The Man Without a Party

CRIPPS, ADVOCATE EXTRAORDINARY--Patricia Strauss--Duell, Sloane & Pearce ($3).

Last month gaunt, radical Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons Sir Richard Stafford Cripps K.C., P.C., stepped down from his high office, accepted Prime Minister Churchill's invitation to head the Ministry of Aircraft Production (TIME, Nov. 30). London's editorial columns buzzed with conjecture.

Cabled the New York Times's London office (Nov. 23): "Sir Stafford has been a disappointment to the Government as Leader of the House. For all his sincerity, he has shown himself lacking in parliamentary finesse and political acumen."

These words must have sounded familiar in the ears of Knight and Privy Councillor Sir Stafford Cripps. Few individuals in the last quarter century of British politics have moved in & out of the limelight so erratically. Said the Manchester Guardian in 1937: "He has some of the higher qualities of leadership--character, disinterestedness, courage, sincerity, and a certain aloofness. He is a thoroughly unskillful politician; he has been in politics for eight years and is still inexperienced; he has made more 'gaffes' than any of his contemporaries."

Patricia Strauss (Bevin & Co., TIME, July 7, 1941) might well have taken these words as the starting point for her valuable, fact-filled, respectful biography of Cripps. Long a worker within the British Labor Party and the wife of an ardent Crippsian (G. R. Strauss, Labor M.P. for North Lambeth), Author Strauss tries to show that the very lack of "finesse" and "political acumen" is what has made Cripps the hope of thousands of Englishmen. It is a position, she says, that he would lose only if "they came to suspect, even mistakenly, that he had lost his political naivete and learned the lessons of expediency, compromise and adaptability. . . ."

Out of the Wood. Fifty-three-year-old Minister of Aircraft Production Sir Stafford Cripps has one of the most aristocratic backgrounds of any English leftist. The man who urged the British to "cut down the decaying wood of the House of Lords before it falls upon us" is descended from Sire Crispe de Stanlake, a 13th-century Buckinghamshire squire, Sir Stafford's father and two uncles were peers (Parmoor, Passfield, Courtney). His brother, Freddie, married the Duchess of Westminster.

Raised in comfortable country-house surroundings, young Stafford was the pet of the family. His religious mother insisted that her children be "unsectarian Christians . . . taking their religious inspiration directly from the spirit of the New Testament." Stafford absorbed her teachings, but quickly developed "a disconcerting habit of giving unsought, and often unwelcome, advice to elder members of the family." Result: his elder brothers dubbed him "Dad," and "the trait which earned the name has been a characteristic of his political life."

The young Cripps was an avid horseman and hunter, but his main interests were scientific. At 17 he built and flew a glider. At 18 he received the rare honor of working in the laboratory of the great chemist Sir William Ramsay. At 22 he read a science paper before the Royal Society (title: The Critical Constants and Orthobaric Densities of Xenon). Soon after the outbreak of World War I, young Cripps was recalled from driving a truck in France, rose to be assistant superintendent of "the largest explosives factory in the British Empire."

Not until the war's end did he enter seriously into his profession--the law. Within a few years great British manufacturing concerns found in the young barrister the most able scientific expert in the country. Calm, urbane, he could speak clearly, expertly on the most complicated industrial matters, could explain to bewildered judges the manufacturing processes of dyestuffs," celanese, the photoelectric cell. At the age of 38 (1927) Cripps was a King's Counsel earning -L-10,000 a year and able to "command almost any fee and any terms."

Out of court he had also begun to interest himself in politics. Cripps joined the Labor Party and, in 1930, came "the luckiest break" of his political life. Ramsay MacDonald's Solicitor General resigned because of illness; Cripps was appointed, in his place and automatically knighted by the King. Conservative Prime Minister-to-be Stanley Baldwin remarked: "Here comes a future Prime Minister."

From the first the "future Prime Minister" was in hot water. He infuriated Conservatives, Communists and Labor alike. When Sir Stafford spoke coldly of the sacred precincts of Buckingham Palace, the London Times condemned his "indefatigable exercise of an irresponsible tongue." When he and other leftists in the Labor Party formed the Socialist League (designed to prod Labor into more radical action) he drew down the fury of the whole press.

Said the usually staid Morning Post: "Sir Stafford Cripps, known abroad as Sir Scrapps, among his friends as Scrappy, among his opponents as Stiffy, and among an ungrateful proletariat as Gripes, is an embryo-dictator. . . ."

