George Alfred George-Brown, Baron George-Brown (; 2 September 1914 – 2 June 1985), was a British Labour Party politician who was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1960 to 1970 and held several Cabinet roles under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, including Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State.
After leaving school at the age of 15, Brown began work as a clerk, before joining the Transport and General Workers' Union. He rose quickly through the union ranks as an organiser, and shortly before the 1945 election he was chosen as the Labour Party candidate for the seat of Belper. He defeated the Conservative incumbent and went on to hold the seat until his own defeat at the 1970 election. He briefly served in the Attlee government as Minister of Works in 1951. After Labour lost office he was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet, and came to be regarded as a leader of the trade-union-supporting faction on the right of the Labour Party. Following the sudden death of Aneurin Bevan in 1960, Brown was successful in the election to replace him as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.
Three years later, following the sudden death of Hugh Gaitskell, Brown became Acting Leader of the Labour Party, and consequently was briefly Leader of the Opposition. He stood in the election to gain the role permanently, but was beaten by Harold Wilson; one factor in his defeat was concern from colleagues about the impact of his well-known alcoholism, an affliction that remained with him through his life.Francis Wheen "BOOK REVIEW / Statesman who bottled out: 'Tired and Emotional: The Life of Lord George Brown' – Peter Paterson" , The Independent on Sunday, 9 May 1993 Following Labour's victory at the 1964 election, Wilson appointed Brown as First Secretary of State, making him the next-most senior member of the Cabinet, and appointed him to the new position of Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to curtail the power of HM Treasury.
Two months after Labour's landslide victory at the snap 1966 election, Wilson moved Brown to the role of Foreign Secretary, a job he had always coveted. Despite this, Brown continued to struggle with his alcoholism, and after several arguments with Wilson in 1968, the two agreed that Brown would resign. Brown lost his seat of Belper in 1970, and shortly thereafter was elevated to the House of Lords; he insisted, having always been known simply as "George Brown", that upon taking his peerage in November 1970 he would combine his first name and surname to create his title, Baron George-Brown, of Jevington in the County of Sussex.
Early life Brown was the eldest of four children born to George Brown and Rosina Harriett (née Mason),Lane, A. Thomas (ed.) Biographical Dictionary of European Labour Leaders, vol. 2, Greenwood Press, 1995, p. 151 at Flat 22, I Block, Peabody Buildings, Duke Street, Lambeth, in the flat of his maternal grandmother, Ann Martha Mason, widow of a Scottish asphalter;Paterson, Peter. Tired and Emotional: The Life of Lord George-Brown, Chatto & Windus, 1993, p. 11 the flat was in a working-class housing estate built by the Peabody Trust, a housing charity. Soon after the birth, his family left and moved to the Peabody Trust block at Peabody Square, Blackfriars Road, Southwark, near Waterloo station. His father, of a family long settled in The Borough, but who believed themselves to have Irish origins,Paterson, Peter. Tired and Emotional: The Life of Lord George-Brown, Chatto & Windus, 1993, p. 12 had worked in his earlier years as a grocer's packer, then as a lorry and van driver (for Lyons, later for the Evening Standard), and served in the First World War as a chauffeur to senior British Army officers; he later became a fur salesman. A staunch trade unionist, he eventually served as a member of the executive council of the Transport and General Workers' Union, and was later employed as a full-time official.SEATO Record, Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation, 1966, p. 22Current Biography Yearbook 1963, H. W. Wilson Co., 1964, p. 67Connor, William N. George Brown: A Profile and Pictorial Biography, Pergamon Press, 1964, p. 14 Aspersions were thus cast on his son's 'working-class credentials' in light of what were perceived to be (however inaccurately given his English, Scottish and Irish forebears) his 'East End commercial middle-class Jewish' roots.Brief Lives, Paul Johnson, Arrow Books, 2011, p. 46
Brown attended Gray Street Elementary School in Blackfriars where he did well enough to pass an entrance examination to the West Square Central School, a junior grammar school and now part of a conservation area. Brown had already adopted his parents' left-wing views and later claimed to have delivered leaflets for the Labour Party in the 1922 general election when he was eight years old.
The school wanted Brown to stay on beyond the age of 15, but he decided to leave to earn his living and help his parents financially. He started work as a junior clerk in the ledger department of a City firm, but was made redundant after pressing his fellow clerks to join a trade union. From 1932, he worked as a fur salesman for the John Lewis Partnership, dropping his Cockney accent to appeal to society customers. Brown earned a great deal on commission. During this time, Brown continued his education through London County Council evening schools and the Workers' Educational Association. The poverty of his upbringing led Brown in later life to resent those who had a more privileged background and a university education.
