George Alfred George-Brown, Baron George-Brown,
PC (
2 September 1914 –
2 June 1985) was a
British politician who served as Deputy Leader of the
Labour Party from 1960 to 1970, and was a senior
Cabinet minister (including as
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) in the Labour government of the
1960s. He was a leader of the right wing within the Labour Party and an effective, if aggressive, election campaigner, but was ultimately unable to cope with the pressures of high office without excessive
drinking. He changed his surname from Brown to George-Brown in order to incorporate his first name into his
peerage title, which was created on
6 November 1970.
Early Life Shortly before marrying Sophie Levene on
22 April 1937, Brown was appointed as a ledger clerk with the
Transport and General Workers Union, moving to be District Organiser for
Watford the next year. Brown was already active within the Labour Party and the Labour League of Youth. He ran as a moderate candidate for the Chairmanship but at the Labour Party conference in 1937 he was defeated by
Ted Willis of the left, later a noted playwright and television dramatist. At the 1939 Labour Party conference Brown made his mark by a strong speech demanding the expulsion of
Stafford Cripps for his support for the
Popular Front. Cripps refused to speak to Brown for the rest of his life.
His TGWU activities brought him into close contact with
Ernest Bevin, the Union's founder and General Secretary who was brought into the wartime coalition government. Brown himself served as a temporary
Civil Servant in the Ministry of Agriculture from 1940 onwards.
Trade Union organiser 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 the top Labour target seats. In the
1945 general election Brown won the seat with a majority of nearly 9,000. 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 picked to be a
Parliamentary Private Secretary by
George Isaacs, who had followed the promoted Bevin as
Minister of Labour.
The job of the Parliamentary Private Secretary (usually known as a 'PPS') was almost made for Brown, who 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 transferred to be PPS to
Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton in 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.
Member of Parliament Attlee, despite knowing all about Brown's plot to depose him, swiftly appointed Brown as Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture. 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 could be lifted, but progress was slow. However, Attlee grew to appreciate his talent.
When his mentor Bevin died in April 1951, Brown was appointed
Minister of Works in the 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.
Ministerial office No sooner had Brown got to grips with his office, than he was forced to leave it when Labour lost the
1951 general election. As with other Government ministers, Brown found himself forced to rely on an inadequate Parliamentary salary which led him to consider a return to being a Trade Union official. However, he was appointed in 1953 as a consultant to
the Daily Mirror Group of 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 prominent, but also 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 Brown found it easier to win promotion as his friend
Hugh Gaitskell became Leader of the Labour Party. Brown had a private but widely publicised shouting-match with
Soviet leaders
Nikita Khruschev and
Nikolai Bulganin when he was part of a Labour Party delegation invited to dine with them on their British visit in April 1956. That year, he lost the election to be the
Treasurer of the Labour Party to Bevan.
Opposition After the death of
Aneurin Bevan in the summer of 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 did not seem to most on the left of the Labour Party to be 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 - most notably,
Middlesbrough West.
Gaitskell's sudden death in January 1963 left Brown no choice but to challenge for the Party Leadership. However he mishandled the campaign badly. 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 undermined his reputation for plotting; Brown repudiated any such agreement, laying himself open to the accusation.
Deputy leadership Many on the right of the Labour Party, most notably
Anthony Crosland and
Denis Healey, supported James Callaghan for the leadership, as they were opposed to Wilson, but also didn't trust Brown. Part of the reason for the mistrust of Brown was the private knowledge of his excessive drinking, which exacerbated his rude and aggressive style of politics. Crosland himself called the leadership election as being "A choice between a crook (Wilson) and a drunk (Brown)". The mainstream press of the day did not publicise this problem, but it became publicly apparent when Brown was invited on
Associated-Rediffusion television to pay tribute to
John F. Kennedy after his assassination (Brown was probably the closest Labour politician to Kennedy). Brown had come from a dinner in
Shoreditch where he had already drunk a great deal, and drank more while preparing to go on air - having a row with actor
Eli Wallach which became physical. When Brown went on air, millions of viewers saw him interpret a fair question as an accusation of his having overstated his closeness, then give a morose and slurred tribute from which it was apparent he was intoxicated. Brown had to issue a public apology. Many Labour MPs who were prepared to accept Brown as Deputy Leader were unhappy with the idea of him being in charge, and thus Wilson was easily elected.
Brown bitterly resented his leadership defeat, which came only a matter of weeks after he had defeated Wilson for the Deputy Leadership. He disappeared for five days after the result was declared, using an assumed name to book a flight to
Glasgow; the newspapers were full of stories about the vanishing politician. When he returned he demanded of Wilson that he be appointed Shadow Foreign Secretary, which Wilson refused to do.
He retained the Deputy Leadership and despite his personal differences, played an important part in advising Wilson about Labour's campaign strategy in the
1964 general election. It was decided that Wilson would make only a limited number of major campaign speeches outside London, while Brown would tour the country speaking in all the marginal seats (his main theme was predicting an imminent economic crisis). Brown later calculated that he had made 100 speeches. In one of them he made a
gaffe by suggesting that the mortgage interest rate could be cut to 3%; the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer
Reginald Maudling was quick to capitalise on this and ask how much it would cost.
Personal problems Labour won the election with a narrow majority. As previously arranged with Wilson, Brown was appointed to the newly created
Department of Economic Affairs through which they both hoped to institute long-term economic planning and remove some of the power of the
Treasury. Brown also took the honorific title of
First Secretary of State to cover his seniority as Deputy Leader of the Party (Brown, but no-one else, claimed that he was actually the Deputy Prime Minister).
