William Allen Jowitt, 1st Earl Jowitt, (15 April 1885 – 16 August 1957) was a British

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, National Labour and then Labour Party politician and lawyer who served as

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under Clement Attlee from

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1951 Events January * January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). * January 9 – The Government of the United ...

Background and education

He was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, the son of Reverend William Jowitt,

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of Stevenage, by his wife Louisa Margaret Allen. At the age of nine, he was sent to Northaw Place, a preparatory school in

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, Middlesex, where he first met and was looked after by fellow student Clement Attlee, the future Labour Party

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. From Northaw he went to Marlborough College, then to New College, Oxford where he studied

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. He was admitted to the

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on 15 November 1906 and was called to the Bar on 23 June 1909.

Legal and political career (1922–1931)

Jowitt became a member of chambers in Brick Court in

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. He proved himself a skilled advocate, attracting attention for his subdued and charming manner when barristers were more inclined to browbeat witnesses. He became a King's Counsel the day before the 1922 general election in which he was elected

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(MP) for

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. Jowitt was a member of the faction of the

led by

H. H. Asquith Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom f ...

and somewhat radical in his beliefs. He continued to practise law whilst a

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MP and was not considered a great orator in the

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. Jowitt was re-elected, now part of the re-united Liberal Party, at the 1923 general election, and in 1924, he was a member of the Royal Commission on Lunacy. He lost his seat in the 1924 general election. Jowitt stood successfully in Preston in the 1929 general election, again elected as a Liberal. Following the formation of a minority

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government, he was offered the position of attorney general by the new

prime minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

, Ramsay MacDonald. Labour had few experienced lawyers in its ranks in Parliament and had experienced problems filling the positions of legal officers in its first government. Jowitt agreed, but resigned his seat and stood again as a candidate for the Labour Party. At the by-election in July 1929, Preston re-elected him with an increased majority. As was customary, Jowitt received a

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upon becoming attorney general. His work mainly concerned the drafting of government bills, particularly the reversal of the

Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 ( 17 and 18 Geo V c 22) was a British Act of Parliament passed in response to the General Strike of 1926, introduced by the Attorney General for England and Wales, Sir Douglas Hogg MP. Provisions ...

. As was still the custom for the attorney general, he occasionally prosecuted in high-profile cases, notably

Sidney Harry Fox Sidney Harry Fox (1899 – 8 April 1930) was a British petty swindler and convicted murderer. He was executed for the murder of his mother in an attempt to obtain money from an insurance policy on her life. His case is unusual in that it is a rar ...

, charged with murdering his mother by suffocating her and then setting fire to her hotel room. It was said that a single question from Jowitt ("Explain to me why you shut the door?") sealed Fox's fate since Fox could think of no convincing answer.

Divided loyalties (1931–1939)

When the Labour government split over the financial crisis in 1931, Jowitt was one of only a handful of Labour MPs to follow MacDonald into the National Government. He was uncomfortable in a coalition with the

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but believed that the proposed spending cuts causing the split were necessary, and the coalition was necessary to force them through. Like others who joined the National Government, he was expelled from the Labour Party. He was made a Privy Councillor but found himself in a difficult electoral position when he could not secure the withdrawal of the Conservative candidate in Preston in the 1931 general election. He thus stood instead as the National Labour candidate for the Combined English Universities, but there too, he competed with other candidates supporting the National Government and was defeated. MacDonald persuaded Jowitt to remain as Attorney General in the hope that a new seat could be found to maintain the handful of National Labour positions in the government, but that proved impossible and Jowitt stepped down. He was replaced as Attorney General in January 1932 and returned to the Bar. Though relatively new to the party, Jowitt greatly regretted the split with Labour. He remained close to MacDonald, but after Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister in 1935, Jowitt began campaigning for Labour. A number of

constituency Labour Parties __NOTOC__ A constituency Labour Party (CLP) is an organisation of members of the British Labour Party who live in a particular parliamentary constituency. In England and Wales, CLP boundaries coincide with those for UK parliamentary constituen ...

attempted to nominate him as their candidate for the general election that year, but he was still expelled. Unable to stand for Labour, he refused to stand for any other party or as an independent. Jowitt was readmitted to the Labour Party in November 1936. Still a public figure, he was a critic of the National Government's policy of appeasement, and in 1937, he called for the state control of the arms industry and rapid rearmament to face the growing threat of fascism on the Continent. In February 1939 he called for the recreation of the

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. In October, he was adopted as Labour's candidate at a

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and was duly elected, unusually unopposed.

