James Chuder Ede, not a name much remembered these days, was a key Labour Party politician during and after the Second World War. Born 140 years ago today, he played a major role in the 1944 Education Act, and, after the war, he was Home Secretary throughout Clement Atlee’s period as Prime Minister. His wartime diaries - published in 1987 - are said to reveal ‘much about the operation of wartime politics at a variety of levels, notably within the Labour Party’.
During the war, Ede married Lilian Mary Williams, but they would have no children. After the war, having switched to become a Labour Party member, he was elected to Parliament at a bye-election, though he lost his seat in general election soon after. From 1929, he was elected MP for South Shields, losing the seat in 1931; but, thereafter, he regained it in 1935, and held it to 1964. When Epsom and Ewell were awarded borough status in 1937, he was chosen as the Charter Mayor. He was also appointed a deputy lieutenant for the county of Surrey, and was chairman of the British Electrical Development Association in 1937.
In the wartime coalition, Ede was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, and served under two Conservative Presidents, first Herwald Ramsbotham, and then Rab Butler. With Butler, Ede - having detailed knowledge of state education - steered the Education Act 1944 through Parliament. Following the post-war Labour victory, Clement Attlee appointed him Home Secretary, a post he held until Labour lost power in 1951 (though for the last few months he was also Leader of the Commons). During his remaining 15 years as an MP in opposition, he continued an involvement with the British Museum, was an active member of the BBC’s General Advisory Council, and he held a leading rôle in the Unitarian church. He also stepped up his efforts towards abolishing the death penalty - as Home Secretary he had denied a reprieve from the death penalty to a prisoner he later knew to have been innocent.
In 1964, he was created a life peer as Baron Chuter Ede. He died the following year (his wife having died nearly 20 years earlier). Further information is available from Wikipedia, Christ’s College Cambridge, and Epsom & Ewell History Explorer.
Ede kept diaries for some of his life, though, after the Second World War, the responsibilities of being Home Secretary left him with insufficient time to keep up the habit. However, the diaries he wrote during the war were edited by Kevin Jeffreys and published by The Historians’ Press in 1987 as Labour and the Wartime Coalition - From the Diary of James Chulter Ede, 1941-1945.
Jeffreys’ introduction begins as follows: ‘The Chuter Ede diary sheds important new light on British politics during the Second World War. Wartime politics have often been treated as an adjunct to the military and diplomatic events which naturally dominate the period between 1939 and 1945. The politics of the war years have been considered by many of the biographers of leading twentieth-century politicians, and the background to the Labour Party’s famous victory at the 1945 general election has also been carefully examined. But for the most part the war has remained a neglected area of study in modern political history; a reflection in part of the assumption that party politics were somehow suspended after the formation of a coalition between Conservative and Labour forces under Churchill’s leadership in May 1940. In consequence, little attention has been paid to the everyday working of the coalition government, to the wartime concerns of back-benchers, or to the relationship between the political parties at Westminster. James Chuter Ede was well placed to observe these developments. He served as a Labour junior minister at the Board of Education from 1940 to 1945, and was subsequently to become Home Secretary in Attlee’s post-war governments. His daily record of events, reproduced in edited form here, reveals much about the operation of wartime politics at a variety of levels, notably within the Labour Party.’
The following extracts are taken from Labour and the Wartime Coalition, which can be freely borrowed digitally from Internet Archive.
28 January 1942
‘As I entered the Party Meeting Aneurin Bevan was pleading for ‘large scale abstentions’ in tomorrow’s division. Tinker vehemently opposed this but said there should be a free vote so that no one need sit on the fence of abstention. Muff warned the abstentionists that they should read in the Book of Revelations the fate that threatened Laodicea. Pressed to say what that was he defined it as a process of regurgitation Philips Price said we should give a jolt to the Government but not bring it down. The 1922 Committee had been satisfied about India & the maintenance of private enterprise, therefore we were entitled to feel misgivings. Bellenger wanted a reasoned amendment. Woodbum said abstentionists were trying to break up the Govt. He objected to seeing the Labour Party as an appendage to Henderson-Stewart. No one could be acquitted of lack of foresight. The Chamberlain Govt, was brought down by the abstentionists. Shinwell said it was clear the Party could not vote against the Government. American shipping would not be available until the end of 1943 & would then be inadequate. It should not be assumed that if he was seen talking with Winterton in the corridors that he was intriguing; he was probably discussing fat stock prices. Mainwaring said the discussion had been more mischievous than helpful.
