Lansbury, George

Lansbury, George (lănz`bərē), 1859–1940, British Labour party leader. During the 1880s he was influenced by Christian socialism, and he later joined (1892) the Social Democratic Federation. A reformer, he campaigned constantly for the amelioration of poverty and for woman suffrage. He was a member of the royal commission on the Poor Laws (1905–9) and signed the famous minority report. He helped to found the Daily Herald (1912), which he edited until 1922, when it became the official Labour party newspaper. A Labour member of Parliament (1910–12, 1922–40), he served as commissioner of works (1929–31) and as leader of the opposition (1931–35) against the National government of Ramsay MacDonald. A lifelong pacifist, he had defended conscientious objectors during World War I, and in 1935 he resigned as party leader over the issue of League of Nations sanctions against Italy, a move he thought would lead to war. He advocated unilateral disarmament by Great Britain during the 1930s, and in 1937 visited Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in an attempt to avoid war.

Bibliography

See his autobiographical Looking Backwards—and Forwards (1935); biographies by R. W. Postgate (1951), R. Holman (1990), and J. Schneer (1990).

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Lansbury, George

(born Feb. 21, 1859, near Halesworth, Suffolk, Eng.—died May 7, 1940, London) British politician. As a member of the House of Commons (1910–12, 1922–40), he became known as a socialist and poor-law reformer, and he led the British Labour Party from 1931 to 1935. Pacifist in his leanings, he was unwilling to call for economic sanctions against Italy for its aggression in Ethiopia (1935), fearing it might lead to war, and lost his party leadership post. In 1937 he visited Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in the vain hope that his personal influence could stop the movement toward war.