Patrick Chrestien Gordon Walker, Baron Gordon-Walker, (7 April 1907 – 2 December 1980) was a British Labour Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years and twice a cabinet minister. He lost his Smethwick parliamentary seat at the 1964 general election in a bitterly racial campaign conducted in the wake of local factory closures.

Early life

Born in Worthing, Sussex, Gordon Walker was the son of Alan Lachlan Gordon Walker, a Scottish judge in the Indian Civil Service. He was educated at Wellington College and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a second in Modern History in 1928 and subsequently gained a B. Litt. He was a student (fellow) in history at Christ Church from 1931 until 1941.

From 1940 to 1944, Gordon Walker worked for the BBC's European Service, where from 1942 he arranged the BBC's daily broadcasts of the BBC German Service. In 1945, he worked as assistant director of the BBC's German Service working from Radio Luxembourg, travelling with the British forces. He broadcast about the liberation of the German concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, and wrote a book on the subject called The Lid Lifts.

From 1946 to 1948, he was chairman of the British Film Institute.

Political career

He first stood for parliament at the 1935 general election, when he was unsuccessful in the Conservative-held Oxford constituency. who offered to stand down from the by-election if Labour did the same and backed a Popular Front candidate against the Conservatives. Eventually, Gordon Walker reluctantly stood down and both parties supported Sandy Lindsay as an Independent Progressive. Quintin Hogg, the Conservative candidate, defeated Lindsay in the by-election.

Gordon Walker did not contest the 1945 general election, but was elected later in 1945 as member of Parliament (MP) for Smethwick in a by-election on 1 October 1945 after Labour's Alfred Dobbs was killed in a car accident the day after winning the seat at the 1945 general election.

In opposition from 1951, Gordon Walker disagreed with the Labour leadership's stance on the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This led Gordon Walker to remain outside the Shadow Cabinet. He re-joined the front bench in 1955 and was successful in the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet elections in 1956, as he was to be in every year until 1963 (the last before Labour returned to government). In opposition, Gordon Walker was a close ally of the Labour Leader Hugh Gaitskell, and briefly considered standing for the leadership after Gaitskell's death in January 1963. In office, the new Labour government made the decision to continue with the Polaris (UK nuclear programme); the decision was taken at a Cabinet committee by Harold Wilson, Denis Healey (the Secretary of State for Defence) and Gordon Walker.

Although Labour did win the 1964 election to end 13 years of Conservative rule, Gordon Walker was defeated in controversial circumstances by the Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths. Smethwick had been a focus of immigration from the Commonwealth but the economic and industrial growth of the years following the Second World War were coupled with local factory closures, an ageing population and a lack of modern housing. Griffiths ran a campaign critical of the opposition's, and the government's, policies, including immigration policies. Griffiths' supporters made wide use of the slogan "If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour". Griffiths did not accept that he had invented the slogan, but steadfastly refused to condemn it.

Despite, therefore, not being an MP or peer able to answer to Parliament, Gordon Walker was appointed to the Foreign Office by Harold Wilson. To resolve this unusual situation, he stood for the normally "safe" Labour constituency of Leyton in the Leyton by-election in January 1965; however, he lost, and was finally forced to resign as foreign secretary. in 1974 and was briefly a member of the European Parliament.

Bibliography

References

Sources

  • Pearce, R. (2004) "Gordon Walker, Patrick Chrestien, Baron Gordon-Walker (1907–1980)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 26 August 2007

Further reading

  • Richard Davenport-Hines, History in the House: Some Remarkable Dons, and the Teaching of Politics Character and Statecraft. Collins, London 2024, .
  • Gordon Walker, Alan. Patrick Gordon Walker: A Political and Family History, Umbria Press, 2022.
  • Morris, Ted. Managing Decline: British Foreign Secretaries of the Twentieth Century, Troubador, 2026
  • Avi Shlaim, Peter Jones and Keith Sainsbury. British Foreign Secretaries Since 1945, David & Charles, 1977. Profile on Patrick Gordon Walker by Peter Jones.
  • The Papers of Baron Gordon-Walker held at Churchill Archives Centre
  • BBC recording of Gordon-Walker reporting from newly liberated Bergen Belsen

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