John Robert Clynes (27 March 1869 – 23 October 1949) was a British
trade unionist and Labour Party politician. He
was a Member of Parliament for 35 years, and led the party in its breaktrough at
the 1922 general election.
The son of the labourer, Patrick Clynes, he was born in Oldham on 27th March 1869 and began
work in a local cotton mill when he was 10 years old. At 16 he wrote a series of articles about child labour in the textile
industry and in 1886 he helped form the Piercers' Union. In 1892,
Clynes became an organiser for the Lancashire Gasworkers' Union and came in contact with the
Fabian Society. He joined the Independent
Labour Party and attended the 1900 conference that formed the Labour Representation Committee which became the Labour Party.
Clynes stood for the new party in the 1906 general election and
was elected to Parliament for Manchester North East becoming one of Labour's bright stars and was
elected vice-chairman of the party in 1910. During the First World
War Clynes was a supporter of British military involvement and in 1917 became Parliamentary
Secretary of the Ministry of Food in the Lloyd George coalition government.
Clynes became leader of the party following the war and led it through its major breakthrough in the 1922 general election when Labour went from 52 seats to 142.
Ramsay MacDonald had resigned as Labour leader in 1914
due to his wartime pacifism and lost his seat in the 1918 general
election. MacDonald returned to the House of Commons in 1922. MacDonald's pacifism had been forgiven and when the newly titled position of "Leader of the Labour Party" and
"Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party" was elected, Clynes was narrowly beaten by MacDonald.
When MacDonald became Prime Minister he made Clynes the party's
leader in the Commons until the government was defeated in 1924. In the second MacDonald government
of 1929-1931, Clynes served as Home
Secretary. In 1931, Clynes sided with Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury against MacDonald's support for austerity measures to deal with the Great Depression and split with MacDonald when he left Labour to form a
National Government. Clynes was one of Labour's casualties in the
1931 election, losing his Manchester Platting seat, but he regained the constituency in
1935 and remained in the House of Commons until
his retirement in 1945.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
