Monday, January 21, 2013

Edgar Granville, champion defector

Winston Churchill once said: "Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat."

But Churchill does not hold the record as Britain's most prolific defector, according to a new post by Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell:
This title goes to Edgar Granville, who had five changes of party label to his name. He was first elected to the House of Commons for Eye in Suffolk as a Liberal in 1929. In 1931 he became a Liberal National, but left to sit as an independent during the war, before returning to the Liberals just before the 1945 election. 
After losing his seat in the Liberals’ worst general election performance in 1951, he joined the Labour Party. Granville was never re-elected as an MP, but he was created a Labour peer. However, his allegiance to the Labour Party did not last and he ended his days as a cross-bencher.

2 comments:

Mark Valladares said...

And yet he is still remembered in the area. I knocked on a door in my ward in 2011 and was told, "I always vote Liberal, I worked for Edgar Granville!".

Well-Behaved Orphan said...

Fascinating life.

Indie obit here; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-lord-granville-of-eye-1145676.html