Member of Parliament
Jack Lawson took which position from Nov 1935 to Jun 1945?
Jack Lawson John James Lawson , 1st Baron Lawson , PC ( 16 October 1881 – 3 August 1965 ) was a British trade unionist and a Labour politician . A miner and later Member of Parliament in County Durham , he served in the governments of Ramsay MacDonald and Clement Attlee . In 1950 he was ennobled as Baron Lawson , of Beamish in the County of Durham , and is sometimes referred to as Lord Lawson of Beamish . Background . Lawson was born in the port town of Whitehaven , Cumberland , and grew up in the nearby village of Kells . His father John Lawson was a sailor and miner who had begun working in a colliery by the age of nine , sailed round the world by eleven , and later served in the Royal Naval Reserve . His mother , Lisbeth Savage , was a strict disciplinarian . Both parents were illiterate and the family lived in extremes of poverty common at the time . At the age of three , Lawson was sent to the local National School , Glass House School . Here , he learned to read , developing an avid interest in popular fiction as a boy , and moving on to literary fiction and poetry in later years . When he was six his family moved to the village of Flimby , near the towns of Maryport and Workington . The family now included ten children : five boys and five girls . Two of his elder brothers worked with his father at the local colliery and the family was no longer on the breadline . A year later , they moved to County Durham , where the working members were employed at Boldon Colliery . The family joined the Co-operative Society , and were committed trade unionists , active in the Durham miners strike of 1892 . Outside of school , Jack Lawsons time was consumed with chores and he often looked after his youngest brother , Will , born in 1890 . Lawson eagerly began work in the colliery the day after he turned twelve . He started as a trapper , opening and shutting doors for the drivers , working a ten-hour day . He was paid ten pence per day , and his life greatly improved – he was treated as an adult now . After a few months he became a driver , with his own pony . After a couple more years , he began off-hand work , braking inclines and attending to the signalling bells . He began attending union meetings , including the annual Durham Miners Gala , where in later years he met the likes of Will Crooks , Ellen Wilkinson , Ernest Bevin and George Lansbury . At eighteen he became a putter and began speaking and working for the union . With five members of the family now working at the colliery , the Lawsons had a higher status and moved into a house closer to the pit , with a front room . Throughout this period he gambled frequently and read a lot : Eventually , reading won over gambling . He had read nothing of economics or politics yet , but had developed a strong sense of injustice , firmly believing that manual workers were under-paid and under-valued . These ideas generally seemed strange to his colleagues and family and he kept them to himself . He joined the Methodist Society , and found his ideas more accepted there . Through reading the Labour Leader and The Clarion , Lawson realised he was a socialist . At the age of 21 he met Isabella Graham Scott , a domestic servant from Sunderland who was staying with friends at Boldon . They were married in February 1906 . Trade Unionist . In 1904 , Lawson joined the newly founded branch of the Independent Labour Party at Boldon . He was invited to be a speaker , but initially refused , unsure of his own ability . He discovered a socialist bookshop in Newcastle , where he met many like-minded people , and read books on economics and society , including those of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin . He became a hewer that year , working at the coal-face , and within a few months was elected as an assistant checkweighman . He had no ambition for work beyond being a hewer , but he did want to continue his education . He began teaching boys who worked at the colliery and then helped to set up a school for adults in two disused colliery houses . In 1905 Lawson became an active speaker for the ILP , expounding socialism and the Labour Representation Committee to the miners of Durham , who had traditionally supported the Liberal Party . Later that year , Lawson joined a correspondence class with Ruskin College , Oxford . The following spring , Lawson received a letter from the college offering him six months scholarship if he could find the money to pay for the other six months . This was a significant expense that would be compounded by living costs , and as Lawson was determined that he would only ever work as a miner there was no obvious advantage to university study . Canon William Moore Ede , a county councillor and later Dean of Worcester , convinced him to go and helped raise some of the fees ; Lawson and his wife sold their furniture and saved what they could , and the rest was paid by his parents . His wife moved to Oxford with him , finding work and accommodation as a servant in a series of homes . Amongst his tutors , Hastings Lees-Smith , the vice-principal of Ruskin and a lecturer on economics , had a particular influence on Lawson . At the end of the year , Lawson was offered a further six months scholarship on the same terms , and after working at Boldon over the winter to raise the money he began his second year of study in February 1908 . Halfway through that year , he was told that the College Council had decided to extend his scholarship to cover the rest of the full year . It was suggested he should enter Manchester College , Oxford , to study for a degree . He was grateful but refused , not wanting a professional career ; three months later , he returned to Boldon . He became well known around the county , as a speaker for both the ILP and the union . He was a negotiator for his union lodge and a delegate to the Miners Council at Durham . In 1909 , he was invited by the union to run for Durham County Council , but he was not yet on the electoral register and was ineligible to stand . Pete Curran , Labour Member of Parliament ( MP ) for Jarrow , had made Lawson his election agent : this was unpaid , hard work , and consumed all of Lawsons spare time during campaigns , as he travelled to and around Jarrow division . Curran was hit by ill health in the January 1910 general election and had trouble campaigning . He lost by less than 100 votes and died within a week . The Lawsons first daughter , Irene , was born later that year . Whilst campaigning in the general election in December , Lawson was asked by friends in Chester-le-Street to stand for the position of checkweighman at Alma Colliery . Elected and paid by hewers , as a checkweighman he would be responsible for ensuring miners received the full amount due for the coal they dug and would act as their legal representative . Lawson was reluctant to leave manual work , but allowed his name to go forward . Labour lost Jarrow again ; at the same time , the miners at Alma , elected him almost unanimously . Member of Parliament . Two years after moving there , Lawson was elected to the County Council