Political Wings

William Wedgewood Benn, First Viscount Stansgate

Alun Wyburn-Powell

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473848153
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Militär- & Seefahrtsgeschichte

This is the first biography of Rt. Hon. William Wedgwood Benn DSO, DFC, first Viscount Stansgate, cabinet minister under MacDonald and Attlee, Air Commodore with active service in both World Wars, defector from the Liberals to Labour over his dispute with Lloyd George, and father of Tony Benn. Benn served in the army and RAF during the First World War (when he took part in the first parachute drop behind enemy lines at night) and in the Second World War he reached the rank of acting Air Commodore). His eldest son Michael, heir to the viscountcy, died on active service with the RAF, leaving his second son Tony to inherit the title and a seat in the House of Lords. Before his death, Tony Benn gave extensive interviews for this book. His brother, David has also provided interviews and material, as have other members of the family including Stephen Benn (now the third Viscount Stansgate). Extensive paperwork left by William Wedgwood Benn (now in the Parliamentary Archives) including his diary and unfinished, unpublished autobiography were all utilised in the construction of this biography. Alun Wyburn-Powell has managed to construct a biographical study of real force, weaving together snippets from Benn's own private papers with insights from his family and colleagues in order to create an authentic impression of Benn and the times in which he lived.

Chapter One

A Fledgling Dynasty with a Flat-Pack Ancestral Home 1877–1906

Looking back, the life of William Wedgwood Benn (1877 to 1960) clearly spanned what we can now see as the early stages of one of Britain’s greatest political dynasties, launched on the back of profits from publishing a trade magazine. But when William Wedgwood Benn was born, the publishing business was not even a twinkle in his father’s bank account, the family was not involved in politics and the pieces of their ‘ancestral home’ had not even left the factory in Norwich. The Wedgwood name seems to hint at a connection with the pottery business, but Benn’s parents were not actually sure if there was a family connection. So, what was the family’s ancestry and did it really matter?

No-one escapes the genetic legacy of their forebears, but for some, their inheritance is crucial to the course of their lives. Ancestors, known or unknown, will have passed on their DNA, influencing longevity and appearance. Others may hand down money, a family home, a famous name or even a title. Some may be the subject of family stories, which – true or not – influence how later generations see themselves. What someone wrongly thinks happened to their ancestors could have as much bearing as what actually did. William Wedgwood Benn’s life is defined more than most by his inheritance and his legacy.

Benn’s DNA was a good inheritance. His ancestors tended to outlive their contemporaries. Even a vague awareness of this can have an effect on someone’s life: an old man in a hurry, a slow starter, a léger dilettante, someone who grew up too fast – all could be the result of suspicion of one’s likely longevity. Tony Benn wrote confidently, while his father was still alive, that he would live to the age of eighty-two (he nearly reached eighty-nine).¹ Benn’s ancestry meant that he could reasonably expect a generous lifespan (although he made decisions at several stages which put this in jeopardy, and he was always eager to use every day to the maximum, as though it was to be his last). Benn inherited a terrier-like make-up – short, solid, brave, lively, eager and highly intelligent. In appearance he was attractive in a neat, friendly, youthful and open-looking way, quite the opposite of the formulaic tall, dark and handsome.

Benn’s ancestors before his parents’ generation passed on no money, title, land or property. The name Wedgwood was indeed connected to the eponymous potters. It was Benn’s middle name, given to him (but not to his siblings) because his mother was fairly sure that she had a distant family connection to the Wedgwoods. She was correct in her belief – both in the connection and the distance. The connection, in fact, pre-dated the founding of the pottery business. The common ancestors were Gilbert Wedgwood (1588–1678) and his wife Margaret Burslem (1594–1655), four generations before Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795), founder of the pottery business. The Wedgwood name was an asset and a liability at different times, but it was just a middle name, not a share in a valuable business.

The connection to Josiah Wedgwood the potter meant that Benn also had a very distant family link to Charles Darwin and composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams. Darwin was the grandson of Josiah Wedgwood and Vaughan-Williams was his great-great grandson. Other famous relatives included Margaret Rutherford, who was his cousin and his much more distant relative, but his contemporary in politics, Josiah Wedgwood MP.

