Patrick Gordon Walker Explained

Honorific-Prefix:The Right Honourable
The Lord Gordon-Walker
Office:Secretary of State for Education and Science
Primeminister:Harold Wilson
Term Start:29 August 1967
Term End:6 April 1968
Predecessor:Anthony Crosland
Successor:Edward Short
Office1:Minister without Portfolio
Primeminister1:Harold Wilson
Term Start1:6 April 1966
Term End1:29 August 1967
Predecessor1:Peter Carington
Successor1:George Thomson
Office2:Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Primeminister2:Harold Wilson
Term Start2:16 October 1964
Term End2:22 January 1965
Predecessor2:Rab Butler
Successor2:Michael Stewart
Office3:Shadow Foreign Secretary
Leader3:Harold Wilson
Term Start3:14 February 1963
Term End3:16 October 1964
Predecessor3:Harold Wilson
Successor3:Rab Butler
Office4:Shadow Home Secretary
Leader4:Hugh Gaitskell
Term Start4:13 May 1957
Term End4:12 March 1962
Predecessor4:Kenneth Younger
Successor4:George Brown
Office5:Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
Primeminister5:Clement Attlee
Term Start5:28 February 1950
Term End5:26 October 1951
Predecessor5:Philip Noel-Baker
Successor5:The Lord Ismay
Office6:Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
Primeminister6:Clement Attlee
Term Start6:7 October 1947
Term End6:28 February 1950
Predecessor6:Arthur Bottomley
Successor6:Angus Holden
Office7:Member of Parliament
for Leyton
Term Start7:31 March 1966
Term End7:8 February 1974
Predecessor7:Ronald Buxton
Successor7:Bryan Magee
Office8:Member of Parliament
for Smethwick
Term Start8:1 October 1945
Term End8:25 September 1964
Predecessor8:Alfred Dobbs
Successor8:Peter Griffiths
Birth Name:Patrick Chrestien Gordon Walker
Birth Date:1907 4, df=yes
Birth Place:Worthing, Sussex, England
Death Place:London, England
Party:Labour
Children:5
Alma Mater:Christ Church, Oxford

Patrick Chrestien Gordon Walker, Baron Gordon-Walker, (7 April 1907 – 2 December 1980) was a British Labour Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years and twice a cabinet minister. He lost his Smethwick parliamentary seat at the 1964 general election in a bitterly racial campaign conducted in the wake of local factory closures.

Early life

Born in Worthing, Sussex, Gordon Walker was the son of Alan Lachlan Gordon Walker, a Scottish judge in the Indian Civil Service. He was educated at Wellington College and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a second in modern history in 1928 and subsequently gained a B. Litt.[1] He was a student (fellow) in history at Christ Church from 1931[2] until 1941.[3]

From 1940 to 1944, Gordon Walker worked for the BBC's European Service, where from 1942 he arranged the BBC's daily broadcasts of the BBC German Service. In 1945, he worked as assistant director of the BBC's German Service working from Radio Luxembourg, travelling with the British forces. He broadcast about the liberation of the German concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, and wrote a book on the subject called The Lid Lifts.[4] [5]

From 1946 to 1948, he was chairman of the British Film Institute.[6]

Political career

He first stood for parliament at the 1935 general election, when he was unsuccessful in the Conservative-held Oxford constituency.[4]

In 1938, he was selected to stand again in the Oxford by-election. The Liberal Party had selected Ivor Davies,[7] who offered to stand down from the by-election if Labour did the same and backed a Popular Front candidate against the Conservatives.[8] Eventually, Gordon Walker reluctantly stood down and both parties supported Sandy Lindsay as an Independent Progressive.[9] Quintin Hogg, the Conservative candidate, defeated Lindsay in the by-election.

Gordon Walker did not contest the 1945 general election, but was elected later in 1945 as member of parliament (MP) for Smethwick in a by-election on 1 October 1945 after Labour's Alfred Dobbs was killed in a car accident the day after winning the seat at the 1945 general election.[4] After the by-election, Gordon Walker's support in the constituency gradually declined.

