Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, known as Dick Crossman, (15 December
1907 – 5 April 1974) was a British Labour Party politician, author and editor of the
New Statesman. One of the most prominent hard
left socialist intellectuals, he was one of the Labour Party's leading anti-communists and Zionists.
Youth and education
The son of a judge, he grew up in Oxfordshire and attended Winchester College. He studied Classics at New College, Oxford, receiving a double first and becoming a Fellow
in 1931. He was a councillor on Oxford City Council, becoming head of the Labour group in 1935.
World War II service
At the outbreak of World War II he joined the Civil
Service, serving in the Psychological Warfare Department under
Robert Bruce Lockhart. During this time he produced anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts for Radio of the European Revolution, set up by the
Special Operations Executive. He eventually became Assistant Chief of the
Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF and was awarded
an OBE for his wartime service. In the spring of 1945 he was one of the
first British officers to enter the Dachau concentration camp.
Member of Parliament
He entered the House of Commons in 1945, as
Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry East, a seat he would hold until shortly before his death in
1974. During 1945-46 he served, on the nomination of the Foreign Secretary Ernest
Bevin, as a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine. The
committee's report, submitted in April 1946, included a recommendation for 100,000 Jewish "displaced persons" to be permitted to
enter Palestine. The recommendation was rejected by the British government, after which
Crossman led the socialist opposition to the official British policy for Palestine. This incurring Bevin's enmity, and may have
been the primary factor which prevented Crossman from achieving ministerial rank during the 1945-51 government.
He was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party
from 1952 until 1967, and Chairman of the Labour Party in 1960-61. Crossman cemented his role as a leader of the left
wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1947
by co-authoring the Keep Left pamphlet, and later became one of the more prominent
Bevanites.
In 1957, Crossman joined Aneurin Bevan and Morgan
Phillips in a controversial lawsuit for libel against The Spectator
magazine, which had described the men as drinking heavily during a socialist conference in Italy.
Having sworn that the charges were untrue, the three collected damages from the magazine. Many years later, Crossman's
posthumously published diaries confirmed the truth of The Spectator's charges.
Crossman was Labour's spokesman on Education before the 1964 General
Election, but upon forming the new Government Harold Wilson appointed Crossman
Minister of Housing and Local Government. In 1966 he became
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons.
He was Secretary of State for Health and Social Security
from 1968 to 1970, in which position he worked on an ambitious
proposal to supplement Britain's flat state pension with an earnings-related element. The proposal had not, however, been passed
into law at the time the Labour Party lost the 1970 general election. During the preceding months of great political turmoil
before the election loss, Crossman had also even been considered, however briefly, as a late option to replace Wilson as Prime
Minister.
As an author and editor
After the election loss, Crossman resigned from the Labour front bench in 1970 to become editor of the New Statesman
magazine, where he had been both a frequent contributor and assistant editor from 1938 to 1955. He left the New Statesman
in 1972. He died of cancer in April 1974.
Crossman was a prolific writer and editor. He is most famous for his colourful and highly subjective three-volume
Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, covering his time in government from 1964 to 1970,
published despite a legal battle by the government to prevent their publication. He also edited The God That Failed, a collection of anti-Communist
essays published in 1949, and made available his backbench diaries which also eventually found their way into print.
Quotation
- The Civil Service is profoundly deferential – 'Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister!'
Works
- Plato Today New York: Oxford University Press (1939).
- The God That Failed New York: Harper (1950). (editor)
- The Politics of Socialism New York: Atheneum (1965).
- The Myths of Cabinet Government Cambridge: Havard University Press (1972).
Further reading
External links
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