Concept
Anthony Crosland
Overview
Charles Anthony Raven Crosland (29 August 1918 – 19 February 1977) was a British Labour Party politician and author. A social democrat on the right wing of the Labour Party, he was a prominent socialist intellectual. His influential book The Future of Socialism (1956) argued against many Marxist notions and the traditional Labour Party doctrine that expanding public ownership was essential to make socialism work, arguing instead for prioritising the end of poverty and improving public services. He offered positive alternatives to both the right wing and left wing of the Labour Party.
Having served as Member of Parliament (MP) for South Gloucestershire from 1950 to 1955, Crosland returned to Parliament for Great Grimsby (1959–1977). During Harold Wilson's governments of 1964–1970 he served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury (1964), then Minister of State for Economic Affairs (1964–1965). Entering the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science (1965–1967), he led the Labour campaign to replace grammar schools with comprehensive schools that did not use the eleven-plus for the selection of pupils. He later served as President of the Board of Trade (1967–1969), then Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning (1969–1970).
When Labour returned to power he served as Secretary of State for the Environment (1974–1976) and briefly as Foreign Secretary (1976–1977). In that role he promoted détente with the Soviet Union. He died suddenly in February 1977 of a cerebral haemorrhage, aged 58.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Such arguments make a great appeal to what are called ``practical'' men, and the answers to them are of a sort which it is difficult to render widely convincing. Revolt against the evils of competition is, however, part of the very essence of the Socialist's protest against the existing order, and on this ground, if on no other, those who favor Socialism may be summoned to look for some better solution.
Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom
States what Anthony Crosland is.
Then began the period of prodigious capitalistic development, on the foundation of the national state. For the Labor Movement this was the period of the gradual gathering of strength, of the development of organization, and of political possibilism. In England the stormy period of Chartism, that revolutionary awakening of the English proletariat, had completely exhausted itself ten years before the birth of the…
Leon Trotsky, The Bolsheviki and World Peace
Close in meaning to Anthony Crosland; the term itself is not named.
Although the conditions of life in the country, the isolated dwellings, the stability of the surroundings and occupations, and consequently of the thoughts, are decidedly unfavourable to all development, yet poverty and want bear their fruits even here. The manufacturing and mining proletariat emerged early from the first stage of resistance to our social order, the direct rebellion of the individual by the…
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892
Close in meaning to Anthony Crosland; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Marxism
- Labour Party (UK)
- Fabian Society
- Baltimore
- 1959 United Kingdom general election
- Harold Wilson
- London School of Economics
- Biography
- The Future of Socialism
- Little, Brown and Company
Place in the tradition
Part of Social democracy.