Lester Hutchinson

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Lester Hutchinson in 1947

Hugh Lester Hutchinson[1] (13 December 1904 – February 1983)[2] was a Labour politician who was elected to represent Manchester Rusholme in the 1945 General Election, winning the seat by ten votes.

Early life and background

Hutchinson was born in

Bury, Lancashire, the son of Richard Hutchinson, a backer of the Socialist Labour Party and his wife Mary Knight, who was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).[3][4][5][6] He was educated at Bootham School. He studied at the University of Neuchâtel, University of Genoa and University of Edinburgh, and then worked as a schoolteacher.[3]

In India

At Edinburgh, Hutchinson knew a young woman of the

Ben Bradley.[7] According to intelligence reports, he was a suspected communist from his arrival in India on 17 September 1928, having associated in Berlin with A. C. N. Nambiar, brother-in-law of Virendranath Chattopadhyaya.[8] Philip Spratt considered that Hutchinson might have been in touch with M. N. Roy, and knew of contact with Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, and that he was not a member of the CPGB. He had an affair with Suhasini Chattopadhyay.[9]

Hutchinson participated in the trade union movement in India in 1928–29, in the

Girni Kamgar Union (GKU) of cotton mill workers, a breakaway group with Shripad Amrit Dange as general secretary.[9][10] He was also a journalist on the Indian Daily Mail.[11]

At the time of the 1929

High Court of Judicature at Allahabad ended in August of that year with Hutchinson and eight other defendants being released.[16]

S. V. Ghate, Gopal Basak
.

In politics, and later life

Returning to the United Kingdom, Hutchinson worked for the National Council of Labour Colleges. In 1935 he set up, with J. T. Murphy, the New School of Political Science to run correspondence courses.[17] He seconded a motion by Alex Gossip on Palestine at the 1936 Labour Party Conference.[18]

There was a by-election in 1944 in the Manchester Rusholme constituency, caused by the death of the Conservative Member of Parliament. Hutchinson was a reputed fellow traveller with communist connections, and the constituency party was strongly left-wing; but the war-time electoral pact meant that Hutchinson, who had gone public as keen to stand as an Independent Labour candidate, was put in his place. Instead, Labour party officials quietly arranged that a Common Wealth Party candidate, Harold Blomerley, should be given a clear run, with an undertaking that he would later step aside for a Labour candidate outside the current coalition.[19]

The Scottish journalist Bob Brown (1924–2009) campaigned for Hutchinson in Manchester Rusholme in the 1945 general election, as a soldier stationed in Manchester. He described Hutchinson as "very left-wing" and "a man after my own heart who believed in socialism in our time, as I did then".

Elizabeth Braddock.[23]

Left-wing backbench opposition to the

Progressive Party, with Henry A. Wallace and Michele Guia.[28] In February Labour's National Executive Committee told his presumptive constituency party (Manchester Ardwick) that there was a prospect he would not be endorsed in the future.[29]

The

D. N. Pritt, expelled 1940, and John Platts-Mills, expelled 1948, to set up the Labour Independent Group, which lasted to the 1950 election. Hutchinson was expelled in July, because he opposed the Treaty, and joined them.[24][31]

The Rusholme constituency was abolished for the 1950 election. Hutchinson unsuccessfully stood for the Walthamstow West seat, won by Clement Attlee, whom he criticised for acting cautiously after becoming Prime Minister in 1945.[32] He never returned to Parliament.

In later life Hutchinson was a teacher in Lichfield.[33]

Works

He also produced an edition (1969) of two pamphlets by Karl Marx, Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century and The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston.[40]

References

  1. ^ "Hugh Lester Hutchinson". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 6 May 2023.
  2. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 19 December 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. ^
    ISBN 9780810300408
    .
  4. ISBN 978-1-000-70668-0
    .
  5. ISBN 978-1-000-70668-0
    .
  6. ^ Styles, William (2016). British Domestic Security Policy And Communist Subversion 1945 - 1964. University of Cambridge. pp. 208–209.
  7. ISBN 978-1-4008-3141-8
    .
  8. ISBN 978-0-88386-247-6
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4008-6932-9
    .
  10. ISBN 978-1-4008-6932-9
    .
  11. ^ a b "S.H. Jhabwala And Ors. vs Emperor on 3 August, 1933". indiankanoon.org. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  12. ISBN 978-81-7626-002-2
    .
  13. ISBN 978-1-78478-412-6
    .
  14. ^ The Left Review. T.H. Wintringham for the Writers' International, British Section. 1935. p. 234.
  15. ISBN 978-81-230-0059-6
    .
  16. ISBN 978-1-4008-6932-9
    .
  17. ISBN 978-0-85323-733-4
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-582-78305-8
    .
  19. ^ Pateman, Michael Gareth (2000). "Towards the new Jerusalem : Manchester politics during the Second World War" (PDF). eprints.hud.ac.uk. pp. 191–192.
  20. ISBN 978-0-85790-613-7
    .
  21. ISBN 978-1-349-81467-1
    .
  22. ^ Lilleker, Darren Graham (2001). "Against The Cold War: The nature and traditions of Pro-Soviet sentiment in the British Labour Party 1945-89" (PDF). etheses.whiterose.ac.uk. University of Sheffield. p. 114.
  23. ISBN 978-0-436-20556-9
    .
  24. ^
    ISBN 978-1-349-02346-2
    .
  25. ISBN 978-0-85772-525-7
    .
  26. ISBN 978-1-5261-0946-0
    .
  27. ^ Lilleker, Darren Graham (2001). "Against The Cold War: The nature and traditions of Pro-Soviet sentiment in the British Labour Party 1945-89" (PDF). etheses.whiterose.ac.uk. University of Sheffield. p. 108.
  28. ISBN 978-0-393-29204-6
    .
  29. ISBN 978-1-349-17431-7
    .
  30. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31872. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  31. ISBN 978-0-691-14186-2
    .
  32. ISBN 978-3-89639-485-9
    .
  33. ^ Lilleker, Darren Graham (2001). "Against The Cold War: The nature and traditions of Pro-Soviet sentiment in the British Labour Party 1945-89" (PDF). etheses.whiterose.ac.uk. University of Sheffield. p. 300.
  34. ^ Hutchinson, Lester (1935). Conspiracy at Meerut. Allen & Unwin.
  35. ^ Windmiller, Marshall (1959). Communism in India. University of California Press. p. 137.
  36. JSTOR 2602482
    .
  37. ISBN 978-0-598-00138-2
    .
  38. ^ Hutchinson, Hugh Lester (1941). The Rise of Capitalism. N.C.L.C. Publ. Society.
  39. ^ Hutchinson, Lester (1967). The Conspiracy of Catiline. Barnes & Noble.
  40. ^ The National Union Catalogs, 1963-: A Cumulative Author List Representing Library of Congress Printed Cards and Titles Reported by Other American Libraries. Vol. 61. Library of Congress. 1964. p. 419.

External links

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