Fenner Brockway

Fenner Brockway (born November 1, 1888, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died April 28, 1988, Watford, Hertfordshire, England) was a British politician and passionate socialist who devoted his life to such prominent 20th-century causes as world peace, anticolonialism, and nuclear disarmament.

Brockway was the son of missionaries and espoused liberal beliefs from an early age, notably in his support for the Boers in the South African War (1899–1902). He became a convert to socialism in 1907 after interviewing the founder of the Labour Party, J. Keir Hardie, for a London newspaper, and by 1912 Brockway was editor of the weekly Labour Leader. After being jailed as a pacifist and draft resister during World War I, Brockway fought for prison reform and served as chairman (1923–28) of the No More War Movement and War Resisters’ International. Brockway joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP; Labour’s left-wing offshoot) and served as ILP general secretary (1923–26 and 1933–39), chairman (1931–33), and political secretary (1939–46), but he returned to the Labour Party in 1946. He represented Labour in Parliament (1929–31 and 1950–64), where his fight for independence for British African colonies earned him the nickname “the member for Africa.” After reluctantly accepting a life peerage in 1964, Brockway continued to crusade for various causes in the House of Lords, an institution he tried to have abolished. His many books include a defense of Indian nationalism, The Indian Crisis (1930); a study of race relations, This Shrinking Explosive World (1967); and four autobiographical volumes, the last of which, 98 Not Out, was published in 1986.