Out of the Party. There was truth in this sarcasm. Some of the Labor Party's leaders were deeply suspicious of an intellectual who had no respect for Party discipline. But they were eager to retain one of the most brilliant legal minds in England. They made Cripps a member of Labor's Executive Committee--following the age-old British rule that "when a man is a nuisance the best way to make him behave properly is to burden him with responsibility." It was no go. When Cripps disagreed with his fellows over an issue of principle he simply resigned from the Committee. Outside he urged, against the Committee's wish, collaboration by Labor with all Parties opposed to the British Government. Indignant, the Committee expelled him from the Party. Said Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express: "The Labor Party has blown its brains out."

The expelled Cripps promptly toured the country, ending his biting addresses on antiFascism with a plea to his listeners to join the Labor Party.

In the first months of World War II when Britons jested "the war's not lost, only mislaid," and "we're not on fighting terms with Hitler," Cripps's independence gained him enormous popular approval. It bore fruit, irresistibly, when Churchill took the helm and promptly sent "Red Squire" Cripps to Moscow as British Ambassador. Sir Stafford settled down comfortably, studying French literature, taking daily cold baths in zero temperature, eating his unvarying vegetarian meals of fruit, salad, cheese.

Cripps's return to England, after the Nazi invasion of Russia, became a triumphant rout. Huge audiences flocked to hear him speak. Wired a Labor Party local chief to the Executive Committee: "May we attend the reception to Sir Stafford Cripps . . .?" Replied embarrassed headquarters: "You may attend a reception to the ex-Ambassador to the Soviet Union, but you may not attend a reception to Sir Stafford Cripps, ex-member of our Party."

Out of India. Author Strauss ends her biography with an account of Cripps's trip to India in March 1942 and the failure of that mission. It is no way a critical account: Author Strauss simply cites Sir Stafford's own words, pins much of the blame on the intervention of Mohandas Gandhi. But to Americans the Cripps mission was the most prominent feature of Cripps's career, and his conduct of it is still debated.

Hottest debate has run recently in the Nation. Contestants: dour aggressive Correspondent Louis Fischer (Men and Politics) and Graham Spry, Canadian member of Sir Stafford's staff on his trip to India.

Charges Fischer:

> When Cripps reached India he promised the Congress party that India "could have an immediate national government . . . not subject to the Viceroy's veto." Later he "withdrew that promise." (Reason: the British Government, alarmed at the objections of reactionary and military groups in India, ordered Cripps to withdraw the proposal.)

> The U.S. and British Governments, says Fischer, have written evidence of this about face. Cripps himself admitted in India "that his enemies had defeated him," but later pinned the blame on Congress, especially Gandhi.

Retorts Spry:

> The Fischer thesis is "simple," but "wholly false." No promise of national government without veto power in the hands of a British Viceroy was ever made by Cripps. He was not stabbed in the back by his colleagues in the British Cabinet. ("I . . . knew at any moment what instructions Sir Stafford received.")

> Congress demanded "a self-perpetuating autocracy." This Cripps refused. Behind his refusal was the fact that he viewed Gandhi as "the decisive influence upon the Congress party" and that "the risk of interference in the defense of India by believers in nonviolence could not be taken with Japanese troops on the border."

Out of a Job. To Fischer, Cripps's failure is a sad reflection on the changed nature of the man himself. But to Author Strauss, Cripps has lost nothing of his high principles. Regarding his demotion from the Cabinet, she suggests that there might have been disagreements between Churchill and Cripps in regard to postwar reconstruction plans and coal nationalization ("Americans never seem to realize that coal is the heart of Britain"). Author Strauss believes that Churchill timed the Cripps ouster perfectly, doing it at a time when public opinion was occupied with the African campaign.

Patricia Strauss is convinced that Cripps is not a man who allows personal ambition to stand in his way if he feels he can be of service--as in such a post as Minister of Aircraft Production. He is certainly not headed for obscurity, she believes, unless he succumbs to his tendency "to overemphasize the importance of the individual in political affairs and to underemphasize . . . social forces." But she admits that if he cannot maintain, through an inflexible pursuit of his principles, plus a feeling for the needs of his supporters, "popular support . . . strong enough to override both [Conservative and Labor] Party machines, [Sir Stafford] will be in a political vacuum.''

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