for the Chester-le-Street division . He wrote a pamphlet campaigning for minimum wage for miners and was a leading figure in Durham during the miners strike of 1912 on this issue . He and his wife had a second daughter , Edna , while his brother Will , whom he had tutored , took a diploma in Economics and Political Science at Ruskin . In 1913 he was a delegate to the Miners International in Carlsbad . Journeying through Leipzig and Dresden , he saw the growing Prussian army , and once in the Balkans witnessed some of the troubles that would spark the first World War . When war broke out in 1914 , Will Lawson became an officer in the Durham Light Infantry . Jack Lawson followed his example , volunteering for service ; experienced with horses , he was assigned as a driver with the Royal Field Artillery , serving in France . Another brother , Tom , joined the Border Regiment . Will Lawson was sent to Ypres in January 1915 , and died in battle thirteen months later . Following the end of the war , Jack Lawson was granted temporary leave to contest the Seaham division of Durham in the 1918 general election ; he campaigned against war reparations and won only a third of the votes against a coalition candidate . After that he was sent to Clipstone in Derbyshire , where he was demobbed . Returning to work at Alma Colliery and as a county councillor , he started to have health problems and was sick during the council elections the following year . The Labour Party , which entered the election with around a dozen out of one hundred councillors , won control of the council . Later in 1919 , John Taylor , Labour MP for Chester-le-Street since 1906 and a friend of Lawsons , resigned his seat due to ill health . Though reluctant to risk leaving Durham and the colliery for London and Parliament , Lawson was persuaded to stand for Labour in the by-election . He was sponsored by the Durham Miners Association and won with a majority of eleven thousand , entering the House of Commons in November 1919 . Ramsay MacDonald appointed Lawson as Financial Secretary to the War Office in the 1924 Labour government . He worked alongside Clement Attlee , and the two came to enjoy a very firm friendship and mutual admiration . Both felt odd , controlling generals theyd served under a few years before , but the generals liked them , considering them less idle than their predecessors . He served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour in the 1929 Labour government , but refused MacDonalds invitation to join the National Government following the split in 1931 . The 1931 general election was disastrous for Labour , and Lawson was one of only two Durham Labour MPs to keep their seats , out of seventeen who won there in the 1929 election . During the 1930s , Lawson supplemented his income as an MP by writing . He published his autobiography , A Mans Life , in 1932 , intended as a record of the family life of miners . He followed this with a novel about miners , Under the Wheels , and biographies of Peter Lee and Herbert Smith . He also wrote for newspapers and periodicals . Elder Statesman . When Attlee became leader of the Labour Party in 1935 , he created a new Defence Committee for the party , appointing Lawson along with A . V . Alexander and Manny Shinwell . In April 1936 , Lawson wrote a column in the Sunday Sun criticising the National Governments policy of appeasement : Entitled Watch Winston , it predicted the governments policy of appeasement would result in war , and that Winston Churchill , at that time a marginal figure , would return to become Prime Minister . In April 1939 , during the build-up to the Second World War , Sir John Anderson , the Home Secretary , appointed Lawson as Deputy Commissioner for Civil Defence in the Northern Region . This region covered Durham , Northumberland and the North Riding ; Lawson oversaw preparations for aerial bombardment and possible invasion , and the organisation of shelter and relief when bombing began . Lawson later refused the offer of a position in government to continue his work in civil defence . His third daughter , Alma , was a gunner in the ATS ; his son Clive , born in 1932 , was killed by a bomb in 1942 . With Labours victory in the general election of July 1945 , Lawson was appointed Secretary of State for War , with a seat in Attlees Cabinet . During the closing months of the war , he travelled thousands of miles , visiting troops in India and the Far East , and speaking at military functions and mass meetings . His refusal to stick to the scheduled , whitewashed routes on official visits , insistence on seeing everything for himself , and willingness to stop and listen to everyone he met , made him unpopular with senior officers . However , he was very popular with soldiers , who were glad that one of their own was now in the War Office . Lawson oversaw planning for post-war operations , including the occupation of Germany , and for the mass demobilisation , ensuring it happened quickly and smoothly . He also served as one of Attlees key allies in the Cabinet , particularly during early conflicts with Herbert Morrison . However , from the summer of 1946 , Lawson found his job increasingly difficult : he suffered severe health problems and had to go into hospital , retiring from the front bench in October . In 1949 , on Attlees recommendation , the King appointed Jack Lawson as Lord Lieutenant of Durham . He resigned from parliament in December 1949 on appointment as vice-chairman of the National Parks Commission , he was made a hereditary peer as Baron Lawson , of Beamish in the County of Durham , in March 1950 . Lords Lieutenant are unpaid , and Lawson , one of the first working-class men to hold such a position , received income support . He attended the House of Lords but did not take a front-bench position . Still a close friend of Attlee , he provided moral support during struggle to hold the Labour Party together during the 1950s . His protégé , Sam Watson , became General Secretary of the Durham Miners and one of the most influential trade unionists in the party . Lawson retired as Lord Lieutenant in 1958 and died in 1965 , at the age of83 . His hereditary peerage became extinct on his death . The Lord Lawson of Beamish Community School is named in his honour . He was for years on friendly terms with the historian Sir Arthur Bryant , despite the latters more right-wing outlook . Books . - John James Lawson ( 1944 ) . A mans life . Hodder & Stoughton , 1944 His personal papers , including correspondace political , official , and personal , including a file of constituency correspondence for 1926–7 , appointments diaries , journals , accounts and recollections by Lawson of politicians , politics , and travels abroad on official missions , fragments of an autobiography continuing A mans life , drafts of publications , speeches , broadcasts , sermon notes , cuttings and photographs - are held at the Durham University Library , Archives and Special Collections . Related collections also can be found at Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives , Kings College , London : Bryant Papers D/4 , letters from Jack Lawson , early 1940s .