mouse Act. In Parliament, he defended authors of a "Don't Shoot" leaflet addressed to soldiers called to deal with militant strikers.

Lansbury helped found, in 1912, the Daily Herald, a socialist newspaper. He became editor just prior to World War I and used the paper to oppose the war, publishing a headline "War Is Hell" at the outbreak of fighting. In 1922 the Herald was desperately short of funds and Lansbury reluctantly handed over the paper to the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party.

He was instrumental in opening the first training school for destitute Poplar children in 1905, called Hutton Poplars and situated near Hutton in the Essex countryside, the model for subsequent children's homes.

As Labour Mayor of Poplar, one of London's poorest boroughs, Lansbury led the Poplar Rates Rebellion in 1921, opposing not only the Government and the London County Council, but leaders of his own party. The borough council, instead of forwarding the precept of collected tax monies to LCC, dispersed the money as aid to the needy. Thirty councillors, including six women, were jailed by the High Court for six weeks. Council meetings during this time were held in Brixton Prison, until the government grew uneasy about the imprisonment and LCC asked the High Court to release the prisoners. A rates revision was achieved and Lansbury returned to Parliament at the 1922 general election, when he regained his old seat of Bromley and Bow.

Between 1925 and 1927 he edited Lansbury's Labour Weekly, which included columns by Ellen Wilkinson and Raymond Postgate and artwork by Reginald Brill.

Lansbury's standing within the Labour party grew and in 1927 he was elected Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party for 1927-28. In 1929 Lansbury became First Commissioner of Works in the second Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. In this capacity, he was associated with the construction, amongst numerous other public works, of a large open air swimming pool on the Serpentine in Hyde Park, popularly known as 'Lansbury's Lido'. This led to him gaining the popular title "First Commissioner for Good Works".

He was sworn into the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1929, allowing him the use of the title The Right Honourable for Life.

Leader of the Labour Party

Two years later the government fell, MacDonald deserted the Labour Party to form the National Government and the party went to a massive defeat in the 1931 General Election. The party's new leader Arthur Henderson and nearly every other leading Labour figure were defeated. Lansbury was the one exception and became Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1931. The following year Henderson stood down from the leadership of the overall party and Lansbury succeeded him.

The Fulham East by-election in June 1933 was dominated by the issue of re-armament against Nazi Germany, following Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations. Lansbury, a lifelong Christian pacifist, sent a message to the constituency in his position as Labour Leader:

I would close every recruiting station, disband the Army and disarm the Air Force. I would abolish the whole dreadful equipment of war and say to the world: "Do your worst."

As a pacifist Lansbury found himself increasingly at odds with the official foreign policy of the party he led. On several occasions he offered to resign the leadership but his parliamentary colleagues dissuaded him, not least because there was no clear alternative leader. However in late 1935 the disagreements became more severe and public. Many in the Labour Party, particularly the Trade Union wing led by Ernest Bevin, were pushing for the party to support sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia. Lansbury fundamentally disagreed with this. In the weeks leading up to the Labour Party Conference Lansbury's position was weakened when both Lord Ponsonby, the Labour leader in the House of Lords, and the Labour frontbencher and National Executive member Sir Stafford Cripps, widely seen as Lansbury's political heir, resigned from their positions because they too opposed sanctions and felt it would be impossible to lead a party when they were in disagreement with it on the major political issue of the day.

Many wondered how Lansbury's leadership could survive, even though he retained an immense personal popularity. At the Conference this was publicly displayed by delegates, but then during a debate on foreign policy Ernest Bevin launched a withering attack on Lansbury. Heavily defeated in the vote, Lansbury determined to resign as leader. At a meeting of Labour MPs called shortly afterwards there was a great reluctance to accept his resignation, partially out of continued support but also because many Labour MPs feared that the next leader would be Arthur Greenwood, widely seen as heavily aligned to trade unionists like Bevin. In a vote the MPs voted by 38 to 7 with five abstentions to not accept Lansbury's resignation, but he insisted on stepping down. When it came to selecting a successor (initially envisaged as a temporary position), Greenwood's name was not considered and the party instead unanimously elected Lansbury's deputy, Clement Attlee.

Lansbury was chair of the No More War Movement, chair of the War Resisters' International, 1936–1940, and President of the Peace Pledge Union, 1937-1940. He was a critic of British policy towards the Spanish Civil War and worked with Spanish pacifist José Brocca.

His efforts to prevent World War II led him, under the banner Embassies of Reconciliation, to visit most of the heads of government in Europe, including Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He also visited U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He died of cancer on 7 May 1940, aged 81, in Manor House Hospital in North London.

