John Strachey (politician)

Evelyn John St Loe Strachey
Evelyn John St Loe Strachey
Born	October 21, 1901 (age 125); Guildford, Surrey, England
Died	July 15, 1963 (aged 61); Marylebone, London, England
Occupation(s)	Politician, author, journalist
Years active	1920s–1963
Known for	Labour Party politician; Minister of Food; Secretary of State for War; author of Marxist and social democratic works

Evelyn John St Loe Strachey (21 October 1901 – 15 July 1963) was a British politician affiliated with the Labour Party and an accomplished author.

Strachey began his career as a journalist before entering Parliament in the 1929 election. Initially influenced by Oswald Mosley, he grew disillusioned with the Second Labour Government's handling of unemployment issues and consequently helped establish the New Party in 1931. However, he soon distanced himself from Mosley and refrained from joining the fascist movement. After losing his parliamentary seat in the 1931 election, Strachey showed sympathy towards Communist ideals throughout the 1930s but ultimately left the Communist Party in 1940.

During the Second World War, he served as an officer in the Royal Air Force, focusing on planning and public relations duties. Returning to Parliament as a Labour MP in the 1945 election, he held ministerial positions under Clement Attlee, including Minister of Food—where he dealt with widespread dissatisfaction due to persistent food rationing—and later Secretary of State for War. Throughout his career until his passing, Strachey remained a Labour MP, generally aligning with the party’s right wing faction.

An avid writer, Strachey produced numerous works, adopting a communist perspective during the 1930s and shifting towards social democracy after World War II.

Early and education

Born on 21 October 1901 in Guildford, Surrey, Strachey was the youngest among three brothers of John St Loe Strachey (1860–1927), who edited The Spectator. He attended Eton College from 1915 to 1919 and matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1920. While at Oxford, he co-edited the conservative-leaning Oxford Fortnightly Review alongside Robert Boothby. Due to health issues, he left Oxford without completing a degree in 1922 and joined The Spectator's editorial team that same year.

Political career

Association with Oswald Mosley

Strachey began contributing to the Independent Labour Party’s New Leader publication in 1923 and officially joined the Labour Party. He unsuccessfully contested Birmingham Aston as a Labour candidate in 1924. As a close associate of Oswald Mosley, then an emerging figure within Labour, Strachey co-wrote the "Birmingham Proposals" in 1925 that called for enhanced unemployment measures. That year, he also authored Revolution by Reason, advocating policies such as currency expansion, wealth redistribution, and government economic planning.

During the 1926 General Strike, he served as editor for the ILP’s Socialist Review and The Miner, expressing Marxist sympathies while opposing class conflict rhetoric. Strachey visited the Soviet Union twice, in 1928 and again in 1930. On 24 April 1929, he married Esther Murphy, daughter of a New York department store magnate; Mosley acted as best man.

Winning Birmingham Aston in the 1929 general election, Strachey became Mosley’s Parliamentary private secretary. Both resigned from government posts in May 1930 over dissatisfaction with unemployment policies. In February 1931, Strachey supported Mosley’s creation of the New Party, but resigned by July when Mosley rejected socialism and Soviet connections, later adopting fascist ideology.

By this time, Strachey's first marriage had deteriorated; he renewed ties with Celia Simpson, a former left-wing journalist who had been dismissed from The Spectator due to Communist affiliations. Standing as an independent pro-communist workers’ candidate in the October 1931 election, Strachey was defeated. After being deemed unreliable by the CPGB, he suffered a nervous breakdown and underwent three years of psychoanalysis. Following his divorce, he wed Celia on 13 October 1933; they had two children: Charles (born 1934) and Elizabeth (born 1936).

Communist

In June 1934, Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) organized a significant rally at London's Olympia Hall, which escalated into violent confrontations. To oppose such fascist gatherings, a Committee for Coordinating Anti-Fascist Activities was established, with Strachey serving as secretary and supported by the World Committee Against War and Fascism. When the BUF held another demonstration in September 1934, assembling 3,000 fascists in Hyde Park, Strachey's committee orchestrated a large counter-protest involving 20,000 anti-fascists.

Strachey joined forces with publisher Victor Gollancz and Harold Laski to create the Left Book Club in 1936. As the author of The Coming Struggle for Power (1932) and various other publications, he became one of the most productive British Marxist–Leninist theorists during the 1930s. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography attributes to him "the most influential popularisations of Marxism ever published in English." While initially critical of John Maynard Keynes' theories from a Marxist perspective, Strachey later embraced Keynesian economics. He was a frequent contributor to the monthly bulletin Left News.

