predecessor successor death_place birth_place death_date imagesize party office primeminister birth_date term_start image article_title term_end name
sir david alfred thomas alan chorlton james fergusson william joynson-hicks robert cecil office created william adamson sir george henry roberts hugh delargy alan chorlton herbert samuel james gascoyne-cecil clement attlee ramsay macdonald london , england oldham , lancashire , england 23 october 1949 200px labour party home labour party leader of the labour party minister of food secretary control member of parliament for manchester platting manchester north east lord -lrb- 1906 -- 1918 -rrb- privy seal deputy leader of the ramsay macdonald ramsay macdonald david lloyd george 27 march 1869 8 14 february 1921 9 july 1918 14 november 1935 8 june february 1906 1929 22 january 1924 21 november 1922 jrclynes.jpg j. r. clynes
 26 21 november 1922 10 january 1919 5 july 1945 27 august october 1931 1931 6 november 1924 25 october 1932 john robert clynes
j. r. clynes

john robert clynes pc -lrb- 27 march 1869 -- 23 october 1949 -rrb- was a british trade unionist and labour party politician .
he was a member of parliament -lrb- mp -rrb- for 35 years , and as leader of the labour party -lrb- from 14 february 1921 to 21 november 1922 -rrb- , led the party in its breakthrough at the 1922 general election .
he was the first englishman to serve as leader of the labour party the son of a labourer named patrick clynes , he was born in oldham , lancashire , and began work in a local cotton mill when he was 10 years old .
at the age of 16 , he wrote a series of articles about child labour in the textile industry , and a year later he helped form the piercers ' union .
in 1892 , clynes became an organiser for the lancashire gasworkers ' union and came in contact with the fabian society .
having joined the independent labour party , he attended the 1900 conference where the labour representation committee was formed ; this committee soon afterwards became the labour party .
clynes stood for the new party in the 1906 general election and was elected to parliament for manchester north east , becoming one of labour 's bright stars .
in 1910 he became the party 's deputy chairman .
during the first world war clynes was a supporter of british military involvement -lrb- in which he differed from ramsay macdonald -rrb- , and in 1917 became parliamentary secretary of the ministry of food control in the lloyd george coalition government .
the next year he was appointed minister of food control , and at the 1918 general election he was returned to parliament for the manchester platting constituency .
clynes became leader of the party in 1921 , and led it through its major breakthrough in the 1922 general election .
before that election , labour only had 52 seats in parliament ; but as a result of the election , labour 's total number of seats rose to 142 .
macdonald had resigned as labour leader in 1914 , due to his wartime pacifism , and at the 1918 general election he lost his seat .
not for another four years did he return to the house of commons .
by that stage , macdonald 's pacifism had been forgiven .
when the occupant of the labour leadership had to be decided on through a vote of labour parliamentarians , macdonald narrowly defeated clynes .
when macdonald became prime minister he made clynes the party 's leader in the commons until the government was defeated in 1924 .
during the second macdonald government of 1929 -- 1931 , clynes served as home secretary .
in this role , clynes gained literary prominence , when he explained in the commons his refusal to grant a visa to the russian revolutionary leon trotsky , then living in exile in turkey , who had been invited by ramsay macdonald 's party to give a lecture in britain .
clynes had then been immortalised by the scathing criticism of clynes ' concept of the right to asylum , voiced by trotsky in the last chapter of his autobiography `` my life '' entitled `` the planet without visa '' .
in 1931 , clynes sided with arthur henderson and george lansbury , against macdonald 's support for austerity measures to deal with the great depression .
clynes split with macdonald when the latter left labour to form a national government .
in the 1931 election , clynes was one of the casualties , losing his manchester platting seat .
nevertheless he regained this constituency in 1935 , and then remained in the house of commons until his retirement ten years later at the 1945 general election .
he died in 1949 .
he had married mary harper , a mill worker , in 1893 .
