Background
John Richard Clynes was born in Oldham on 27 March 1869, the eldest son of Patrick Clynes, an Irish farm worker who had emigrated to Lancashire and found employment there as a gravedigger for the town corporation, and of Bridget Scanlon.
John Richard Clynes was born in Oldham on 27 March 1869, the eldest son of Patrick Clynes, an Irish farm worker who had emigrated to Lancashire and found employment there as a gravedigger for the town corporation, and of Bridget Scanlon.
John attended elementary school until he was ten years of age and then began work as a piecer (a job in the cotton-spinning process) in the cotton textile trade.
He became a “big piecer” in 1883. In 1891 he became a full-time district organizer of the National Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers, a union for the unskilled, and acted as its president between 1912 and 1937. He was first president and then secretary of the Oldham Trades Council between 1892 and 1912, and secretary of the Lancashire Piecers’ Union from 1896. He regularly attended meetings of the Trades Union Congress for his unions as well as various international trade union meetings.
Clynes began his parliamentary career when he became M.P. for the Manchester Northeast constituency in 1906, holding the seat until 1943, except during the years from 1931 to 1933, following Ramsay MacDonald’s defection from Labour. In fact Clynes retired at the age limit set by trade union rules. In the House of Commons he held many different posts. He was vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (the Labour Party is the party throughout the country, while the Parliamentary Labour Party is the organization that brings M.P.s together in the House of Commons) in 1918 and chairman in 1921. As chairman, he was effectively Labour leader, although that title did not come into use until 1922, when Ramsay MacDonald defeated Clynes in the leadership contest that followed the 1922 general election.
Clynes’s ubiquity within Labour ranks helped him obtain high office. Although he had warned Labour against joining Asquith’s wartime coalition government in May 1915, Clynes himself accepted membership in the Food Commission in 1917, and in 1918 he became a member of the Privy Council and the Controller of Food. He was opposed to Labour’s withdrawal from Lloyd George’s coalition government in November 1918 but accepted the Labour Party’s decision to do so. He was out of office until January 1924 when, having moved a vote of no confidence in the Baldwin government in January 1924, he became deputy leader of the House of Commons and Lord Privy Seal in MacDonald’s first Labour government.
The first Labour government lasted barely ten months, and it was almost five years before Labour came to office again. In the interlude Clynes worked to enable the miners, mine owners, and the government to achieve a compromise that would avoid industrial conflict. He failed in that effort, but got his union to give its full backing for the nine-day General Strike of May 1926, when almost two million trade unionists struck in support of the miners.
In June 1929 the second Labour government was formed and Clynes became home secretary. In this role he attempted to introduce prison reform, promoted the cotton-trade enquiry, and made the decision to refuse Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, permission to settle in Britain. He attempted to introduce a bill for electoral reform, but it was doomed by the economic crisis of the summer of 1931 and the collapse of the second Labour government in August. Clynes was offered the leadership of the Labour Party after MacDonald’s defection but refused the offer. Instead, he spent more time building up his union, now known as the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, which had almost 500,000 members when he retired as its president.
Clynes retired from Parliament in 1945, at age 75, and lived frugally on his trade union pension at Putney, in London.
Clynes was a socialist and a founding member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which was formed at St. George’s Hall, Bradford, in January 1893; he also attended the international Socialist Congress held at Zurich that year.
He was active in the ILP and the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), later the Labour Party, which was formed in 1900, and was a member of the LRC/Labour national executive committee between 1904 and 1930.
He was a much-respected figure in Labour circles and tremendously active in Labours trade union and political organs. His defeat by Ramsay MacDonald in the contest to become Labour leader in 1922 is a likely indicator that although he was a brilliant administrator he lacked the oratorical skills essential for effective leadership. His strong trade union credentials guaranteed him a high place in Labours ranks but could not guarantee him the position of leader and prime minister, although he had anticipated such an outcome at the beginning of 1922.
Clynes also married Elizabeth, the daughter of Owen Harper, in 1893. His marital affiliation did not impair his socialist activities.