Anthony Greenwood, Baron Greenwood of Rossendale

Arthur William James Greenwood, Baron Greenwood of Rossendale, (14 September 1911 – 12 April 1982) was a British Labour Party politician in the 1950s and 1960s. Under the Wilson government, Greenwood served in cabinet, holding three ministerial portfolios.

Background and education The son of Arthur Greenwood (Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under Clement Attlee) and his wife Catherine Ainsworth, Greenwood was born in Leeds and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, and then read politics, philosophy and economics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he held the posts of chairman of the Labour Club and, in 1933, president of the Oxford Union. In 1933 he visited India as a member of the British Universities' Debating Team.

Early life He gained third-class honours in politics, philosophy, and economics. After that he went on a debating tour to India, but was unemployed for a while. He contemplated fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, but in 1938–39, went to work for the National Fitness Council. At the outbreak of the World War II he joined the Ministry of Information, and served in the RAF as an intelligence officer from 1942. He later worked with the Allied Reparations Committee and attended the conference at Potsdam in 1945. In 1965 he was moved to become Minister of Overseas Development, and the following year he became Minister for Housing and Local Government, in which he oversaw a record 400,000 houses built during 1966-67. In October 1969 he was dropped from the cabinet when his housing ministry was placed under the expanded Department of Local Government and Regional Planning headed by Anthony Crosland. From 1977 to 1979 he was Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities and Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees.

Business career From 1970, Greenwood developed a business career, he held a number of business directorships. He was a Director of both the Britannia Building Society and the Municipal Mutual Insurance Company.

Personal life In 1940 he married Gillian Crawshay Williams (1910–1995), They had two daughters, He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.