John Freeman (politician)

John Freeman (politician)

Major John Freeman, MBE (born 19 February 1915) is a retired British politician, diplomat and broadcaster. He was the Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Watford from 1945 to 1955.

Life and career

He was educated at Westminster School and Brasenose College, Oxford, (where he was elected an honorary fellow in 1968) and he joined the Labour Party in 1933. During World War II, Freeman saw active service in the Middle East, North Africa, Italy and North West Europe and was commissioned in the Rifle Brigade in 1940. He was appointed MBE in 1943. Upon his return, he was selected as Labour candidate for Watford and was elected in the 1945 election victory.

He was on the Bevanite left-wing of the Party although also supported by Hugh Dalton who liked to go 'talent-spotting' among young MPs. He rose quickly through the ministerial ranks, but resigned along with Bevan and Harold Wilson in 1951 over National Health Service charges. He decided to stand down as an MP in the 1955 general election.

Freeman established himself as a political journalist and was editor of the "New Statesman" from 1961 to 1965. He also presented the interview programme, "Face to Face" (where on one famous occasion he reduced TV personality Gilbert Harding to tears) and "Panorama". When Harold Wilson became Prime Minister, he appointed Freeman to be British High Commissioner in India (1965-1968) then British Ambassador in Washington D.C. (1969-1971). Freeman joined the Privy Council in 1966.

Freeman was appointed Chairman of London Weekend Television Ltd in 1971, serving until his retirement in 1984. During this period, he wrote an article in 1981 which criticised what he saw as the heavy-handed, interventionist broadcasting policy of the British government expressed in the ethos of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and expressed views which would soon come to be closely associated with Margaret Thatcher and the deregulatory, laissez-faire new school of Conservative Party politics. He was director of several other companies in this period and President of ITN (1976 - 1981).

Following his retirement he commentated on bowls for Granada Television. From 1985 to 1990 he was Visiting Professor of International Relations at the University of California, Davis. He is one of the last of those elected to Parliament in 1945 to survive.

He had been married four times:
# Elizabeth Allen Johnston (1938 - 1948; dissolved)
# Margaret Ista Mabel Kerr (1948 - 1957; widowed)
# Catherine Dove (1962 - 1976; dissolved)
# Judith Mitchell (since 1976)

External links

* [http://www.stuartthomson.co.uk/books/biography/freeman/ Entry in the "Dictionary of Labour Biography"]


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