Richard Crossman

Early life

Crossman was born in either Cropredy, Oxfordshire, or Bayswater, London, the son of Helen Elizabeth (née Howard; she was of the Howard family of Ilford descended from Luke Howard, a Quaker chemist and meteorologist who founded the pharmaceutical company Howards and Sons) and Charles Stafford Crossman, a judge, and grew up in Buckhurst Hill, Essex. He was educated at Twyford School, and at Winchester College (although these scholarships were abolished in 1857, he was 'founder's kin', being descended from William of Wykeham through his father's ancestor, John Danvers), 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 the Labour group in 1935.

War service and after

At the outbreak of World War II Crossman joined the Political Warfare Executive under Robert Bruce Lockhart, where he headed the German Section. 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. In the spring of 1945, he was one of the first British officers to enter the Dachau concentration camp.

Crossman co-wrote the script for German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, a British government documentary, produced by Sidney Bernstein with treatment advise 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. It was the subject of a 2014 documentary, Night Will Fall.

Crossman was one of the leading players at the Konigswinter conference that was organised by Lilo Milchsack that was credited with helping to heal the bad memories after the end of the Second World War. Crossman met the German politician Hans von Herwarth, the ex soldier Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin and future German President Richard von Weizsäcker and other leading German decision makers. At the conference too were Dennis Healey, soon to become a Labour Party politician, and Robin Day, later a political broadcaster.

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."

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 joined Aneurin Bevan and Morgan Phillips in a controversial lawsuit for libel against The Spectator, which had described the men as drinking heavily during a socialist conference in Italy. Having sworn that the charges were untrue, the three collected damages from the magazine. Many years later, Crossman's posthumously published diaries confirmed the truth of The Spectator's charges.

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

He was Secretary of State for Health and Social Services from 1968 to 1970, in which position he worked on an ambitious proposal to supplement Britain's flat 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 the general election defeat, Crossman resigned from the Labour front bench in 1970 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.

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. After the war, he edited The God That Failed (1949), a collection of anti-communist essays.

He is best remembered for his colourful and highly subjective three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, written whilst living in Vincent Square and 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. Among other things, the diaries describe his battles with "the Dame", his Permanent Secretary Evelyn Sharp, Baroness 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 highly successful TV comedy series Yes Minister.

Death

Crossman died of liver cancer in 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 the M.P. Maurice Edelman. The Crossmans had two children, Patrick and Virginia.

Quotation

Published works

Biographies