Pethick-Lawrence lucidly summed up. We had to say whether we supported the Govt, or not. The Party had four courses open to it. (1) To oppose the Govt. No one had suggested that. (2) To allow a free vote. That would be a serious decision in an affair of this importance. (3) To have large abstentions. How this was to be arranged no one had explained although Muff had chaffingly suggested the A-M names should abstain & the N-Z names should support the Government. P.-L. suggested this course would render Labour Ministers continuance in the Govt. very precarious. (4) To support the Govt. Tinker insisted on moving for a free vote. 16 voted for this & 53 for supporting the Govt. Silverman asked that those against this should be counted and only 12 held up their hands . . .
When the P.M. left the House he remarked to Sandys, who was sitting beside me, that there was a lot of bitterness & there would be a rough journey . . .’
8 September 1942
‘. . . I reached the House just as the P.M. was moving the vote of condolence on the death of the Duke of Kent . . . The P.M. then rose, in Committee on the Vote of Credit, to give his review of the war situation. He was happy and did not strive after great oratorical effects. Nevertheless there were deft verbal touches that amused the House, which remained interested throughout the speech. He began by expressing his thanks for the defeat of the Wardlaw-Milne motion, nine weeks ago. . . He could assure the House we could maintain the defence of Egypt for months to come. He praised the policy of understatement practised by the Cairo communiqué in deference to the taste of the House. We were entitled to regard last week’s fighting as -and he made a dramatic pause as if seeking for some superlative - distinctly not unsatisfactory. Later Greenwood a little unnecessarily reproved the P.M. for this as a meaningless phrase. The House appreciated the humour of the deliberate anti-climax. He had had four days’ personal conference with Stalin to whom he paid a long, eloquent & hearty tribute . . . He made it clear we should go to Russia’s aid regardless of the loss & sacrifices involved. He had foreseen one political danger from the date of the collapse of France. He had feared that Hitler might create an empire like Charlemagne’s, but wherever the German went he was hated as no people had been hated in the history of the world. They corrupted everyone who associated with them. This remark led him to a stern denunciation of the attack on the Jews in France. The hour of victory would be the hour of retribution. The House emptied & not forty members stayed to hear Greenwood who was twice interrupted by Haden-Guest. who first asked if there was united strategy, & then ‘on a point of order’ if it was right for the P.M. to withdraw while the Leader of the Opposition was speaking - Greenwood remarked that it was a point of hunger & intimated his sympathy with the P.M. When Greenwood sat down only Cary rose. I went to lunch . . .
Cripps, according to the wireless, trounced M.P.s who went out during the P.M.’s speech & those who did not stay to hear Greenwood or to carry on the debate. . .’
16 December 1943
‘I reached the House just before noon, but in time to hear Attlee tell the House that the P.M. had had a cold which had developed a patch of pneumonia. A bulletin signed by Lord Moran and two other doctors was read. Another is expected today. The House was evidently concerned and sympathetically cheered Attlee’s promise to send a message of good wishes to the invalid . . .
The Evening Papers have commendatory references in addition to long resumes of the Bill. For the purpose of this publicity the P.M.’s illness has taken the place we might otherwise have expected on the front pages. . .’
18 January 1944
‘. . . The P.M. strolled nonchalantly past me into the House. His progress was accompanied by loud, long and joyous cheers, every member in the House, except a few on the Front Opposition Bench, rising. Needless to say, he had another warm reception when he answered his first question. He had a long list. Herbert Williams, in a supplementary about the Italian campaign, asked if Montgomery’s speech some weeks [ago] had not caused false optimism. The P.M. drily, and brusquely, retorted: ‘I don’t know about false optimism; there’s been a lot of bad weather. . .’
6 July 1944
‘I heard the P.M.’s statement on the flying bombs. He had to wait to make it until a lot of questions on business about the Town & Country Planning Bill had been answered. The P.M. did not underrate the menace of the bomb. 2754 had been launched; these had caused 2752 casualties. He told of the months of heavy bombing which had delayed the use of this weapon by the enemy. He said June had been a very bad month from our point of view. The overcast skies had prevented us from using our great air supremacy over the Normandy battlefield and had prevented us from photographing & bombing the sites from which the flying bombs were launched. I was sitting below the Bar and there was some cynical amusement when the P.M. announced that Duncan Sandys, who is his son-in-law, was Chairman of the Committee in charge of offensive operations. The P.M. said the Chiefs of Staff suggested this arrangement. He announced that evacuation was taking place. No compulsion would be used. He could give no promise as to the length of the attack or its possible increase in strength. He paid a tribute to the work H. Morrison had done and wound up by saying this attack would not deflect our strength & determination from the Normandy battlefield . . .’
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