Personal life

Family

George Lansbury married his schoolfriend Elisabeth (Bessie) Jane Brine in 1880. They had twelve children, including Edgar and Daisy Lansbury; and he was the father-in-law of suffragette Minnie Lansbury, Belfast-born actress Moyna MacGill, and historian and novelist Raymond Postgate. George Lansbury was grandfather of actress Angela Lansbury, producers Bruce and Edgar Lansbury, and animator and puppeteer Oliver Postgate.

Historical sites

George Lansbury lived at 39 Bow Road, Tower Hamlets, which was destroyed by German bombing a few months after his death in 1940. The site is now occupied by a block of flats that bears Lansbury's name and carries a memorial plaque. Outside the flats, at the corner of Bow Road and Harley Grove, there is a stone memorial to George Lansbury with an inscription that includes the words "A great servant of the people."

George Lansbury's name and memory live on in the Lansbury Estate and Lansbury Gardens, East London, numerous street names both in London and Halesworth, Suffolk where he was born, and the aforementioned Lansbury's Lido that he founded on the Serpentine in London's Hyde Park.

Christian pacifist and leader of the British Labour Party.

George Lansbury, grandfather of actress Angela Lansbury, was the leader of the British Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. The esteemed historian, A. J. P. Taylor, regards Lansbury as "The most lovable figure in modern politics" due to his integrity at great personal cost and and unwavering, tireless work for peace.

Born in Suffolk, he was influenced by a Government advertising campaing to move to Australia at a young age with his wife, seeking to escape the destitution in late Victorian England. Finding conditions in Queensland to be just as harsh as at home, he returned to England, determined to expose the false advertising in the Government campaign and thereby joined the [Gladstonian] Liberal Party. Here he also became increasingly determined to improve conditions for the working poor in the slums around the major cities. He ran as a councillor in 1889 in order to campaign for legal enshrinement of the Eight Hour Day.

After failing to gain support for these industrial relations reforms from the party, he switched allegiance joined the Social Democratic Foundation in 1892. Lansbury found his relationship with H.M. Hyndman, leader of the SDF, increasingly difficult. Lansbury disliked Hyndman's dictatorial method of running the party, he also disagreed with his Marxist views. Lansbury's socialism had been inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ, whereas Hyndman was a devout follower of Karl Marx, an atheist.

In 1903 Lansbury left the Social Democratic Federation and joined the Independent Labour Party, an organisation that contained a large number of Christian Socialists. Here he was elected to the House of Commons.

In 1912 he resigned his seat on principle in order to campaign for women's suffrage, a rare cause for a man of that era to become involved in. Losing a by-election on this issue, he did not return to parliament for ten years.

In 1913, charged with sedition for his support of the suffragettes, Lansbury was imprisoned in Pentonville.

Peace, however, was his earliest love, and at the age of 11 he silenced his elders with concern over the Franco-Prussian War. In 1900 he braved the jingoist patriotism of the Boer War to stand in the 'khaki' election as a socialist, denouncing the war as wicked. These statements put Lansbury at the very forefront of the modern pacifist movement, which had not moved beyond the narrow confines of Quakerism and other smaller religious sects into the wider public consciousness until after the First World War. Indeed, it was Lansbury who helped pave the way for the birth of modern pacifism due to his unshakeable conviction in its truth at a time when society still accepted warfare and nationalism as something "glorious". Few other secular voices apart from Emily Hobhouse and a few suffragettes were actively denouncing the Boer War.

In 1912, Lansbury founded the newspaper, Daily Herald, which became one of the most active voices in providing opposition to the First World War, publishing a headline "War Is Hell" upon outbreak of fighting.

As Labour Mayor of Poplar, one of London's poorest boroughs, Lansbury was instrumental in opening the first training school for destitute Poplar children in 1905 called Hutton Poplars situated near Hutton in the Essex countryside, the model for subsequent children's homes.

Lansbury then led the Poplar Rates Rebellion in 1921, opposing not only the Government and the London County Council, but leaders of his own party. The borough council, instead of forwarding the precept of collected tax monies to LCC, dispersed the money as aid to the needy. Thirty councillors, including six women, were jailed by the High Court for six weeks. Council meetings during this time were held in Brixton Prison, until the government grew uneasy about the imprisonment and LCC asked the High Court to release the prisoners. A rates revision was achieved and Lansbury returned to Parliament at the 1922 general election, this time standing for the British Labour Party, and he regained his old seat of Bromley and Bow.

Lansbury's standing within Labour continued growing and in 1927 he was elected Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party for 1927-28. In 1929 Lansbury became First Commissioner of Works in the second Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. In this capacity, he was associated with the construction of numerous public works. This led to him gaining the popular title "First Commissioner for Good Works".