Once in parliament, Gordon Walker was promoted rapidly through the ranks of Clement Attlee's Labour government. In 1946, he was appointed a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to Herbert Morrison, the leader of the House of Commons. From 1947 to 1950, he was a parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Commonwealth Relations Office, and in 1950 he joined the cabinet as Secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, serving until Labour's defeat at the 1951 general election.[4]

As Commonwealth secretary in 1950, Gordon Walker persuaded the cabinet to agree to prevent Seretse Khama, the heir to the throne of the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, from becoming its king, on the grounds that he had married a white English woman, Ruth Williams, an inter-racial marriage that had upset Bechuanaland's neighbouring state, apartheid South Africa.

Khama had been brought to Britain by the government under false pretences, ostensibly to talk about his future, and at Gordon Walker's behest he was then prevented from returning to his homeland for five years, subsequently increased to a lifetime ban (although eventually rescinded by a later, Conservative, government). Khama said the unexpected and earth shattering news of his exile was given to him by Gordon Walker in an "unemotional" and "unfeeling" manner. "I doubt that any man has been asked to give up his birthright in such cold, calculating terms," he said.[10]

After the 1964 general election, following a successful career in opposition, Gordon Walker became foreign secretary in the Labour government; he had held the shadow role for the previous year.

Although Labour did win that election to end 13 years of Conservative rule, Gordon Walker was defeated in controversial circumstances by the Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths. Smethwick had been a focus of immigration from the Commonwealth but the economic and industrial growth of the years following the Second World War were coupled with local factory closures, an ageing population and a lack of modern housing. Griffiths ran a campaign critical of the opposition's, and the government's, policies, including immigration policies. Griffiths' supporters made wide use of the slogan "If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour". Griffiths did not accept that he had invented the slogan, but steadfastly refused to condemn it.[4] [11]

Despite, therefore, not being an MP or peer able to answer to Parliament, Gordon Walker was appointed to the Foreign Office by Harold Wilson. To resolve this unusual situation, he stood for the normally "safe" Labour constituency of Leyton in the Leyton by-election in January 1965; however, he lost, and was finally forced to resign as foreign secretary.[4] After a sabbatical conducting research in Southeast Asia, he finally won Leyton in the 1966 general election. Following this election, he sat in the cabinet in 1967–68, first as minister without portfolio, then as secretary of state for education and science. On his retirement from the cabinet in 1968, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour.[4]

Gordon Walker retired from the House of Commons at the February 1974 general election. On 4 July that year, he was made a life peer as Baron Gordon-Walker, of Leyton in Greater London, in 1974 and was briefly a member of the European parliament.[4]

Personal life

In 1934 he married Audrey Muriel Rudolf. They subsequently had twin sons and three daughters. Lord Gordon-Walker died in London in 1980, aged 73.[4]

Bibliography

Sources

External links

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Notes and References

  1. Oxford University Calendar 1932, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1932, pg.268, 817.
  2. Oxford University Calendar 1932, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1932, pg.541.
  3. The Times, 3 December 1980, p.19 col.6
  4. Pearce (2004)
  5. Book: Celinscak, Mark. Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp. 2015. University of Toronto Press. Toronto. 9781442615700.
  6. BFI Annual Reports, London: BFI
  7. http://liberalhistory.org.uk/uploads/34-35-Spring-Summer%25202002.pdf Liberal History, spring 2002
  8. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=MQGAXGB4GLkC&dq= By-Elections in British Politics
  9. Book: Eaden. James. Renton. David. The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920. limited. 2002. Palgrave. 0-333-94968-4. 67.
  10. Williams, Susan. 2006. Colour Bar. Allen Lane. p 125-126
  11. Buettner . Elizabeth . 'This is Staffordshire not Alabama': Racial Geographies of Commonwealth Immigration in Early 1960s Britain . The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Publication Details, Including Instructions . 2014 . 42 . 4 . 710-740 . 10.1080/03086534.2014.962929 . 22 April 2024.