Richard Stafford Cripps was born in London on 24th April, 1889. His mother, Theresa Cripps, was the sister of Beatrice Webb. After an education at Winchester and New College Oxford, he became a research chemist. He also carried on studying law and was called to the bar in 1913.
Cripps was a pacifist and during the First World War served with the Red Cross in France. In 1918 Cripps returned to his work as a barrister. Specializing in company law, Cripps made a fortune in patent and compensation cases.
A Christian Socialist and member of the Labour Party, Cripps was elected to the House of Commons in 1931 at a by-election in East Bristol. The following year Ramsay MacDonald appointed Cripps as his solicitor-general. However, like most members of the party, Cripps refused to serve in MacDonald's National Government formed in 1931.
In the 1930s Cripps was converted to Marxism and became one of the most prominent left-wing figures in Britain. In 1936 Cripps joined with other socialists such as Victor Gollancz, Aneurin Bevan, George Strauss and Ellen Wilkinson to start a left-wing weekly journal called Tribune. Largely funded by Cripps, Tribune advocated socialist solutions to domestic and international problems.
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Cripps campaigned for the formation of a Popular Front with other left-wing groups in Europe to prevent the spread of fascism. He became involved in a dispute with the leadership of the Labour Party over this issue and in 1939 Cripps and Aneurin Bevan were expelled from the party.
For the first two years of the Second World War Cripps and Bevan provided the main opposition to Britain's coalition government. In a survey carried out in 1941, the public was asked who should be prime minister if anything should happen to Winston Churchill. Of those who replied, 37% said Anthony Eden and a surprising 34% selected Cripps.
Churchill now became concerned about having one of his main critics so high in the polls. In 1942 Churchill appointed Cripps as Lord Privy Seal in his government and put him in the War Cabinet. However, Cripps continued to question Churchill's war strategy and in October 1942 he was removed from the War Cabinet. He remained in the government and now became Minister of Aircraft Production.
On Cripps removal from the War Cabinet, Hugh Dalton recorded in his diary: "He has, I think, been very skilfully played by the P.M. He may, of course, be quite good at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, but seldom has anyone's political stock, having been so outrageously and unjustifiably overvalued, fallen so fast and so far."
In 1945 Cripps published his book Towards a Christian Democracy and his readmittance to the Labour Party. Following the 1945 General Election, the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, appointed Cripps as Minister of Trade. Two years later Cripps replaced Hugh Dalton as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His policy of high taxation, tight public spending and a voluntary wage freeze, helped to keep inflation in Britain under control.
In October 1950 poor health forced him to resign from the government. The following year was elected as President of the Fabian Society. Richard Stafford Cripps died in 1952.
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(1) Clement Attlee, As It Happened (1954)
Stafford Cripps had entered the House as Solicitor-General, and had displayed immediately his great Parliamentary gifts in helping to pilot through the House the land clauses of Snowden's Budget. Many great lawyers have failed to adapt themselves to the House of Commons, but from the start Cripps showed that he was the exception. He brought to our ranks wide knowledge, fine debating powers and a first-class mind. His only weakness was a lack of practical acquaintance with the Movement. He was not always a good judge of men, nor had he very much experience with which to temper his enthusiasm. For a time, however, he was very content to follow Lansbury's lead, but it was not until the Second World War that he arrived at a balanced political judgment.
(2) Walter Monckton wrote about Stafford Cripps in his unpublished memoirs.
I learned to respect him as far and away the best equipped and most formidable advocate of the day, and to love him for himself. It was good fun being against him as we never suspected each other of descending to the lower arts; we never tried to "catch" each other; we exchanged overnight the authorities we were going to quote next day; and we satisfactorily helped one another to avoid mistakes in fact or law.
(3) George Orwell, BBC radio broadcast (20th December 1941)
The most important event this week is not military but political. It is the appointment of Sir Stafford Cripps to proceed to India by air and there lay before the leaders of the Indian political parties the scheme which has been worked out by the British Government.
The Government has not yet announced what its plans are and it would be unwise to make a guess at them, but it is at least certain that no one now alive in Britain is more suited to conduct the negotiations. Sir Stafford Cripps has long been recognised as the ablest man in the British socialist movement, and he is respected for his absolute integrity even by those who are at the opposite pole from him politically. He has had a varied career, and possesses knowledge and
experience of a kind not often shared by professional politicians. During the last war he managed an explosives factory on behalf of the Government. After that for some years he practised as a barrister, and won for himself an enormous reputation for his skill in dealing with intricate: civil cases. In spite of this, he has always lived with extreme simplicity and has given away most of his earnings at the Bar to the cause of Socialism and to the support of his weekly socialist paper, the Tribune. He is a man of great personal austerity, a vegetarian, a teetotaller and a devout practising Christian. So simple are his manners that he is to be seen every morning having his breakfast in a cheap London eating house, among working men and office employees. In the last few years he has given up practising at the Bar in order to devote himself wholly to politics.
