Wilfrid Roberts

Wilfrid Hubert Wace Roberts (28 August 1900 – 26 May 1991) was a radical British Liberal Party politician who later joined the Labour Party.

Roberts was born in York to Charles Henry Roberts, who became Liberal MP for Lincoln, and Lady Cecilia Maude Roberts, daughter of the 9th Earl of Carlisle; the artist Winifred Nicholson was his elder sister.

He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk, and Balliol College, Oxford.

Roberts first stood for parliament, without success, for North Cumberland in 1931, losing by 1,277 votes.

A farmer, Roberts in 1934 and 1935 broadcast two series of talks, Living in Cumberland, on the BBC Home Service.

Roberts became a Member of Parliament (MP) for North Cumberland at the 1935 election, gaining the seat from the Conservatives.

The Labour Party did not contest the seat, a tribute to his existing reputation as a radical.

Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Liberal leader, appointed Roberts an Assistant Whip in the House of Commons, working under the Chief Whip Sir Percy Harris.

Following on from his BBC talks on Living in Cumberland, Roberts was chosen by the BBC as one of their regular speakers on The Week at Westminster.

In June and July 1936, Dudley Aman, 1st Baron Marley and Roberts were in Budapest, negotiating on behalf of Mátyás Rákosi.

At the time of the Spanish Civil War, Roberts was nicknamed "MP for Spain".

He led a delegation of six Members of Parliament to Republican Spain in November 1936.

Roberts was Secretary of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief, the formation of which from the Parliamentary Committee for Spain he proposed.

At this period he was an active speaker for the Left Book Club (LBC), a publishing company founded in 1936, with Acland.

The Popular Front gained additional credibility when it was advocated by Sir Stafford Cripps.

He commissioned Leslie Martin to work on Banks House, near Brampton, Cumberland, in 1937.

He worked with Conservative MP Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl, as Chair, David Grenfell of the Labour Party, and Eleanor Rathbone the Independent MP, from 1937 to 1940.

With the Conservative MP John Macnamara, Roberts was also joint secretary of the Basque Children's Committee.

He worked in the relief effort for Basque refugees, with Christopher Hill as one of his colleagues.

The initial reception camp for Basque children was at Stoneham in Hampshire, and was organised by Roberts and Henry Brinton, in response to the relief efforts of Leah Manning in May 1937 at Bilbao.

In June Roberts announced with the Countess of Atholl that over 1000 children had been moved from the camp to Catholic homes.

Roberts was a supporter of the Popular Front seeking an alliance between left-of-centre political forces.

The Popular Front was not officially endorsed by the Liberal Party, but was supported by a number of other Liberal MPs such as Megan Lloyd George and Richard Acland.

Roberts spoke at the 1938 Emergency Conference for a Popular Front.

He was embarrassed and angry, however, when he was chairing the Spain Conference in the Queen's Hall, and the "Internationale" was sung.

John Strachey in late 1938 saw the move by which Acland, Cripps and Roberts were proposed as additions to the LBC book selection committee as the beginning of an "Anti-Fascist Association".

As an LBC speaker, Roberts was in a Popular Front group prepared to share platforms, with Acland, Sir Norman Angell, Cripps, David Lloyd George, Hewlett Johnson, Harry Pollitt, Paul Robeson and Strachey.

An internal BBC memo in 1939 described Roberts as having a "pleasant manner".

Both Roberts and Acland were counted by Cripps in "The Group", his cadre of supporters gathered after he was expelled from the Labour Party in early 1939.

The LBC organisation had grown to the point that it held public meetings and rallies.

He spoke with most of them on 24 April 1939, at the Empress Hall, Earl's Court, for the third annual LBC rally.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Roberts was commissioned into the Border Regiment.

He returned to politics, however, and in 1941 was in the Air Ministry.

From September 1943 A. J. Ayer was a lodger in his flat near the House of Commons.

Ayer had not previously known Roberts, and described him as "very tall, unmistakably English, quiet, with an undercurrent of strong feeling, cultivated and philanthropic."

Roberts was also the owner of the Carlisle Journal newspaper, which ceased publication in 1969.

He served as a Justice of the peace.

Roberts's first political involvement came as a district councillor.

He described the tradition of Cumbrian local politics in an interview with Hunter Davies for A Walk Along the Wall (1974):

"There's always been a branch of the Howard family which has been radical. In this area three families have been running things for decades, the Howards, the Grahams of Netherby, and the Lowthers. I've tried to keep the anti-Tory tradition alive, fighting our traditional Tory rival families, the Lowthers and the Grahams."