Reginald Bassett (25 June 1901 – 9 July 1962) was an English historian and Professor of Political Science at the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

. Having left school to become a solicitor's clerk, at the age of 25 Bassett won a scholarship to study for a diploma at

Ruskin College, Oxford Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is an independent educational institution in Oxford, England. It is not a college of Oxford University. It is named after the essayist, art and social critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) an ...

, and from there proceeded to New College, Oxford.BASSETT, Reginald, 1901-1962, Professor of Political Science

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, retrieved 20 July 2018. He was a lecturer under the Extra-Mural Studies Delegacy of the University of Oxford, lecturing mainly in Sussex. From 1945-50 he was a tutor at the London School of Economics for a course designed for students from trade unions. He was lecturer in political science from 1950 to 1953, Reader in Political Science from 1953 to 1961, and Professor of Political Science from 1961 to 1962. Bassett was a member of the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...

. In 1931 he supported Ramsay MacDonald's decision to a form the National Government with the

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and the Liberals. He later published a detailed history of the crisis of 1931, challenging the left-wing interpretation of it as a plot. His famous 1948 article on Stanley Baldwin's "confession" of November 1936 challenged the view of

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

, who claimed in his

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of the

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that Baldwin had admitted that an election fought on rearmament in 1935 would have been lost. Bassett proved that Baldwin was instead talking about 1933/34 when the public mood favoured disarmament, as revealed by the East Fulham by-election.Reginald Bassett, ‘Telling the truth to the people: the myth of the Baldwin "confession"’, ''Cambridge Journal'', II (1948), pp. 84-95.

Works

*''The Essentials of Parliamentary Democracy'' (1935). *''Democracy and Foreign Policy'' (1952). *''Nineteen Thirty-one: Political Crisis'' (1958).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bassett, Reginald 1901 births 1962 deaths English political scientists 20th-century English historians Alumni of Ruskin College Alumni of New College, Oxford 20th-century political scientists