Churchill ministry (1940–1945)

Eight months later,

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appointed Jowitt as Solicitor General in his coalition government. Jowitt dispensed legal advice to the government for two years in

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before he was placed in charge of planning for reconstruction. He also held Cabinet positions that were mostly sinecures such as

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and then Minister without Portfolio in that role. In 1944, he became

Minister of National Insurance The secretary of state for work and pensions, also referred to as the work and pensions secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with overall responsibility for the business of the Department for Work and P ...

at the head of a new government department. He resigned from the government when Labour left the coalition in May 1945, after

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, and he was re-elected for Ashton-under-Lyne in the general election in July.

Lord Chancellor (1945–1951)

After a landslide victory in the 1945 election, Labour formed its first majority government. Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed Jowitt as

. As soon as he was appointed, Jowitt met with

US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...

Justice Robert H. Jackson to resolve outstanding points of contention over the draft

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, which would govern the procedures of the

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. He retained the Conservative MP and outgoing Attorney General,

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir, (29 May 1900 – 27 January 1967), known as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe from 1942 to 1954 and as Viscount Kilmuir from 1954 to 1962, was a British Conservative politician, lawyer and judge who combine ...

, as the official liaison but indicated that the new Attorney General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, would serve as Britain's Chief Prosecutor in the trials themselves. Jowitt introduced and saw signed the

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, the legislation that governs how the UK subordinates itself to the UN. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Jowitt, of Stevenage in the

County of Hertford Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

, on 2 August 1945 and entered the

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. He led much important judicial legislation during the life of the Labour government, including an

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to grant full legal sovereignty to

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and a number of other Commonwealth countries. Jowitt was also responsible for some key changes to the legal culture in Britain. He attempted to end political and social imbalances in the Magistrates Courts and is considered to have been the first

to adopt a policy of appointing judges purely on the basis of merit. As Lord Chancellor, he also served as

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of the House of Lords, a delicate job given the Conservative majority in the Lords. Christopher Addison, Labour's leader in the Lords, died shortly after the party's defeat in the 1951 general election. Labour was now in opposition, and Jowitt took over as leader of the Labour peers. He was created Viscount Jowitt, of Stevenage in the County of Hertford, on 20 January 1947, and was awarded an

earl Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word ''eorl'', meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form '' jarl'', and meant "chieftain", particula ...

dom by Attlee in the 1951 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours, being created Viscount Stevenage, of Stevenage in the County of Hertford and Earl Jowitt on 24 January 1952.

Later political life

A senior figure in the party, and a member of the Shadow Cabinet, Jowitt was careful to keep the Labour peers out of the conflict between the Bevanites and

Gaitskellites Gaitskellism was the ideology of a faction in the British Labour Party in the 1950s and early 1960s which opposed many of the economic policies of the trade unions, especially nationalisation and control of the economy. Theoretically, it repudi ...

in the early 1950s. The opposition to the Conservative government in the Lords was meagre but sometimes successfully rallied support from government backbenchers. In 1955, for instance, Jowitt led a successful rebellion in the Lords over a government bill to criminalise the medical use of marijuana. Jowitt was a prominent spokesperson against human rights abuses during the suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, teaming up with the Archbishop of Canterbury to launch a review of the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Colonel Arthur Young as Commissioner of Police in the colony. He stood down as leader in November 1955, at the age of 70.

Family

Jowitt married Lesley McIntyre, a daughter of James Patrick McIntyre, in 1913. He died at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in August 1957, aged 72. His peerages did not survive his death, as he had no male heirs.

Publications

Jowitt wrote two books on espionage and compiled a legal dictionary, which was published posthumously in 1959, completed by Clifford Walsh, and became a standard reference work. It remains in print as '' Jowitt's Dictionary of English Law''.London: Sweet & Maxwell. * ''The Strange Case of Alger Hiss'' (1953. London: Hodder & Stoughton) * ''Some Were Spies'' (1954. London: Hodder & Stoughton) * ''Dictionary of English Law'' (1959. London: Sweet & Maxwell)

References

External links

*
UK Parliamentary Archives, Correspondence and papers of Sir William Allen Jowitt, Earl Jowitt, 1885-1957
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jowitt, William 1885 births 1957 deaths Alumni of New College, Oxford Attorneys General for England and Wales English King's Counsel English barristers Knights Bachelor Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Labour Party (UK) hereditary peers Law lords Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Jowitt, William Jowitt, 1st Earl Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Ashton-under-Lyne Jowitt, William Jowitt, 1st Earl Ministers in the Churchill wartime government, 1940–1945 National Labour (UK) politicians People educated at Marlborough College People from Stevenage Solicitors General for England and Wales UK MPs 1922–1923 UK MPs 1923–1924 UK MPs 1929–1931 UK MPs 1935–1945 UK MPs 1945–1950 UK MPs who were granted peerages United Kingdom Paymasters General Ministers in the Attlee governments, 1945–1951 Barons created by George VI Viscounts created by George VI Earls created by George VI