Stafford Cripps

Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (24 April 1889 – 21 April 1952) was a British Labour Party politician, barrister, and diplomat.

He left science for the law, and in 1913 was called to the bar by the Middle Temple.

He served in the First World War as a Red Cross ambulance driver in France, and then managed a chemical factory producing armaments.

He practised as a barrister during the 1920s, where he specialised in patent cases, and was reported to be the highest paid lawyer in England.

Cripps was a member of the Church of England and in the 1920s became a leader in the World Alliance to Promote International Friendship through the Churches, as his father had been.

At the end of the 1920s, Cripps moved to the left in his political views, and in 1930 he joined the Labour Party.

The next year, he was appointed Solicitor-General in the second Labour government, and received the then customary knighthood.

From 1923 to 1929 Cripps was the group's treasurer and its most energetic lecturer.

He was appointed a King's Counsel in 1927.

A wealthy lawyer by background, he first entered Parliament at a by-election in 1931, and was one of a handful of Labour frontbenchers to retain his seat at the general election that autumn.

In 1931, Cripps was elected to Parliament in a by-election for Bristol East.

As an MP, he was a strong proponent of Marxist social and economic policies, although he had strong faith in evangelical Christianity, and did not subscribe to the Marxist rejection of religion.

In the 1931 general election, Cripps was one of only three former Labour ministers to hold his seat, alongside George Lansbury, who subsequently became party leader, and Clement Attlee, deputy leader.

In 1932, Cripps helped found and became the leader of the Socialist League, which was composed largely of intellectuals and teachers from the Independent Labour Party who rejected its decision to disaffiliate from Labour.

The Socialist League put the case for an austere form of democratic socialism.

He argued that on taking power the Labour Party should immediately enact an Emergency Powers Act, allowing it to rule by decree and thus "forestall any sabotage by financial interests", and also immediately abolish the House of Lords.

In 1936, Labour's National Executive Committee dissociated itself from a speech in which Cripps said he did not "believe it would be a bad thing for the British working class if Germany defeated us".

Cripps also opposed British rearmament:

Cripps was an early advocate of a united front against the rising threat of fascism and he opposed an appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany.

In 1936, he was the moving force behind a Unity Campaign, involving the Socialist League, the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain, designed to forge electoral unity against the right.

Opposed by the Labour leadership, the Unity Campaign failed in its intentions.

Rather than face expulsion from Labour, Cripps dissolved the Socialist League in 1937.

Tribune, set up as the campaign's newspaper by Cripps and George Strauss, survived.

In 1938, Cripps visited Jamaica to investigate violence which took place during mass strikes.

During one of the political meetings he spoke at, the audience included the future pioneer of black civil rights in Britain, Billy Strachan, who had been taken by his father to hear Cripps speak.

During this same meeting, the People's National Party was formed.

He became a leading spokesman for the left-wing and co-operation in a Popular Front with Communists before 1939, in which year he was expelled from the Labour Party.

In early 1939, however, Cripps was expelled from the Labour Party for his advocacy of a Popular Front with the Communist Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and anti-appeasement Conservatives.

During World War II, he served as Ambassador to the USSR (1940–42), during which time he grew wary of the Soviet Union, but achieved great public popularity because on being invaded by Nazi Germany the USSR stated its co-operation with the Allies and restoring peace, causing Cripps to be seen in 1942 as a potential rival to Winston Churchill for the premiership.

He became a member of the War Cabinet of the wartime coalition, but failed in his efforts (the "Cripps Mission") to resolve the wartime crisis in India, where his proposals were too radical for Churchill and the Cabinet, and too conservative for Mahatma Gandhi and other Indian leaders.

He later served as Minister of Aircraft Production, an important post but outside the inner War Cabinet.

When Winston Churchill formed his wartime coalition government in 1940 he appointed Cripps Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the view that Cripps, who had Marxist sympathies, could negotiate with Joseph Stalin who had a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

Cripps rejoined the Labour Party in 1945, and after the war; served in the Attlee ministry, first as President of the Board of Trade and between 1947 and 1950 as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The economy improved after 1947, benefiting from American money given through grants from the Marshall Plan as well as loans.

However, the pound had to be devalued in 1949.

He kept the wartime rationing system in place to hold down consumption during an "age of austerity", promoted exports and maintained full employment with static wages.

The public especially respected "his integrity, competence, and Christian principles".

Cripps was born in Chelsea, London, the son of Charles Cripps, a barrister and later Conservative MP, and the former Theresa Potter, the sister of Beatrice Webb and Catherine Courtney.

Cripps grew up in a wealthy family and was educated at Winchester College, where the Headmaster described him as "a thoroughly good fellow" and at University College London, where he studied chemistry.

Labour party member and historian Kenneth O. Morgan claimed of his role in the latter position that he was "the real architect of the rapidly improving economic picture and growing affluence from 1952 onwards".