Arthur Greenwood

Arthur Greenwood (8 February 1880 – 9 June 1954) was a British politician. A prominent member of the Labour Party from the 1920s until the late 1940s, Greenwood rose to prominence within the party as secretary of its research department from 1920 and served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health in the short-lived Labour government of 1924. He served as Minister of Health in the second Labour government between 1929 and 1931, later becoming Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1935 under Clement Attlee.

In 1940, he was appointed to Winston Churchill's War Cabinet when Labour joined the wartime coalition government. During the May 1940 war cabinet crisis he emerged as the strongest and most vocal supporter of Churchill’s position that Britain should continue fighting Nazi Germany in World War II instead of accepting peace terms.

He also played a role in the postwar Attlee government, helping to establish the National Health Service.

Early life Greenwood was born in Hunslet, a working-class district of Leeds, the son of Margaret Nunns, and William Greenwood, a painter and decorator. As a schoolboy, he read the socialist magazine The Clarion and bought Labour pamphlets from the Leeds market. He was educated at the Yorkshire College (which later became the University of Leeds), where he took a BSc. He went on to become head of economics at Huddersfield Technical College.

In 1914, he moved to London, where he found work as a civil servant in the Ministry of Reconstruction, working closely with Christopher Addison and Arthur Henderson. He established himself within the Labour Party's intellectual circles, and was appointed secretary to the party's advisory committees in 1920, and in 1927 head of the research department, a post which he held until 1943.

On 2 September 1939, acting for Attlee who was in hospital for prostate surgery, he was called to respond to Neville Chamberlain's ambivalent speech on whether Britain would aid Poland. As he was about to speak, he was interrupted by an angry Conservative backbencher and former First Lord of the Admiralty, Leo Amery, who electrified the chamber when he exclaimed loud and clear: "Speak for England, Arthur!"

A flustered Greenwood proceeded to denounce Chamberlain's remarks, to the applause of both sides of the House, in a short speech for which he is best remembered.

Wartime government In the opening months of World War II Greenwood played a central role in Labour's strategy of supporting the war effort but refusing to serve in a government under Chamberlain. Greenwood however was in decline by this time, judged by Churchill to be ineffective, he was sacked from the cabinet in February 1942.

From February 1942 until the end of World War II, Greenwood performed the function of Leader of the Opposition, though he did not receive the salary. In 1943, he was elected as Treasurer of the Labour Party, beating Herbert Morrison in a close contest.

Postwar During the Attlee government, he served successively as Lord Privy Seal, Paymaster General and Minister without Portfolio. According to one historian, he was a major architect of both the National Health Service and the national insurance system through his chairmanship of the cabinet social services committee. In September 1947 Attlee sacked him from the cabinet in a reshuffle, on the basis that he wanted to bring in younger men.

He continued to be elected to positions in the Labour Party, retaining the post of Treasurer until 1954, and being elected as Chair of the National Executive Committee in 1952.

Personal life Greenwood married Catherine Ainsworth in 1904; they had one daughter and one son. His son Anthony Greenwood (later Lord Greenwood, 1911–1982) was an MP from 1946 until 1970, first for Heywood and Radcliffe and later for Rossendale, and served in Harold Wilson's governments.

Alcoholism Greenwood was noted for his struggles with alcoholism. R. C. Whiting notes that by the mid-1920s "the drink problem emerged”, and that, by the mid-1930s his “regular drunkenness had now become firmly established”. Andrew Marr describes him as having fought “a lifelong battle with the bottle”. Roy Jenkins wrote that Greenwood had “as great a propensity to alcohol as Churchill himself, but he held it less well”. Ben Pimlott called him a "heavy and near-compulsive drinker".

During the war his drinking was sufficiently well known for Arthur Cecil Pigou to refer to him privately as “Lord Alcohol” and “Whisky Arthur”. David Owen notes that his drinking was absent or well controlled during the 1940 war cabinet crisis.

Death Greenwood died on 9 June 1954 at the age of 74, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 14 June 1954. His ashes and memorial lie in Bay 17 of the East Boundary Wall.