Richard Crossman

Richard Howard Stafford Crossman OBE (15 December 1907 – 5 April 1974), sometimes known as Dick Crossman, was a British Labour Party politician. A university classics lecturer by profession, he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1945 and became a significant figure among the party's advocates of Zionism. He was a Bevanite on the left of the party, and a long-serving member of Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) from 1952. He was a Cabinet minister in Harold Wilson's governments of 1964–1970, first for Housing, then as Leader of the House of Commons, and then for Social Services.

Not to be confused with Anthony Crosland.

The Right Honourable Richard Crossman OBE
Secretary of State for Social Services
In office 1 November 1968 – 19 June 1970
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Keith Joseph
Lord President of the Council Leader of the House of Commons
In office 11 August 1966 – 18 October 1968
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Herbert Bowden
Succeeded by	Fred Peart
Minister of Housing and Local Government
In office 16 October 1964 – 11 August 1966
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Keith Joseph
Succeeded by	Tony Greenwood
Shadow Secretary of State for Education
In office 14 February 1963 – 16 October 1964
Leader	Harold Wilson
Succeeded by	Quintin Hogg
Chair of the Labour Party
In office 7 October 1960 – 6 October 1961
Leader	Hugh Gaitskell
Preceded by	George Brinham
Succeeded by	Harold Wilson
Member of Parliament for Coventry East
In office 5 July 1945 – 28 February 1974
Preceded by	Constituency created
Succeeded by	Constituency abolished
Personal details
Born	Richard Howard Stafford Crossman (1907-12-15)15 December 1907 Cropredy, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Died	5 April 1974(1974-04-05) (aged 66) Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Political party	Labour
Alma mater	New College, Oxford

In the early 1970s Crossman was editor of the New Statesman. He is remembered for his highly revealing three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, published posthumously.

Early life

Crossman was born in either Cropredy, Oxfordshire,[1] or Bayswater, London,[2] the son of Charles Stafford Crossman,[3] a barrister and later a High Court judge, and Helen Elizabeth (née Howard). Helen was of the Howard family of Ilford descended from Luke Howard, a Quaker chemist and meteorologist who founded the pharmaceutical company Howards and Sons.[4]

Crossman grew up in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, and was educated at Twyford School, and at Winchester College (although these scholarships were abolished in 1857,[5] he was 'founder's kin', being descended from William of Wykeham through John Danvers, one of his father's ancestors),[6][7] where he became head boy. He excelled academically and on the football field. He studied Classics at New College, Oxford, receiving a double first and became a fellow in 1931. He taught philosophy at the university before becoming a lecturer for the Workers' Educational Association. He was a councillor on Oxford City Council, and became head of its Labour group in 1935.

He had homosexual affairs at university.[8]

Service in Second World War and afterwards

At the outbreak of the Second World War Crossman joined the Political Warfare Executive under Robert Bruce Lockhart, where he headed the German Section.[9] He produced anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts for Radio of the European Revolution, set up by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). He eventually became Assistant Chief of the Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF and was awarded an OBE for his wartime service.[10] In April 1945, Crossman was one of the first British officers to enter the former Dachau concentration camp. With war correspondent Colin Wills, Crossman co-wrote the script for German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, a British government documentary, produced by Sidney Bernstein with treatment advice by Alfred Hitchcock, that showed gruelling scenes from Nazi concentration camps. The uncompleted film was shelved for decades before being assembled by scholars at the Imperial War Museum and released in 2014. That same year, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was itself the subject of a documentary, Night Will Fall.[11][12]

Crossman became a key participant in the annual Königswinter Conference, organised by Lilo Milchsack to bring together British and German legislators, academics and opinion-formers from 1950 onwards. The conferences were credited with helping to heal bad memories created by the war. At them, Crossman met the German politician Hans von Herwarth, the ex-soldier Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, future German President Richard von Weizsäcker and other leading German decision makers. Other attendees at the conferences included Denis Healey, soon to become a Labour Party politician, and Robin Day, later a political broadcaster.[13]

Political career

Crossman entered the House of Commons at the 1945 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry East, a seat he held until shortly before he died 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. That incurred Bevin's enmity, and may have been the primary factor which prevented Crossman from achieving ministerial rank during the 1945–51 government. Crossman initially supported the Arab cause, but after meeting Chaim Weizmann he became a lifelong Zionist. In his diary, he described Weizmann as "one of the very few great men I have ever met."[14] Crossman remained a supporter of Israel during his political career from the late-1940s until he died in 1974.[15]

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. 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.

