Richard Crossman Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This example Richard Crossman Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Richard Howard Stafford (“Dick”) Crossman (1907–1974) was a writer, diarist, and British Labour Party politician who served as member of Br itish parliament for Coventry East from 1945 to 1974. He held high ministerial positions in Harold Wilson’s Labour governments from 1964 to 1970, but his most lasting contribution to British political life was the publication of three volumes of his controversial ministerial diaries.

In his youth, Crossman won a scholarship to Winchester College and later a scholarship to Oxford University’s New College to read classics. After taking first-class honors, in 1930 he became a don and tutor at New College, where he taught and published books on political philosophy. In the late 1930s, he left Oxford for Labour Party politics, working as a writer and editor for the left-of-center New Statesman. During World War II (1939–1945), he served in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, coordinating political propaganda and psychological warfare. After the end of the war, he won the seat of Coventry East and began his career as a member of Parliament.

Despite his demonstrated abilities, Crossman remained on the Labour backbenches for nearly two decades, in part because of his contentious role in various Labour leadership challenges of the 1950s. His association with Aneurin Bevan and later with Harold Wilson marked him as a left-wing rebel, and it was not until the death of Hugh Gaitskell in 1963 that Crossman was able to use his close relationship with Wilson to help Wilson win his campaign for the party leadership. When the Labour Party won the general election of 1964, Crossman was named minister of Housing and Local Government.

Crossman served as housing minister until 1966, when a cabinet reshuffle gave him the position of lord president of the Privy Council and leader of the House of Commons, a position that he did not greatly enjoy. His diaries reveal that he missed the power and authority that the department had given him. In 1968 when Wilson combined the departments of health and social security to form the single Department of Health and Social Security, Crossman received the charge of the department. As its minister, he worked on a proposal to revise the existing flat-rate state pension program by adding a new earnings-related component.

When the Labour Party lost the 1970 election, Crossman resigned from his party’s front bench to accept the editorship of the New Statesman. He also began to edit and format his political diaries for publication—a task that acquired a particular sense of urgency when he was diagnosed with cancer. Crossman’s determination to give a full and complete account of his time within the Wilson cabinet ran into strong opposition from the cabinet office. Not only did his diaries flout the official secrets acts, which protected government documents from early release, but also his near-verbatim accounts of discussions in cabinet and between ministers and civil servants broke the long-standing tradition of confidentiality within the British political system. The ensuing legal battle to prevent publication was still unresolved when Crossman died in April 1974, but his ministerial diaries would eventually be published. To this day, the Crossman diaries remain a valuable resource for historians and politicians, and the precedent set by their publication opened the way for the printing of other political diaries, both by Crossman’s contemporaries and by future politicians.

Bibliography:

Crossman, R. H. S. The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, 3 vols. London: Hamish Hamilton/Jonathan Cape, 1975–1977.
Dalyell,Tam. Dick Crossman. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.
Young, Hugo. The Crossman Affair. London: Hamish Hamilton/Jonathan Cape, 1976.