Immediately on taking office Brown was told that the budget deficit for the coming year was forecast at £800 million, double what the Labour Party had predicted as the worst possible figure before the election. The leading economic ministers were presented with three options, including
devaluation of the
Pound Sterling, to meet the crisis. They decided on a temporary surcharge on imported goods. However, over the next few months Brown was persuaded by his deputy Anthony Crosland that ruling out devaluation had been a mistake. The pound continued to be under pressure in 1965 and Brown struggled over a 12-hour meeting at the
Trades Union Congress to persuade the unions to accept a tougher prices and incomes policy, to which he was personally opposed.
The most important function of the DEA was to prepare a 'National Plan' for the economy. Brown became personally identified with the project, which helped increase enthusiasm for it among officials and the Labour Party, while also interesting the press. After nearly a year's work the Plan was unveiled on
16 September 1965, pledging to cover 'all aspects of the country's development for the next five years'. The Plan called for a 25% growth in
Gross Domestic Product from 1964 to 1970, which worked out at 3.8% annually. There were 39 specific actions listed, although many were criticized as vague.
Department of Economic Affairs After the
1966 general election at which Labour won re-election with a landslide, the government was hit by a severe financial crisis. The question of devaluation was raised again in a more pressing way, with Brown now strongly supporting it, but Harold Wilson was firmly opposed, preferring a set of deflationary measures including spending cuts and interest rate rises. Brown believed that these measures would damage the economy.
Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan found himself in the middle, as he opposed devaluation but felt that without prompt action it was inevitable. Wilson tried to keep Brown on board, even offering to make him Chancellor should Callaghan resign, but Brown stood firm. When the Cabinet voted by 17-6 against devaluation, Brown sent a letter of resignation.
Wilson craftily sent the letter back to Brown so that he could deny having received it, and then sent
George Wigg to try to talk Brown out of it. This did not prevent the news reaching the public; Wigg then changed his position and told Brown that Wilson would accept his resignation. Bizarrely this convinced Brown to stay and he accepted all of Wilson's terms for staying in the government in a late night meeting before announcing his "un-resignation" to the press in Downing Street.
July measures Brown was reshuffled to become
Foreign Secretary in August 1966, a job he coveted. This decision had implications for the government's stance on the
European Economic Community as Brown had always favoured entry. Wilson had been sceptical, but not opposed outright, to joining but Brown persuaded him and the rest of the Labour Party to support an application. In May 1967 it was announced that Britain had made its second application to join. Like the first, it was vetoed by
Charles de Gaulle.
Brown's drinking was became more pronounced as he became depressed by his loss of face in July 1966. His reaction to his depression was to launch vituperative attacks, for example at the son of newspaper proprietor Cecil King in October 1967. After Wilson was told of this, Brown came round and told Wilson that he had just had a terrible row with his wife and could not continue in Government. More and more people were becoming aware of Brown's
alcoholism, and
Private Eye managed to hint at the scandal with a parody of a memo titled "Brown: F.O. Acts". The memo gave translations into various languages for the words tired, overwrought, expansive, overworked, colourful, and emotional. This coined the phrase "
tired and emotional" as a
euphemism for drunk.
Foreign Secretary During his time, and subsequently, a widely circulated but evidently false rumour had it that Brown had embarrassed himself while drunk at an official reception in South America. Brown was said to have lumbered over to a tall, elegant vision in red, and requested the honour of the next dance, to be told, "I will not dance with you for three reasons. The first is that you are drunk. The second is that the band is not playing a waltz, but the Peruvian national anthem. The final reason is that I am the Cardinal
Archbishop of Montevideo". Although the story is highly amusing, checks that have been done on whether it could true have not substantiated it. Brown did not visit South America during his term, and the same story had originally circulated about a different minister.
Rumoured Archbishop of Montevideo incident Despite devaluation in November 1967, the pound came again under severe pressure in March 1968. When Wilson wanted to declare an emergency
bank holiday to give breathing space, he attempted to contact his Foreign Secretary. Brown could not be found and his staff reported his condition as "only 'so-so' when last seen", and so Wilson convened a special meeting of the
Privy Council without him. Brown was incensed that Wilson had not tried further to contact him, and got together with other uninformed ministers to face down Wilson at a meeting in the early hours of the morning. Brown, who appeared very drunk, incoherently shouted at Wilson, who was almost as angry and stood up for himself. At the end of the meeting Brown stormed out.
It was unclear whether he had resigned but Brown did nothing the next day to apologise. At 6 o'clock that evening he sent a letter which said "I think it better that we should part company" but did not mention "resignation". Wilson decided to reply by accepting Brown's resignation but also sent a message saying that Brown had half an hour to say whether the letter had been misinterpreted. Brown did not act on this and so left the government, but not in the blaze of glory for which he had hoped.
Resignation Brown's constituency of Belper had been the site of considerable new development since he had first been elected. Most of the new housing was for middle-class areas near Derby, and therefore contained mostly Conservative voters. Although a Boundary Commission report in 1969 recommended the removal of this area, the Government decided to postpone the boundary changes and Brown was forced to fight in a seat which was trending away from him. Added to this problem, he remained Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and toured the country making speeches for other Labour candidates during the
1970 general election. His Conservative opponent
Geoffrey Stewart-Smith had spent the last four years nursing the constituency. Brown lost his seat by more than 2,000 votes.
The models
Individual hernias
Femoral hernia
Bibliography
Nickname
Lefthit