Sydney Arnold, 1st Baron Arnold (13 January 1878 – 3 August 1945) was a radical

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...

politician who later joined the Labour Party and served as a government minister. A son of W. A. Arnold, of Manchester, he was educated at

Manchester Grammar School The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) in Manchester, England, is the largest independent school (UK), independent day school for boys in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1515 as a Grammar school#free tuition, free grammar school next to Manchester C ...

. As a member of the General Committee of the Manchester Liberal Federation, he served as Honorary Treasurer of the North-West Division of the

Free Trade Union The Free Trade Union, later known as the Free Trade League, was a British trade organisation extant between July 1903 and the 1970s. It was founded in opposition to the campaign for Imperial Preference which had been launched by Board of Trade ch ...

.''Debrett's House of Commons and Judicial Bench, 1916''.

Politics

He unsuccessfully contested the Conservative seat of

Holderness Holderness is an area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, on the north-east coast of England. An area of rich agricultural land, Holderness was marshland until it was drained in the Middle Ages. Topographically, Holderness has more in common wit ...

Division of the East Riding of Yorkshire at the December 1910 General Election. He was elected in 1912 as

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

for

Holmfirth Holmfirth is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England, on the A635 and A6024 in the Holme Valley, at the confluence of the River Holme and Ribble, south of Huddersfield and west of Barnsley. It mostly cons ...

in what was then the

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...

at a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

following the resignation of the long-serving Liberal MP

Henry Wilson Henry Wilson (born Jeremiah Jones Colbath; February 16, 1812 – November 22, 1875) was an American politician who was the 18th vice president of the United States from 1873 until his death in 1875 and a senator from Massachusetts from 1855 to ...

. In 1914 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jack Pease, the

President of the Board of Education The secretary of state for education, also referred to as the education secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the work of the Department for Education. The incumbent is a member of the Ca ...

. He was also appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to

Edwin Samuel Montagu Edwin Samuel Montagu PC (6 February 1879 – 15 November 1924) was a British Liberal politician who served as Secretary of State for India between 1917 and 1922. Montagu was a "radical" Liberal and the third practising Jew (after Sir Herber ...

the Financial Secretary to the Treasury."ARNOLD", ''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2012; online edn, October 2012
Retrieved 18 January 2014. During the war he served as a captain in the South Staffordshire Regiment. When his constituency was abolished for the 1918 general election, he was elected for the new Penistone constituency against a Coalition Government endorsed Unionist candidate. He supported a levy on capital and the nationalisation of the mines and railways. He resigned that seat due to ill-health in 1921.

Labour party

In 1922 he joined the Labour Party and was ennobled in 1924 as Baron Arnold, of Hale in the County of Chester, and served as

Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies was a junior Ministerial post in the United Kingdom government, subordinate to the Secretary of State for the Colonies and, from 1948, also to a Minister of State. Under-Secretaries of State for the Co ...

in Ramsay MacDonald's short-lived 1924 Labour Government, and as

Paymaster-General His Majesty's Paymaster General or HM Paymaster General is a ministerial position in the Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom. The incumbent Paymaster General is Jeremy Quin MP. History The post was created in 1836 by the merger of the posit ...

from 1929 to 6 March 1931 in Macdonald's second government. In the late 1930s he was a member of the Parliamentary Pacifist Group. He also served as a member of the council of the

Anglo-German Fellowship The Anglo-German Fellowship was a membership organisation that existed from 1935 to 1939, and aimed to build up friendship between the United Kingdom and Germany. It was widely perceived as being allied to Nazism. Previous groups in Britain wit ...

.Richard Griffiths, ''Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–39'', Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 185, 329–30 He resigned from the Labour Party, in 1938, on account of disagreement with its Foreign Policy. Subsequently, his name was one of twenty-six attached to a letter printed in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' supporting a policy of appeasement towards Germany. Because signatories included

Barry Domvile Admiral Sir Barry Edward Domvile, (5 September 1878 – 13 August 1971) was a high-ranking Royal Navy officer who was interned during the Second World War for being a Nazi sympathiser. Throughout the 1930s, he had expressed support for Germany ...

and other leading members it was dubbed " The Link Letter" and its various signatories, including political moderates such as Arnold,

William Harbutt Dawson William Harbutt Dawson (27 July 1860 – 7 March 1948) was a British journalist, civil servant and author, and an acknowledged expert on German politics and society. Career Dawson's first job was on the ''Craven Pioneer'', a Liberal newspape ...

, Smedley Crooke and

Lord Londonderry Marquess of Londonderry, of the County of Londonderry ( ), is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. History The title was created in 1816 for Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Londonderry. He had earlier represented County Down in the Irish House of ...

, came under suspicion as far right supporters.

Arms

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Arnold, Sydney 1st Baron Arnold 1878 births 1945 deaths Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1910–1918 UK MPs 1918–1922 UK MPs who were granted peerages Labour Party (UK) hereditary peers Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom Politics of Penistone United Kingdom Paymasters General Barons created by George V