Cripps, Sir (Richard) Stafford 1889-1952
English Labour statesman, economist, chemist and patent-lawyer

Born in London, the son of the politician Charles Alfred Cripps (1852-1941), and of Theresa, sister of Beatrice Webb, he was educated at Winchester and won a scholarship to New College, Oxford. However, his chemistry papers attracted the attention of Sir William Ramsay, who persuaded him to work in his laboratory at University College London instead. At 22 he was part-author of a paper read before the Royal Society. He also pursued legal studies and was called to the Bar in 1913, became the youngest barrister in the country in 1926, and made a fortune in patent and compensation cases. In 1930 he was appointed Solicitor-General in the second Labour government, but refused to serve in Ramsay MacDonald's Coalition (1931-35). From then until the outbreak of World War II, Cripps was associated with a succession of extreme left-wing movements, at first pacific in character, but later, as the Nazi threat increased, concerned with rallying everyone, and not only socialists, to active opposition to Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Cripps's 'popular front' brought about his expulsion from the Labour Party in 1939 and forced him to sit as an independent MP throughout the war. Appointed ambassador in Moscow (1940-42), under Churchill's leadership in 1942, he became Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the Commons. During the summer he was sent to India with the famous 'Cripps offer' of dominion status for a united India, rejected by both Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and finally in November he succeeded Max Beaverbrook in the vital post of Minister of Aircraft Production; this he held for the remainder of the war. When Labour came to power in July 1945, Cripps was readmitted to the party and appointed President of the Board of Trade. In 1947 he became the first Minister of Economic Affairs and within a few weeks succeeded Hugh Dalton as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His at first unpopular policy of austerity caught the public conscience, and the trade unions took the unprecedented step of imposing a voluntary wage freeze. He only began to be challenged when he devalued the pound in 1949. Illness from overwork forced his resignation in 1950. Cripps firmly believed that politics was a proper sphere for the practice of Christianity, and he wrote Towards a Christian Democracy (1945).

Bibliography: Colin Cooke, The Life of Richard Stafford Cripps (1957)