Manny Shinwell, Baron Shinwell

The Lord Shinwell CH, PC
Minister of Defence
In office 28 February 1950 – 26 October 1951
Prime Minister	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	A. V. Alexander
Succeeded by	Winston Churchill
Secretary of State for War
In office 7 October 1947 – 28 February 1950
Prime Minister	Clement Attlee
Preceded by	Frederick Bellenger
Succeeded by	John Strachey
Personal details
Born	18 October 1884 (1884-10-18) Spitalfields, London
Died	8 May 1986 (1986-05-09) (aged 101)
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour

Emanuel Shinwell, Baron Shinwell CH, PC (18 October 1884 – 8 May 1986), familiarly known as Manny, was a British trade union official, Labour politician and one of the leading figures of Red Clydeside.

Early life, career and trade union activities

Shinwell was born in Spitalfields, London, but moved with his Polish–Jewish family to Glasgow, Scotland. His father had a small clothing shop and his mother was a cook. He educated himself in a public library and at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. He enjoyed sport, particularly boxing, and he was the trainer of a local football team. He began his working life as a machinist in a clothing workshop. In 1903 he became active in the Amalgamated Union of Clothing Operatives, and joined the Glasgow Trades Council in 1906 as a delegate of that union.

In May 1911, he was seconded to help organise the seamen of Glasgow at the request of J. Havelock Wilson of the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union (NSFU). He played a prominent role in the six-week Glasgow seamen's strike which began on 14 June and which was part of a nationwide strike. He subsequently became the secretary of the Glasgow branch of the NSFU. In August 1912, he participated in a revolt against the union, which resulted in the Glasgow branch becoming part of the Southampton-based British Seafarers' Union (BSU). He was the local secretary of the BSU until it became part of the Amalgamated Marine Workers' Union (AMWU) in 1922, after which he served as National Organiser of the new organisation. In 1919, he gained national notoriety through his involvement in the Glasgow 40 Hours' Movement. This movement culminated in clashes between police and protesters in Glasgow's George Square. He was afterwards tried for incitement to riot and was sentenced to five months' imprisonment.

Political career

An Independent Labour Party (ILP) member, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Linlithgowshire at the 1922 general election. He lost his seat in 1924, but was re-elected for Linlithgowshire at a by-election in 1928. In 1929 Ramsay MacDonald appointed him Financial Secretary to the War Office: Cowling says that MacDonald believed he had rescued Shinwell's ministerial career when no minister would take him. From 1930 Shinwell served as Secretary for Mines, an office he had previously held in 1924. He became a critic of Ramsay MacDonald's National Government, and in 1931 he again lost his seat. He returned to the Commons in 1935 for Seaham, County Durham, after defeating MacDonald, whereafter he campaigned vigorously, along with left-wingers such as Aneurin Bevan, for Britain to support the Popular Front government in Spain against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. On 4 April 1938, during a heated House of Commons debate in which he had been criticising the government's foreign policy, he slapped the face of the Conservative MP Commander Robert Tatton Bower after Bower told him to "go back to Poland".^[1] Shinwell had taken this to be an anti-semitic remark.^[2] In May 1940 he refused a position in Winston Churchill's Coalition Government in the Ministry of Food. He became chairman of the Labour Party in 1942.

He served in Clement Attlee's government after the Labour victory in 1945. As Minister of Fuel and Power, he presided over the nationalisation of the mining industry. His decision to mine the grounds of Wentworth Woodhouse, home of the former mine owners, the Earls Fitzwilliam, was severely criticised, including by the miners themselves (who threatened to strike in an attempt to prevent it), and was perceived as an act of class warfare. The Fitzwilliam family for decades, unlike most mine owners, had made the Wentworth Estate a welcoming retreat for all miners, making them welcome to roam the estate and allowing the miners to approach Wentworth Woodhouse and knock on the door for help at anytime. Locals in Wentworth to this day say Shinwell mined the grounds not because he needed to, but because he could.

In 1947, Britain experienced, in an exceptonally severe winter, a serious coal shortage. He was widely criticised for his failure to avert this crisis. Shortly afterwards he took up the position of Secretary of State for War which he held until 1950. His seat became Easington in 1950, at which point he became Minister of Defence. Towards the end of his Commons career, he served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, 1964-67. Shinwell was awarded the Order of the Companions of Honour and made Baron Shinwell, of Easington in County Durham, in 1970, and died in 1986, aged 101, holding the record for the second longest-lived British MP (after Theodore Cooke Taylor) until overtaken by Bert Hazell in November 2008. He became the longest lived peer on 26 March 1986, dying little over a month later on 8 May.

Portrait bust of Lord Shinwell

Shinwell sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill for a portrait^[3] in clay. The correspondence file relating to the Shinwell portrait bust is held as part of the Thornhill Papers (2006:56) in the archive^[4] of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and the terracotta remains in the collection of the artist. A bronze (accession number S.309) was purchased into the Collection of Glasgow City Art Gallery^[5] in 1973.

References

1. ^ http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/apr/04/spain
2. ^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,759518,00.html
3. ^ portrait head of Lord Shinwell image of sculpture
4. ^ http://www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk/matrix_engine/content.php?page_id=584 HMI Archive
5. ^ Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Bibliography

Shinwell wrote three volumes of autobiography:

• Conflict Without Malice (1955)
• I've Lived Through it All (1973)
• Lead With the Left (1981)

Shinwell wrote "When The Men Come Home" (1944)

• Cowling, Maurice, The Impact of Hitler - British Policies and Policy 1933-1940, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 416, ISBN 0-521-20582-4

Archives

• Catalogue of the Shinwell papers held at LSE Archives

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Manny Shinwell

Organized labour portal

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by James Kidd	Member of Parliament for Linlithgowshire 1922–1924	Succeeded by James Kidd
Preceded by James Kidd	Member of Parliament for Linlithgowshire 1928–1931	Succeeded by Adrian Baillie
Preceded by Ramsay Macdonald	Member of Parliament for Seaham 1935–1950	Constituency abolished
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Easington 1950–1970	Succeeded by Jack Dormand
Preceded by Winston Churchill	Oldest sitting member (nb not Father of the House) 1964 - 1970	Succeeded by S. O. Davies
Political offices
Preceded by George Lane-Fox	Secretary for Mines 1924	Succeeded by George Lane-Fox
Preceded by Duff Cooper	Financial Secretary to the War Office 1929–1930	Succeeded by William Sanders
Preceded by Ben Turner	Secretary for Mines 1930 - 1931	Succeeded by Isaac Foot
Preceded by Gwilym Lloyd George	Minister of Fuel, Light and Power 1945 - 1947	Succeeded by Hugh Gaitskell
Preceded by Philip Noel-Baker	Chair of the Labour Party 1947–1948	Succeeded by Jim Griffiths
Preceded by Frederick Bellenger	Secretary of State for War 1947–1950	Succeeded by John Strachey
Preceded by A. V. Alexander	Minister of Defence 1950–1951	Succeeded by Winston Churchill

Persondata
Name	Shinwell, Manny
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	18 October 1884
Place of birth	Spitalfields, London
Date of death	8 May 1986
Place of death