Emanuel Shinwell, Baron Shinwell, CH, PC , known informally as Manny Shinwell, was a British trade union official, Labour politician and one of the leading figures of Red Clydeside.
Background
Shinwell was born in Spitalfields on 18 October 1884, London, but his family moved to Glasgow, Scotland. His father was a Polish Jew who had a small clothing shop and his mother, a Dutch Jew, was a cook from London. He was the eldest of 13 children.
Education
He educated himself in a public library and at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. He enjoyed sport, particularly boxing, and he was the trainer of a local football team. He left school at eleven to be apprenticed as a tailor, and began his working life as a machinist in a clothing workshop. In 1903 he became active in the Amalgamated Union of Clothing Operatives, and joined the Glasgow Trades Council in 1906 as a delegate of that union.
Career
In 1903 he became a member of the Independent Labour party, traveled around Scotland and northern England addressing meetings and engaging in debates on social justice. In 1909 he was nominated to the Glasgow Trades Council as representative of the Scottish Clothing Workers Union and in this capacity took part in negotiations with the shipowners on behalf of dockers during the 1911 seamen’s strike.
Shinwell took the post of secretary to the Scottish Seamen’s Union and was as vice-chairman and later president of the Glasgow Trades Council, and a member of the Scottish Trade Union Congress. In 1916 he was elected to the Glasgow Town Council.
During World War I, Shinwell was not conscripted because his work of collecting seamen to man auxiliary naval vessels was considered to be a reserved occupation of national importance (he was later anonymously attacked in the press as not having served because he was a conscientious objector). In 1918 he suffered his first election defeat when he stood for Parliament as a Labour candidate, but received the highest Labour vote in any constituency in Scotland. In 1919 he was sentenced to five months imprisonment on a charge of incitement to riot during a demonstration calling for reduction of working hours in shipyards and industrial establishments.
During a discussion with Harvie Watt. Churchill's parliamentary private secretary, Shinwell said that he might have some harsh things to say about Churchill regarding tank defects. Watt reacted: “Don’t talk about my chief in that fashion. He is a great military expert.... what’s more, a descendant of the duke of Marlborough, the greatest of our military experts.”
Shinwell couldn’t let that pass: “Don’t talk to me about his great military ancestors. Do you know who my ancestor was? Moses. Consider the trouble he had taking the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, and forty years in the Wilderness.”
In 1922 he entered Parliament as an Independent Labour party member, and, although inhibited by his lack ot formal education, made an impressive maiden speech. He was reported in the Daily Express as having used mannerisms and conventions of parliamentary debate “as if he had been in the House for years instead of hours.” Shinwell was appointed minister of mines in Ramsay MacDonald's socialist government in 1923, and during his tenure obtained an increase in the miners’ basic wages. In the 1924 elections he was defeated, but returned in 1928. He served for eighteen months as financial secretary in the War Office, and once again as minister of mines until 1931, when he lost his scat. He returned to Parliament in 1935 (when he defeated Ramsay MacDonald) and retained his seat for the next thirty-six years.
He was extremely active during the World War II, employing two secretaries to attend to his vast correspondence — over five hundred letters a week; he wrote innumerable articles for the press and magazines and devoted his efforts to the removal of restrictions on production. His next government post was minister of fuel and power in Clement Atlee’s socialist government in 1945, when he piloted the nationalization of the coal mining industry through the House of Commons. In 1947 he returned to the War Office as secretary of state, and was minister of defense in 1950-1951. Shinwell saw to the improvement in conditions of military service, including increased pay and pensions, and longer service to enable more efficient training.
In 1970, on reaching the age of eighty-five he decided not to stand for reelection to the House of Commons. Although he had written and spoken against the upper house, he accepted membership in the House of Lords. He was most active and became chairman of the All-Party Defense Group.
Throughout his long life, Shinwell was most out-spoken and loved verbal fights. He preferred the satisfaction of speaking his mind, remaining true to his ideals.
In 1952 he had an altercation with Winston Churchill, who implied that Shinwell “put Britain’s interest second to political ideology and that he owed loyalty to an idea beyond his country’s frontiers." After the establishment of the State of Israel, Shinwell expressed a sense of pride in the state, especially in its courage to defend itself.
Shinwell’s writings include The Britain I Want (1943), an outline of his proposed postwar policy; When the Men Come Home (1944); Conflict without Malice (1955); The Labour Story (1963); and the autobiotraphical Lead with the Left: My First Ninety-Six Years (1981).
Shinwell was created a life feer in 1970 and was made a freeman of London in 1980.
In October 1984 Shinwell celebrated his hundredth birthday against the backdrop of the miners’ strike. He continued to be active in the House of Lords until shortly before his death. He became the longest lived peer on 26 March 1986, dying a little over a month later on 8 May, aged 101. He held the record for the second longest-lived British MP (after Theodore Cooke Taylor) until overtaken by Bert Hazell in November 2008.
Shinwell's estate was valued for probate at £271,509 (around £700,000 at 2016 prices).
Despite the Orthodox background of his family, he was not a practicing Jew. However, expressions of anti-Semitism aroused his ire and he left no doubt as to where he stood. In 1938, when Shinwell raised a question regarding foreign policy, Commander R. I. Bower, a Conservative M. P., shouted. "Go back to Poland." Shinwell crossed the floor and struck him in the face.
Personality
He enjoyed sport, particularly boxing, and he was the trainer of a local football team.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
boxing
Connections
Shinwell was married three times: from 1903 to 1954 to Fay (Fanny) Freeman, by whom he had two sons and a daughter, from 1956 to 1971 to Dinah Meyer, who was Danish, and from 1972 to 1977 to Sarah Sturgo. He outlived all three of his wives. Shinwell's great niece is the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, Luciana Berger.
Spouse:
Fay (Fanny) Freeman
Spouse:
Dinah Meyer
Spouse:
Sarah Sturgo
References
Manny Shinwell: A Biography
Manny Shinwell started life as a child of the ghetto, before becoming as much of a revolutionary as it was possible for a British radical to be. A stalwart of the parliamentary Labour Party and one of the most colourful figures in British politics for over 50 years, his life mirrors 20th-century British political culture.