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Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (April 24 1889 to April 21 1952), British Labour politician, was born in London, the son of a Conservative member of the House of Commons who late in life, as Lord Parmoor, joined the Labour Party. He was educated at a public school and at University College, London, where he studied chemistry. But he abandoned science for the law, and in 1912 was admitted as a barrister. He served in World War I as an ambulance driver in France.
In 1929 Cripps joined the Labour Party and was elected MP for a seat in Bristol. During the government of Ramsay MacDonald (1929-1931) he moved rapidly to the left and became an outspoken socialist, although he strong faith in evangelical Christianity prevented him from becoming a Marxist. He was briefly Solicitor-General in the MacDonald government. This post was customarily accompanied by a knighthood, making him Sir Stafford Cripps.
After a few months, however, Cripps resigned from his post and from the Labour Party in protest at MacDonald's policies, and in 1931 he retained his seat as an Independent Labour candidate. In 1932 he founded the Socialist League to argue for a pure form of democratic socialism. Tall, thin and intense, he became the archetype of the British upper-class doctrinaire socialist so common in the 1930s.
In 1933 he rejoined Labour, but remained a rebel on the left-wing of the party. He was an early advocate of a popular front against the rising threat of fascism, and in the face of this threat he abandoned his more extreme positions: the Socialist League was dissolved in 1937. In 1939, however, he was expelled from the Labour Party for his advocacy of a popular front with the Communist Party.
When Winston Churchill formed his wartime coalition government in 1940, he appointed Cripps ambassador to the Soviet Union, in the perhaps naive view that a left-wing socialist was the best person to try to negotiate with Stalin, at this time allied with Nazi Germany through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 Cripps became a key figure in forging the alliance between the western powers and the Soviet Union.
In 1942 he returned to Britain and was appointed a member of the war cabinet. He was sent to India to try to negotiate an agreement with the nationalist leaders Gandhi and Nehru that would keep India loyal to the British war effort in exchange for a promise of full self-government after the war. Although no formal agreement was reached, he helped calm the situation in India. Later in 1942 he was appointed Minister for Aircraft Production.
When Labour won the general elections of 1945, Clement Attlee appointed Cripps President of the Board of Trade, the second most important economic post in the government. Although still a strong socialist, Cripps had modified his views sufficiently to be able to work with mainstream Labour ministers. In Britain's desperate postwar economic circumstances, Cripps became associated with the policy of "austerity." As an upper-class socialist he held a puritanical view of society, and took a grim pleasure in enforcing rationing with equal severity against all classes.
When Hugh Dalton resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1948, Cripps succeeded him, and laboured tirelessly to rescue Britain from its economic crisis. Cripps increased taxes and forced a reduction in consumption in an effort to boost exports and stabilise the pound sterling so that Britain could trade its way out of its crisis. He strongly supported the nationalisation of strategic industries such as coal and steel.
Although Cripps's severe manner and harsh policies made him very unpopular, especially among the middle classes, he won respect for the sincerity of his convictions and his tireless labours for Britain's recovery. In 1950 his health broke down under the strain and he was forced to resign his office in October. He retired from Parliament in 1951 and died the following year while recuperating in Switzerland.