In 1957, Crossman was one of the plaintiffs, along with Aneurin Bevan and Morgan Phillips, in a claim for libel made against The Spectator, which had described the three men as drinking heavily during a socialist conference in Italy.[16] Having sworn that the charges were untrue, the three collected damages from the magazine. Many years later, Crossman's posthumously published diaries confirmed that The Spectator's charges had been true and that all three of them had perjured themselves.[17]

Crossman was Labour's spokesman on education before the 1964 general election, but upon forming the new Government Harold Wilson appointed him Minister of Housing and Local Government. In 1966, Crossman became Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons.

Between 1968 and 1970, he was the first Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, in which position he worked on an ambitious proposal to supplement Britain's flat-rate 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 months of political turmoil that led up to the election loss, Crossman had been considered, however briefly, as a last-minute option to replace Wilson as Prime Minister.

Books and journalism

After Labour's general election defeat in 1970, Crossman resigned from the Labour front bench to become editor of the New Statesman, where he had been a frequent contributor and assistant editor from 1938 until 1955. He left the New Statesman in 1972.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Crossman also had a regular column titled "Crossman Says..." in the Daily Mirror, the Labour-supporting tabloid newspaper. Along with the column of 'Cassandra', Crossman's reporting provided the bulk of political and international commentary in the newspaper.

Crossman was a prolific writer and editor. In Plato To-Day (1937) he imagines Plato visiting Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Plato criticises Nazi and Communist politicians for misusing the ideas he had set forth in the Republic.[18] After the war, Crossman edited The God That Failed (1949), a collection of anti-Communist essays by former Communists.

Crossman is best remembered for his colourful and highly subjective three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, written while he was living in Vincent Square, published posthumously from 1975 to 1977 and covering his time in government from 1964 to 1970. The diaries appeared after he had died, and following a legal battle by the government to block publication. One of Crossman's legal executors was Michael Foot, then a cabinet minister, who opposed his own government's attempts to suppress the diaries.[19] Among other things, the diaries describe Crossman's battles with "the Dame", his Permanent Secretary Evelyn Sharp, GBE (1903–1985), the first woman in Britain to hold the position. Crossman's backbench diaries were published in 1981.

Crossman's diaries were an acknowledged source for the television comedy series Yes Minister.[20][21]

Death

Crossman died of liver cancer on 5 April 1974 at his home in Oxfordshire. He was survived by his third wife, Anne Patricia (15 April 1920 – 3 October 2008; née McDougall, daughter of Patrick McDougall, of Prescote Manor, Cropredy, founder of the Banbury cattle market), with whom he shared common descent from the Danvers family of Cropredy. Anne Crossman worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, and served as secretary to Maurice Edelman MP. The Crossmans had two children, Patrick and Virginia.[7]

Legacy

The Richard Crossman Building, built in 1971, at Coventry University is named in his honour.[22]

Quotation

The Civil Service is profoundly deferential – 'Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister!' [23]

Published works

• Government and the Governed (A History of Political Ideas and Political Practice) London: Cristophers (1939)
• Plato To-Day New York: Oxford University Press (1939)
• Palestine Mission: A Personal Record New York: Harper (1947)
• The God That Failed New York: Harper (1950) (editor)
• A Nation Reborn New York: Atheneum (1960)
• The Politics of Socialism New York: Atheneum (1965)
• The Myths of Cabinet Government Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1972)
• Diaries of a Cabinet Minister (three volumes, 1975, 1976 and 1977)
• The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman (1981)

Biographies

• Anthony Howard (1990) Crossman: The Pursuit of Power, Jonathan Cape
• Tam Dalyell (1989) Dick Crossman: A Portrait
• Victoria Honeyman (2006) Richard Crossman; A Reforming Radical of the Labour Party, I. B. Tauris

