J. R. Clynes

The son of an Irish labourer named Patrick Clynes, he was born in Oldham, Lancashire, and began working in a local cotton mill when he was ten years old.{{cite news |title=Mr J.R. Clynes to Leave the House |work=Hull Daily Mail |date=21 May 1942|access-date=30 March 2016 |url=http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000324/19420521/064/0004| publisher = British Newspaper Archive|url-access=subscription }} Aged sixteen, he wrote a series of articles about child labour in the textile industry, and the following year he helped form the Piercers' Union. He was mainly self-educated, although he went to night school after his day's work in the mill. His first book was a dictionary and then, by careful saving of coppers, he bought a Bible, William Shakespeare's plays, and Francis Bacon's essays. Later in life, he would amaze colleagues in meetings and in parliamentary debates by quoting verbatim from the Bible, Shakespeare, John Milton and John Ruskin.Tony Judge, 'J.R. Clynes: A Political Life' (2016) Ch1 He married Mary Elizabeth Harper, a mill worker, in 1893.

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,{{Cite book

|last=Craig

|first=F. W. S.

|author-link= F. W. S. Craig

|title=British parliamentary election results 1885–1918

|orig-year=1974

|edition= 2nd

|year=1989

|publisher= Parliamentary Research Services

|location=Chichester

|isbn= 0-900178-27-2

|page=142

}} 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 (in which he differed from Ramsay MacDonald), 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.{{Cite book

|last=Craig

|first=F. W. S.

|author-link= F. W. S. Craig

|title=British parliamentary election results 1918–1949

|orig-year=1969

|edition= 3rd

|year=1983

|publisher= Parliamentary Research Services

|location=Chichester

|isbn= 0-900178-06-X

|page=191

}}

In August 1917, three months before the Balfour Declaration, the Labour Party issued a statement in support of a Jewish state in Palestine. Clynes spoke in favor of a Jewish state.{{Cite web |last=Vaughan |first=James |date=2023-11-08 |title=Israel, Palestine and the Labour party history that has made Keir Starmer's position so difficult |url=http://theconversation.com/israel-palestine-and-the-labour-party-history-that-has-made-keir-starmers-position-so-difficult-217021 |access-date=2024-05-24 |website=The Conversation |language=en-US}}

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 fifty-two seats in Parliament but, as a result of the election, Labour's total number of seats rose to 142. He was held in considerable respect and affection in the Labour Party and, although lacking the charisma of MacDonald, was a wily operator who believed all resources available should be used to advance the material of the working classes.Tony Judge, 'J.R. Clynes: A Political Life' (2016)

MacDonald had resigned as Labour leader in 1914, due to his wartime pacifism,Marquand, David Ramsay MacDonald, (London: Jonathan Cape 1977); {{ISBN|0-224-01295-9}}, p. 168 and at the 1918 general election, he lost his seat. He did not return to the House of Commons for another four years. 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. Clynes was a critic of government policy towards the Irish population in the years after 1918, and attacked 'a recurring system of coercion' which had left Ireland "more angry and embittered . . . than ever'Jon Lawrence 'Forging a Peaceable Kingdom: War, Violence and Fear of Brutalisation in Post-First World War Britain', JMH (2003), p.582

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 that role, Clynes gained literary prominence when he explained in the Commons his refusal to grant a visa{{cite web

|url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1929/jul/18/m-trotsky#S5CV0230P0_19290718_HOC_92

|title=M. TROTSKY. (Hansard, 18 July 1929) |date=18 July 1929

|quote=In regard to what is called "the right of asylum," this country has the right to grant asylum to any person whom it thinks fit to admit as a political refugee. On the other hand, no alien has the right to claim admission to this country if it would be contrary to the interests of this country to receive him.

|work=Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) |access-date=17 August 2012}}

to the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, then living in exile in Turkey, who had been invited by the Independent Labour Party to give a lecture in Britain. Clynes had then been immortalised by the scathing criticism of his concept of the right to asylum, voiced by Trotsky in the last chapter of his autobiography My Life, entitled "The planet without visa".{{cite book

|chapter-url= http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch45.htm

|title=My Life|chapter=Chapter 45: The Planet Without a Visa

|first=Leon |last=Trotsky|title-link=My Life (Leon Trotsky autobiography)|author-link=Leon Trotsky|year=1930

|quote=The pious Mr. Clynes ought at least to have known that democracy, in a sense, inherited the right of asylum from the Christian church, which, in turn, inherited it, with much besides, from paganism. It was enough for a pursued criminal to make his way into a temple, sometimes enough even to touch only the ring of the door, to be safe from persecution. Thus the church understood the right of asylum as the right of the persecuted to an asylum, and not as an arbitrary exercise of will on the part of pagan or Christian priests.

|work=marxists.org |access-date=17 August 2012

}}

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.