Two years later the government fell, MacDonald deserted the Labour party to form the National Government and the party went to a massive defeat in the 1931 General Election. The party's new leader Arthur Henderson and nearly every other leading Labour figure were defeated. Lansbury was the one exception and became Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1931. The following year Henderson stood down from the leadership of the overall party and Lansbury succeeded him.

The Fulham East by-election in June 1933 was dominated by the issue of re-armament against Nazi Germany, following Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations. Lansbury, a lifelong Christian pacifist, sent a message to the constituency in his position as Labour Leader:

"I would close every recruiting station, disband the Army and disarm the Air Force. I would abolish the whole dreadful equipment of war and say to the world 'do your worst'."

By 1935 Lansbury found he was denouncing war in the face of calls for military action due to a deteriorating international scene; Italy had invaded Abyssinia and the Labour Party executive were urging the government to call upon the League of Nations to act. He offered his resignation, but was persuaded by colleagues to stay on as leader. A few days after a moving speech in the Commons, Lansbury offered his resignation to Labour MPs and, despite their refusal to accept, he insisted and they reluctantly agreed.

As a pacifist and devout Christian, Lansbury had found himself increasingly at odds with the official foreign policy of the party he was leading. On several occasions he offered to resign the leadership but his parliamentary colleagues dissuaded him, not least because there was no clear alternative leader. However in late 1935 the disagreements became more severe and public. Many in the Labour Party, particularly the Trade Union wing led by Ernest Bevin, were pushing for the party to support sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia. Lansbury fundamentally disagreed with this. In the weeks leading up to the Labour Party Conference Lansbury's position was weakened when both Lord Ponsonby, the Labour leader in the House of Lords, and the Labour frontbencher and National Executive member Stafford Cripps, widely seen as Lansbury's political heir, resigned from their positions because they too opposed sanctions and felt it would be impossible to lead a party when they were in disagreement with it on the major political issue of the day.

Many wondered how Lansbury's leadership could survive, even though he retained an immense personal popularity. At the Conference this was publicly displayed by delegates, but then during a debate on foreign policy Ernest Bevin launched a withering attack on Lansbury. Heavily defeated in the vote, Lansbury determined to resign as leader. At a meeting of Labour MPs called shortly afterwards there was a great reluctance to accept his resignation, partially out of continued support but also because many Labour MPs feared that the next leader would be Arthur Greenwood, widely seen as heavily aligned to trade unionists like Bevin. In a vote the MPs voted by 38:7 to not accept Lansbury's resignation, but he insisted on stepping down. When it came to selecting a successor (initially envisaged as a temporary position), Greenwood's name was not considered and the party instead unanimously elected Lansbury's deputy, Clement Attlee. As Attlee noted:

"Lansbury was by nature an evangelist rather than a Parliamentary tactician. Yet during those years in which he led the small Party in the House he showed great skill and powers of everyday leadership. A leading Conservative once replied to a Labour Member who said that he thought George Lansbury was one of the best men he had ever known - The best! Is that all? He's the ablest Opposition Leader that I have ever known." It was, of course, a great source of strength to him that he commanded the personal affection of his followers. He had also a wise tolerance - an attribute which is not so common in the enthusiast."

Lansbury was chair of the No More War Movement, chair of the War Resisters' International, 1936-1940, Chairman of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship and President of the Peace Pledge Union, 1937-1940. He was a critic of British policy towards the Spanish Civil War and worked with Spanish pacifist José Brocca.

His efforts to prevent World War II led him, under the banner Embassies of Reconciliation, to visit most of the heads of government in Europe, including, controversially, both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He also visited U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He was an unusually popular politician, an elder statesman with a considerable following. Amongst his passionate supporters were writers and intellectuals such as Virginia Woolf, Vera Brittain and Aldous Huxley.

One of the few politicians ever formally to move withholding all money from the armed forces, and thereby to abolish them, Lansbury came closer than any other political leader to turning Britain into a true pacifist state. His memoirs indicate that he was not naive about the threat posed by Hitler and Mussolini and he was indeed prepared to live out Christ's command to turn the other cheek. By the same token, his pacifism was in no way "passive" as he worked constructively for peace and sought ways to deal with the totalitarian leaders without giving into either conflict or appeasement. Dick Sheppard, founder of the Peace Pledge Union, of which Lansbury was President at the time of his death, called him 'Public Pacifist Number One'.

Lansbury's greatest legacy is perhaps his attempt to lead a truly Christian life, beyond just lip service, and maintain his personal integrity whilst leading a major party in the world of politics.

He died at the age of 81 at Highgate Hospital, North London. Burial details unknown at this time.

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