Additionally, Strachey played a role in initiating the Popular Front in December 1936.

Second World War

By 1938, Strachey had adopted Keynesianism alongside support for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's American New Deal. In 1940, he authored "A Programme for Progress." Disappointed by the Communist Party's stance on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Soviet actions in Finland, he publicly severed ties with the party in April 1940.

At the war's outset, Strachey volunteered as an air raid warden before enlisting in the Royal Air Force later that year as a squadron leader. His service included acting as adjutant with No. 87 Squadron RAF, a unit flying Hawker Hurricane fighters, followed by a role as public relations officer with a bomber group. Subsequently assigned to the Air Ministry, he became a prominent commentator on air operations for the BBC, delivering official broadcasts concerning RAF Bomber Command missions.

Attlee Government and after

After rejoining Labour, Strachey was chosen as the candidate for Dundee in 1943. He was re-elected in the 1945 election representing Dundee and appointed as Under-Secretary of State for Air. He is noted for excluding Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris and Bomber Command from the Victory Honours List, which may have been retaliation for Harris' unsuccessful attempt to remove him from his Directorate of Bombing Operations post.

During the Palestine Emergency, Strachey expressed support for Zionism and was involved in collaboration against the British Mandate authorities, including endorsement of sabotage activities during the Night of the Bridges, as later detailed by Christopher Mayhew.

In May 1946, he assumed office as Minister of Food and was made a Privy Counsellor. Known for his assured public speaking and administrative competence, his period in office was marked by challenges due to unpopular food rationing measures, notably bread rationing implemented shortly after he took charge. Alongside junior minister Edith Summerskill, he faced ongoing criticism. He also defended the contentious Tanganyika groundnut scheme, maintaining strong support despite its ultimate failure.

Following the division of Dundee constituency, Strachey secured election as Labour MP for Dundee West in 1950 and retained this seat until his passing in 1963. He succeeded Manny Shinwell as Secretary of State for War from 1950 to 1951—a position outside the Cabinet at that time. His transfer to the War Office reflected diminished influence after his unpopular tenure at the Food Ministry. Press scrutiny intensified following the Klaus Fuchs Affair due to his former communist sympathies. He also opposed the Schuman Plan. Although skeptical about involvement in the Korean War, he did not resign like Aneurin Bevan did in 1951.

Throughout Labour's factional disputes during the early 1950s, Strachey maintained an "insider" status by refraining from siding explicitly with either Bevanites or Gaitskellites. He backed Hugh Gaitskell during the 1955 Labour Party leadership election. Throughout that decade, he concentrated on producing social democratic critiques concerning British society and stood against the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In the course of the 1963 leadership contest, he supported George Brown. Following Harold Wilson's victory, Strachey was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs.

Death

Strachey passed away in Marylebone, London, on 15 July 1963 at the age of 61, following surgery on his spine. At the time of his death, his estate was valued at £50,157 and 1 shilling.

Publications

Revolution by Reason (1925)
Workers' Control in the Russian Mining Industry (1928)
The Coming Struggle for Power (1932) – promoting the importance of reason, science, and culture
Unstable Money, John Day (1933)
The Menace of Fascism (1933) – urging vigorous opposition and connecting fascism with the defense of private ownership
The Nature of Capitalist Crisis (1935)
The Theory and Practice of Socialism (1936) – recognized as the Left Book Club's most significant publication
What Are We to Do? (1938)
Why You Should be a Socialist (1938) – achieved sales of 200,000 copies within two months
A Programme for Progress (1940)
Digging for Mrs. Miller: Some Experiences of an Air-Raid Warden in London (1941)
A Faith to Fight For (1941)
Post D (1941/1942)
Labour's task (1951)
Contemporary Capitalism (1956) – combining Keynesian and Marxist perspectives, emphasizing tensions between capitalism and democracy
The End of Empire (1959)
The pursuit of peace (1960)
On the Prevention of War (1962) – advocating deterrence rather than unilateral disarmament
The Strangled Cry (1962) – a critique of communism
"The Challenge of Democracy" (1963)

Notes

Sources

International Who's Who, 1945–1946 ("Strachey, Evelyn John St. Loe, M.P.")
Ceplair, Larry, Under the Shadow of War: Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and Marxists, 1918–1939
Falconer, Jonathon, The Bomber Command Handbook 1939–1945
Macintyre, Stuart, John Strachey, 1901–1931: The development of an English Marxist
Markwell, Donald, John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace
Matthew, Colin (ed.), Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 52; essay on Strachey by Michael Newman

External links

John Strachey Archive at marxists.org
Reg Groves 'John Strachey', International Socialism, 62 (1973).