Trade union organiser Shortly after his marriage on 27 April 1937 to Sophie Levene, daughter of Solomon Levene, a bookbinder,Lane, A. Thomas (ed.) Biographical Dictionary of European Labour Leaders, vol. 2, Greenwood Press, 1995, p. 152 Brown was employed as a ledger clerk with the Transport and General Workers' Union, and appointed District Organiser for Watford the next year. By now Brown was active within the Labour Party and the Labour League of Youth. He stood as a moderate candidate for the Chairmanship but at the 1937 Labour Party conference he was defeated by a left-wing candidate, Ted Willis, later a writer for television. At the 1939 Party conference Brown made his mark by a strong speech demanding the expulsion of Stafford Cripps for his advocacy of a Popular Front. For the rest of Cripps's life he refused to speak to Brown.
Following the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Brown volunteered for the Royal Air Force but Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, kept Brown and other trade union officials in their civilian jobs. Bevin was one of the Labour leaders brought into the wartime coalition government. Brown himself served as a temporary civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture from 1940 onwards.
Early political career Member of Parliament As a TGWU official, Brown was an attractive candidate to Labour constituencies seeking a candidate, as the TGWU would sponsor him and pay election expenses. He was selected for Belper, a mixed constituency near Derby which was one of Labour's principal target seats. In the 1945 general election, Brown gained the seat from the Conservatives with a majority of 8,881. He was invited as one of a dozen 'Young Victors' to a private dinner given by Hugh Dalton on 30 July 1945 who was talent-spotting and networking. Brown was immediately chosen to be a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) by George Isaacs, who had followed the promoted Bevin as Minister of Labour, but his time with Isaacs was brief.
Brown was both adept at understanding political issues and how to communicate them, and convivial and generally popular within the Parliamentary Labour Party (save among the left-wing faction, whom he attacked as 'long-haired intellectuals'). He briefly worked as PPS for Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton from April 1947, at a time when the economic situation of Britain had barely improved and the Chancellor needed the maximum political support. Brown launched an unsuccessful plot to have Clement Attlee replaced as Prime Minister by Ernest Bevin, although without consulting Bevin who did not approve.
Ministerial office Attlee, despite knowing all about Brown's plot to depose him, swiftly appointed Brown as Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. The Prime Minister had decided that it would be best if Brown were kept busy. At the Ministry of Agriculture, Brown worked to pass the Agriculture Act 1947 which provided price support to farmers and also to provide more arable land and ease shortages of machinery and foodstuffs. Government policy aimed at increasing food production so that rationing in the United Kingdom could be lifted but progress was slow; Attlee grew to appreciate his talent. When his mentor Bevin died in April 1951, Brown was appointed Minister of Works in the Cabinet reshuffle – at the head of a Ministry but not in the Cabinet. Brown inherited a long-running struggle by the Government to have the Tower of London open to tourists on Sunday and managed to solve it by outsmarting the Constable of the Tower in negotiations.
Opposition Election of 1951 Brown ceased to be a minister when Labour lost the 1951 general election at the end of October. Like other Labour ex-ministers, Brown found himself forced to rely on an inadequate parliamentary salary; this led him to consider a return to being a trade union official. However, in 1953 he was hired as a consultant by the Mirror Group newspapers, enabling him to stay in politics.
Brown was a partisan participant in the Labour Party's internecine struggles in the early 1950s, opposing the Bevanite campaign. His natural campaigning ability became well-known, as did his tendency to be rude to those with whom he had disagreements. Shortly after the 1955 general election, Brown was elected to the Shadow cabinet for the first time; from that December, when his friend Hugh Gaitskell became Leader of the Labour Party, Brown found it easier to win promotion. Brown had a private but widely publicised shouting-match with Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin when he was part of a Labour Party delegation invited to dine with them on their British visit in April 1956. In October that year, he lost the election for Treasurer of the Labour Party to Aneurin Bevan by 3,029,000 to 2,755,000 votes.
Deputy leadership When Bevan died in July 1960, the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party became vacant at a time when the Labour Party was severely divided over Clause IV of the party constitution. Brown was encouraged to stand as the candidate of the Gaitskellite right; the other candidates were left-winger Frederick Lee and the moderate but insufficiently senior James Callaghan. Brown was elected, beating Lee by 146 votes to 83 when Callaghan had been eliminated. Gaitskell as Leader and Brown as Deputy Leader were not viewed by most of the Labour left as a balanced ticket, and Brown was challenged for the job in both 1961, by Barbara Castle, and 1962, by Harold Wilson. Part of his job was to improve Labour's by-election campaigning, and he was successful in winning several, such as that at Middlesbrough West.
Gaitskell's sudden death in January 1963 made Brown's challenge for the party leadership inevitable. However, he mishandled the opening of his campaign. At the first Shadow Cabinet meeting after Gaitskell's death, Brown and his leadership rival Harold Wilson agreed to a clean fight. Wilson, who was accused by the right of undermining party unity, then informed the press that each agreed to serve under the other, which countered his reputation for plotting; Brown repudiated any such agreement, laying himself open to that accusation.
Personal problems