After retiring, Clynes was living in very straitened circumstances, with no other income than trade union pension of £6 per week. This pension debarred him from the Commons Ex-Members Fund. Doctors' and nursing fees in respect of his invalid wife had hit him heavily.{{cite news |title=J.R. Clynes Left £9816 |work=The Courier|location=Dundee |date=7 February 1950|access-date=30 March 2016 |url=http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000564/19500207/089/0005| publisher = British Newspaper Archive|url-access=subscription }} MPs opened a fund to help and raised about £1,000.{{cite news |title=MR. J.R. Clynes Taken To Hospital |work=Hull Daily Mail |date=31 August 1949|access-date=30 March 2016 |url=http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000324/19490831/040/0003| publisher = British Newspaper Archive|url-access=subscription }} Thus, after a lifetime spent in advancing the material conditions of the people, he died in relative poverty in October 1949. His wife died a month later.

• He was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1918, giving him the honorific title "The Right Honourable" for life.
• He was awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Oldham on 9 January 1946.{{Cite web | url=https://www.oldham.gov.uk/info/200567/the_mayor/1370/honorary_freemen_of_the_borough?acceptCookieContinue=Continue | title=Honorary Freemen of the Borough}}
• He received the Honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) from the University of Durham and the University of Oxford.{{Cite web | url=https://spartacus-educational.com/TUclynes.htm |title = John Robert Clynes}}
• John Clynes Court, a social housing development in Putney, south west London, is named after him.

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

• Clynes, J.R. Memoirs (1937){{Cite web | url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275233/ |title = J.r. Clynes Memoirs 1869 1924)}}
• Edward, George From Mill Boy to Minister (1918){{Cite web | url=https://archive.org/details/frommillboytomin00georiala/ |title = From mill boy to minister; an intimate account of the life of the Rt. Honourable J.R. Clynes, M.P| date=1918 }}
• Judge, Tony. J.R. Clynes: A Political Life (2016)

• {{Commons category-inline}}
• {{Hansard-contribs | mr-john-clynes | J. R. Clynes }}

{{S-start}}

{{S-par|uk}}

{{S-bef| before = Sir James Fergusson}}

{{S-ttl| title = Member of Parliament for Manchester North East

| years = 1906–1918}}

{{s-non| reason = Constituency abolished}}

{{S-new|constituency}}

{{S-ttl| title = Member of Parliament for Manchester Platting

| years = 1918–1931}}

{{S-aft| after = Alan Chorlton}}

{{S-bef| before = Alan Chorlton}}

{{S-ttl| title = Member of Parliament for Manchester Platting

| years = 1935–1945}}

{{S-aft| after = Hugh James Delargy}}

{{S-off}}

{{S-bef| before = The Lord Rhondda}}

{{S-ttl| title = Minister of Food Control

| years = 1918–1919}}

{{S-aft| after = George Henry Roberts}}

{{S-bef| before = The Viscount Cecil of Chelwood}}

{{S-ttl| title = Lord Privy Seal

| years = 1924}}

{{S-aft| after = The Marquess of Salisbury}}

{{S-bef| before = Sir William Joynson-Hicks}}

{{S-ttl| title = Home Secretary

| years = 1929–1931}}

{{S-aft| after = Sir Herbert Samuel}}

{{s-npo|union}}

{{succession box|title=Lancashire District Secretary of the National Union of General Workers|years=1896–1917|before=New position|after=Fleming Eccles}}

{{succession box|title=Trades Union Congress representative to the American Federation of Labour|years=1909|with=Alfred Henry Gill|before=Herbert Skinner and John Wadsworth|after=William Brace and Ben Turner}}

{{succession box|title=President of the National Union of General Workers|years=1912–1924|before=J. E. Smith|after=Position abolished}}

{{succession box|title=President of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers|years=1924–1937|before=New position|after=Fred Marshall
as Chair of the Executive}}

{{S-ppo}}

{{succession box|title=Trades councils representative on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party|years=1904–1909|before=Ben Turner|after=William Barfoot}}

{{S-bef| before = William Adamson}}

{{S-ttl| title = Chair of the Labour Party

| years = 1921–1922}}

{{S-aft| after = Ramsay MacDonald}}

{{S-end}}

{{First Macdonald Ministry}}

{{HomeSecretary}}

{{UK Labour Party}}

{{Labour Party leadership election, 1922|state=collapsed}}

{{GMB (trade union)}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clynes, John Robert}}

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