References

1. Dalyell, 2002
2. Howard, 2008
3. Biographical Register 1880-1974 - Corpus Christi College (University of Oxford) - Google Books. Books.google.ca. 3 January 2007. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
4. Brief Lives with some memoirs, Alan Watkins, Elliot and Thompson, 2004, pp 54-5
5. "The Reverend Anthony Trotman". The Daily Telegraph. 4 November 2006. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
6. Brief Lives with some memoirs, Alan Watkins, Elliot and Thompson, 2004, pg 54
7. "Anne Crossman". The Daily Telegraph. 8 October 2008. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
8. Michael Bloch. "Double lives – a history of sex and secrecy at Westminster". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
9. Mayne, Richard (1 April 2003). In Victory, Magnanimity, in Peace, Goodwill. p. 6. ISBN 0-7146-5433-7.
10. "No. 37308". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 October 1945. p. 5067.
11. Jeffries, Stuart (9 January 2015). "The Holocaust film that was too shocking to show". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
12. "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
13. Long Life: Presiding Genius, Nigel Nicolson, 15 August 1992, The Spectator, Retrieved 28 November 2015 ]
14. Cohen, Michael J. (14 July 2014). "Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948". Princeton University Press – via Google Books.
15. "Crossman and the creation of Israel - Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick". warwick.ac.uk.
16. "Messrs Bevan, Morgan Phillips and Richard Crossman... puzzled the Italians by their capacity to fill themselves like tanks with whisky and coffee... Although the Italians were never sure the British delegation were sober, they always attributed to them an immense political acumen." See Bose, Mihir, "Britain's Libel Laws: Malice Aforethought", History Today, 5 May 2013.
17. Roy Jenkins wrote of his former colleagues (in "Aneurin Bevan" in Portraits and Miniatures, 2011) that they "sailed to victory on the unfortunate combination of Lord Chief Justice Goddard's prejudice against the anti-hanging and generally libertarian Spectator of those days and the perjury of the plaintiffs, subsequently exposed in Crossman's endlessly revealing diaries." Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote (in The Guardian, 18 March 2000, "Lies and Libel"): "Fifteen years later, Crossman boasted (in my presence) that they had indeed all been toping heavily, and that at least one of them had been blind drunk." Dominic Lawson wrote (in The Independent, "Chris Huhne's downfall is another example of the amazing risks a politician will take". 4 February 2013): "Crossman's posthumously published diaries revealed that the story was accurate; and in 1978 Brian Inglis on What the Papers Say revealed that Crossman had told him a few days after the case that they had committed perjury". Mihir Bose (in "Britain's Libel Laws: Malice Aforethought", History Today, 5 May 2013) quotes Bevan's biographer, John Campbell, to the effect that the case had destroyed the career of the young journalist involved, Jenny Nicholson.
18. Goldhill, Simon, Love, Sex and Tragedy, U. Chicago Press, 2004, p. 202
19. Anthony Howard Michael Foot: The last of a dying breed The Telegraph, 5 March 2010
20. "Yes Minister Questions & Answers". Jonathan Lynn Official Website. Archived from the original on 19 November 2014. Retrieved 6 September 2007.
21. Crossman, Richard (1979). Diaries of a Cabinet Minister: Selections, 1964–70. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd. ISBN 0-241-10142-5.
22. "Buildings". Coventry University. Retrieved 6 November 2019.
23. Ratcliffe, Susan. "Richard Crossman (1907–74)". Oxford Index. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 18 October 2015.

External links

• Dalyell, Tam (13 December 2002). "Tam Dalyell on Richard Crossman". Great Lives. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
• Howard, Anthony (January 2008). "Crossman, Richard Howard Stafford (1907–1974)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30987. Retrieved 30 August 2009. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Richard Crossman (1907–1974), Politician National Portrait Gallery, London
• On Richard Crossman CliveJames.com
• Catalogue of Crossman's papers, held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
• Collection of Crossman's papers available digitally, held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
• Newspaper clippings about Richard Crossman in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Coventry East 1945–1974	Constituency abolished
Party political offices
Preceded by George Brinham	Chairman of the Labour Party 1960–1961	Succeeded by Harold Wilson
Political offices
Preceded by Keith Joseph	Minister of Housing and Local Government 1964–1966	Succeeded by Tony Greenwood
Preceded by Herbert Bowden	Lord President of the Council 1966–1968	Succeeded by Fred Peart
	Leader of the House of Commons 1966–1968
Preceded by Kenneth Robinson as Minister of Health	Secretary of State for Health and Social Services 1968–1970	Succeeded by Keith Joseph
Preceded by Judith Hart as Minister of Social Security
Media offices
Preceded by Paul Johnson	Editor of the New Statesman 1970–1972	Succeeded by Anthony Howard