Background
He was born one of twin brothers, sons of James Hawkins Grafton and Ethel Marion Brannan.
captain engineer politician surveyor
He was born one of twin brothers, sons of James Hawkins Grafton and Ethel Marion Brannan.
He was educated at Westminster City School, Sutton Valence School and the College of Estate Management.
They had two sons.
He served as a Captain in the war of 1939-1945 in the Queen's Westminster Rifles, the Dorsetshire Regiment and the Royal Engineers in the United Kingdom and the Far East. He served in India, Ceylon, and Java and went with the expeditionary force to the Cocos Islands. He was Liberal candidate for the Bromley division of Kent at the 1950 General Election.
He broke his leg three days before the election was called and conducted his campaign on crutches.
He did not stand for parliament again. Grafton was the group"s Honorary Secretary.
In 1972 he was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
In 1953, together with Desmond Banks who had been Liberal parliamentary candidate in Harrow East in 1950, Grafton co-founded the Radical Reform Group, a social liberal pressure group within the Liberal Party to prevent what many saw as a rightward drift by the party, and its potential capture by the economic liberals. The Group campaigned under the slogan "social reform without socialism".