Benn was certainly influenced by stories about his forebears. The most striking was about his paternal grandfather, Julius – a semi-literate, religious, melancholic and unlucky man. The family story was that Julius ran away from home in 1842, aged fifteen, contemplating suicide by jumping in the Mersey. He had fallen out with his step-mother, who had brought money from a brick-making business to the impoverished family, who had been living in a damp and smelly cellar in Ardwick, a mile east of the centre of Manchester. Julius’s father was, according to the family legend, either a master quilt-maker, or possibly a licenced victualler (a profession very much at odds with the views of later teetotal generations). Rescued by a rich philanthropic Quaker, Julius was taken in, fed, taught and set up as a linen-draper’s assistant in Limerick, Ireland. Here he was converted to Congregationalism by the Rev. John De Kewer Williams, author of the rather dour-sounding Words of truth and soberness, earnestly addressed to the Independents of England. At the age of twenty-two, according to the family legend, Julius uprooted himself again. He left his job and home in Ireland in disgust after finding that his employer had tried to trick a customer by mis-describing goods. Benn was thus fed a story which hinged on his grandfather’s uprooting his entire life on a matter of principle, because of some dodgy linen.

The gist of the story turns out to be true, but some rather important details were missing. The 1841 census does indeed show Julius, prior to his departure for Ireland, living in Chapel Street, Ardwick with his widowed father, William, listed as a weaver (not a purveyor of alcohol – although many people did also use their homes as public houses at the time), an older sister and two younger brothers. Later censuses show that Julius’s father remarried and that he moved back to Leeds, the city where he was born. Here, he had four more children with his second wife, Ann. In Leeds he worked as a shoemaker, later rising slightly in status to cordwainer – a maker of shoes from fine new leather, as opposed to re-using old leather, the method employed by most shoemakers. Julius’s father remained in Leeds until his death at the relatively advanced age of seventy-eight. Julius’s brothers do not seem to have shared the aversion to their step-mother, as they remained in the same household into their twenties, while they both worked as boilermakers. Evidence for the family’s increased wealth from the brick-making business brought by William’s second wife is scanty and speculative. One of William Benn’s neighbours listed in the 1841 Census was a 33-year-old woman called Ann Dean, a member of whose family was listed as ‘brickmaker’. She was then lodging with a family called Clegg. Circumstantially, her details fit with the family legend and she may have been the Ann who became William Benn’s second wife. William, a poor, widowed, single father working as a weaver, would have been likely to have found his new wife in the immediate neighbourhood. The family’s circumstances do appear to have improved marginally in the years after their move to Leeds, as would have been the case for most families in Britain as the country industrialised and imported cheaper foreign food. However, they remained working class and poor.

One of the most important details missing from the story was that Julius actually left Ireland during the potato famine. It had ravaged the country over the previous three years, slashing the yield of the island’s main food crop by seventy per cent between 1845 and 1848 – the year Julius departed. A million starved and a million more emigrated. Julius cannot have been unaffected, at least emotionally and intellectually, if not nutritionally, by the famine. He left the island amongst the million others, with the western side of the country (including Limerick) being the area worst affected by the exodus. It is also extremely likely that he was acutely aware of the part played in this Irish tragedy by the wealthy English Tory landlords and by the British government’s policy of tariffs, which kept imported wheat and bread prohibitively expensive. Another factor, not totally unconnected to the potato famine, was the departure of John de Kewer Williams from Limerick in 1846 and the near-collapse of the Congregational church in Ireland – the dissolution of Julius’s spiritual home. On his return to England Julius went to Hyde, seven miles to the east of Manchester, to look for a job as a school master’s assistant. Drawn both by the religious creed and the companionship he had enjoyed through the church in Limerick, he visited the Congregational chapel. Here he met his future wife (Benn’s paternal grandmother), the 19-year-old daughter of a shuttle-maker. Unfortunately for Julius, she shared the first name of Ann with his detested step-mother, but this does not seem to have dampened the attraction. Julius and Ann set up, and both worked in, a school at the chapel.