The outstanding thing about Sir Stafford Cripps, however, has always been his utter unwillingness to compromise his political principles. He has sometimes made mistakes, but his worst enemy has never suggested that he cared anything for money, popularity or personal power. About seven years ago, he became dissatisfied with the too cautious policy of the Labour Party, and founded the Socialist League, an organisation within the Labour Party, aiming at a more radical Socialist policy, and a firmer front against the Fascist aggression. Its main objectives were to form a Popular Front Government of the same type as then existed in France and Spain, and to bring Great Britain and the other peace-loving nations into closer association with Soviet Russia.
(4) Harold Nicholson, diary entry (9th September, 1942)
Guy Burgess has heard from his friends who are in close touch with Cripps that the latter is so discontented with the conduct of the war that he proposes to resign. He has already sounded The Times, and possibly Kemsley's papers, to see if they will give him press support. Guy and I agreed that Cripps' attitude was probably wholly disinterested and sincere. He really believes that Winston is incapable of dealing with the home front and that his handling of the minor problems of production and strategy is fumbling and imprecise. We agreed also that Cripps would find the atmosphere of Downing Street (with its late hours, casual talk, cigar smoke and endless whisky) unpalatable, while Winston never regards with affection a man of such inhuman austerity as Cripps, and cannot work easily with people unless his sentiment as well as his respect is aroused.
We also agree that Cripps, who in his way is a man of great innocence and narrow vision, might be seriously unaware that his resignation would shake Winston severely, that around him would gather all the elements of opposition, and that in the end he would create 'an alternative Government' and take Winston's place... I suggested to Guy that we should visit Violet (Bonham Carter) and tell her the whole story. She is the only outside person I know who is on terms of intimate friendship with Winston and also has the confidence of Stafford and Lady Cripps. We told her the story. She said she was in an awkward position, as Lady Cripps had taken her into her confidence and told her much the same. She could not betray this confidence, much as she agreed with our point of view. We arranged therefore that Violet would see Cripps or his wife, and ask whether she might say a word to Winston - a word of warning. Failing this, I should see Brendan Bracken.
(5) Hugh Dalton, diary entry (22nd October, 1942)
On Sunday night Cabinet changes are announced on the air. Morrison succeeds Cripps in the War Cabinet and the latter drops down to Minister of Aircraft Production, thus becoming a lodger downstairs in my own building. This hole is made by the appointment of Llewellin to Washington. Cranborne is to be Lord Privy Seal, and Oliver Stanley returns to the Government as Colonial Secretary. Eden is to lead the House of Commons.
I write at once to Morrison, "Congratulations! The War Cabinet is strengthened." Next morning the Daily Herald begins its leader with these same last five words. It is, indeed, a great improvement. Nearly all Cripps's 'mystique' is now gone, and he has missed all his chances - never really good - of resigning with credit. He has, I think, been very skilfully played by the P.M. He may, of course, be quite good at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, but seldom has anyone's political stock, having been so outrageously and unjustifiably overvalued, fallen so fast and so far. I add in my letter to Morrison that I would like soon to have a meeting and a talk, and I write also to Ellen Wilkinson summarizing my letter to Morrison.
(6) Winston Churchill to Joseph Stalin on Stafford Cripps (1942)
His chest is a cage in which two squirrels are at war, his conscience and his career.
(7) Herbert Morrison, An Autobiography (1960)
Cripps had been taking an interest in military strategy, and his interest led him to ideas different from that other enthusiast for military policies, the Prime Minister. Cripps was brash enough to give his views on what was wrong with the conduct of the war to those of his colleagues who were prepared to listen, and then to argue with Churchill on the changes which ought to be made.
It must be remembered that, his personal interest in and knowledge of strategy apart, Churchill was not merely Prime Minister. He was Minister of Defence and the whole subject of the conduct of the war was in his view ultimately his personal responsibility.
Churchill was, in fact, very patient with Cripps, even after it became obvious that he was trying to influence other ministers to adopt his own critical outlook. In due course he had a private talk with him, and Cripps resigned from the War Cabinet. It was to the latter's credit that he took the decision in a sportsmanlike manner; there was no fuss or bother, and he threw himself into his new job at the Minister of Aircraft Production with all the energy he could muster.
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