Benn’s father was the first born child of Julius and Ann. His parents had been married on 13 February 1850 and he was born on 13 November 1850 – exactly nine months later to the day. He was given the names John Williams Benn – the Williams being in honour of the Reverend John de Kewer Williams. So, like the ‘Welsh Wizard’ Lloyd George, John Benn, a future leader of London politics, was actually born in Manchester.

Having been unlucky in timing his arrival in Ireland just before the start of the potato famine, Julius and family were more fortunate in leaving Lancashire before the cotton famine, caused by the American civil war, in the 1860s. The family decamped to the East End of London, which was to be a focus of the working life of three successive generations of the family. They initially settled in an ‘awful little alley’ called Commercial Place.² In the East End, Julius was involved in social work, including setting up a home for destitute boys. His work here led to his being offered the charge of the country’s first reformatory and industrial school, which was to be set up at Tiffield in Northamptonshire. The family moved there and took up lodgings. Their landlord was Julius’s deputy – making it a rather convoluted hierarchy. John Benn therefore also spent five years of his childhood in rural Northamptonshire.

The family returned to the East End of London for a combination of reasons. The principle cause was that Julius could not practise his Congregational faith in Tiffield and had to worship at the local Anglican church, whose doctrines he could not fully accept. However, as with the combination of principle and practicality which had led to his departure from Ireland, there was also another, more prosaic, reason for the move. Julius had got into financial difficulties, after a failed investment in an agricultural patent. He lost his savings and ended up in debt. He had to leave his job and also the lodgings. Julius’s wife was by then in poor health and unable to walk without difficulty. One version of the family story has Julius pushing Ann in a bath chair, another in a wheelbarrow. Whatever the means of transport, the eventual destination was Stepney. Here Julius set up a toyshop and newsagent – a business which did not thrive, but which taught his son a good deal about commerce. The premises were also used as a depot for the British and Foreign Bible Society.³ The toyshop premises were redeveloped and the family moved again and set up a different business, this time a recruitment agency for domestic staff.⁴ Julius eventually returned to missionary work and became the minister of the Gravel Lane chapel. There was some controversy over whether he was entitled to the designation of ‘Reverend’ or not.⁵

So, on his father’s side of the family, Benn’s grandparents were Congregationalists, poor and from a working class background associated with the textile industry around Manchester. When Benn was born both his paternal and maternal grandparents were still alive. His maternal grandparents also came from Hyde and were non-conformists, but they were wealthier. Benn’s maternal grandfather, John Pickstone, had been a manufacturing chemist and had bought some land and property. He retired to Altrincham, the town of his birth. Benn never got to know his maternal grandfather Pickstone particularly well, but did not feel that he had lost out as a consequence. Even to the teetotal Benn, who had a strong set of morals and could be rather puritanical, his grandfather was ‘uncompromising’, ‘narrow’ and ‘unbending’.⁶ His four sons (Benn’s uncles) were named Benjamin Franklin Pickstone, Louis Kossuth Pickstone, John Bright Pickstone and Alfred Tennyson Pickstone. Benn wryly commented that he was ‘never able to detect very much trace of the paternal influence in their behaviour’, nor presumably did they live up to their names as a founding father of America, a Hungarian freedom-fighter, a Corn Law abolitionist, or a poet laureate. Benn later realised that his opinions of his grandfather were to some extent coloured by his father’s ‘kindly malicious recollections’. Pickstone’s eldest daughter became a member of the Plymouth Brethren. As well as drink and frivolity, another object of Pickstone’s disapproval was the proposed marriage of his younger daughter, Elizabeth, to Benn’s father – ‘this boy from London’.

Fortunately for the family, ‘whatever was lacking’ in Benn’s maternal grandfather was ‘made up’ in his grandmother and Benn believed that his mother’s sweetness and devotion could be traced to her mother. His maternal grandmother was born in 1817 in Nottinghamshire to a father born in Holland and a mother from Burslem in the Potteries, which supported her belief that she probably had a connection with the Wedgwood family.

Benn’s mother, Elizabeth Pickstone (known in the family as Lily) met Benn’s father in 1870, aged nineteen when he came to her parents’ house in Hyde to perform a ghost play involving skulls and crocodiles.⁷ How this play accorded with the alleged serious narrow-mindedness of her father is not clear. According to her future husband, Lily was a ‘bounding’, ‘round’, ‘compact’ figure (not terms usually applied in searching for a potential spouse). She described her own education as having concluded at a ‘finishing school’ in Stockport.⁸ Her outlook on life was domestic – there was ‘family’ and ‘the outside world’.⁹

So, Benn’s father, ‘this boy from London’ as his prospective father-in-law, Pickstone, referred to him, had actually been born in Manchester in 1850, but had moved to St. George’s in the East End of London the following year. In 1856 his family had moved to Northamptonshire, and he had arrived back in the East End again when he was nine. Leaving school at the age of eleven, he was sacked from his first job as an office boy. He then worked for a furniture wholesaler, attending art school at night. In 1868 he was promoted to junior draughtsman, then chief designer and, in 1873, junior partner. An entrepreneurial, hard-working and ambitious young man, Benn’s father had to make up for what Pickstone considered to be his lack of substance in terms of wealth, education and contacts.

Benn’s parents were married on 1 July 1874, after an official engagement lasting a year, to satisfy Pickstone. They went on to have six children. The eldest, Ernest, was born on 25 June 1875. William Wedgwood followed on 10 May 1877. Their third child, Christopher, was born on 27 November 1878, but died just over a year later on 29 December 1879. There followed two daughters, (Lilian) Margaret in December 1880 and (Eliza) Irene in February 1882, and finally a son, Oliver, born in July 1887. The death of one child out of six was unfortunately a fairly typical occurrence at the time.¹⁰ Benn was two and a half years old when his younger brother, Christopher, died. He would have been unlikely to have carried any direct memories of his lost sibling or of his death because at that age children typically do not understand death and regard it as a temporary state. However, Benn is likely to have been influenced indirectly by the effect which it had on the family and by later discussion of their loss. Benn’s sister, Margaret, was born around a year after Christopher’s death. The changed family dynamics after Christopher’s death would have been altered again by this new arrival. Typical effects of the death of a sibling tend to be guilt, anxiety, susceptibility to stress, but in some cases a feeling of invulnerability, greater emotional strength, ability to empathise with the bereaved and greater independence.¹¹ All of these were, in fact, characteristics displayed in abundance by the adult Benn.

It is widely recorded that Benn’s origins were in the East End of London. However, there is no official definition of the East End, so it is quite hard to determine categorically if this is true. There is general agreement that it is bounded by the City of London to the West and by the River Thames to the south. The eastern boundary is usually taken to be the River Lea. However, the northern boundary is less well defined. The widest definitions include the ‘southern part’ of Hackney.¹² Benn was born at Ferncliff Road, almost exactly in the centre of the London Borough of Hackney.¹³ So, by the most generous of definitions, Benn’s birthplace just squeaked into the East End.

The East End was well-known for its significant concentrations of poverty. The house where Benn was born has since been demolished and the area was redeveloped by the GLC as the Mountford Estate, although the name Ferncliff Road survives. Records also survive of the relative affluence or poverty of the surrounding area towards the end of the Victorian era,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Fledgling Dynasty with a Flat-Pack Ancestral Home 1877–1906
• Chapter 2: Liberal MP for the Backstreets 1906–14
• Chapter 3: To War with a Parachute and a Box of Pigeons 1914–18
• Chapter 4: From Leith to Obscurity 1918–27
• Chapter 5: Turbulent Times in the Labour Party 1927–31
• Chapter 6: Summer of 1931
• Chapter 7: Round the World with a Kettle 1931–39
• Chapter 8: Flying Viscount 1939–46
• Chapter 9: The Noble Lord Shall Be No Longer Heard 1946–60
• Chapter 10: Renunciation and Resurrection 1960–
• Notes
• Chronology of William Wedgwood Benn’s Life