Dick Mitchison, Baron Mitchison

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Gilbert Richard Mitchison, Baron Mitchison, Template:Postnominals (23 March 1894 – 14 February 1970) was a British Labour politician.

Life

Born in Staines, Mitchison was educated at Eton College and New College, Oxford, and became a barrister (called to the bar in 1917) and King's Counsel. He served with the Queen's Bays in the First World War, attaining the rank of Major and gaining the Croix de Guerre.

Mitchison stood for Parliament without success in King's Norton at the 1931 and 1935 elections. He worked in the Ministry of Labour during the Second World War, on Beveridge's Manpower Survey, and led the Nuffield College social reconstruction survey. He was the Labour Member of Parliament for Kettering between 1945 and 1964, beating the young incumbent, John Profumo, at the 1945 election. However, his association with the Left of the Labour Party proved a barrier to ministerial office. Mitchison sponsored the New Streets Act as a private member's bill. He was given a life peerage, created Baron Mitchison, of Carradale in the County of Argyllshire on 5 October 1964. He served on the executive of the Fabian Society.

Mitchison died in Westminster aged 75.

Family

Mitchison married the writer Naomi Haldane (daughter of John Scott Haldane and sister of J. B. S. Haldane) in Oxford 1916. They had six children, including four sons: Geoffrey (1918–1927), Denis (1919–2018, a professor of bacteriology), Murdoch (1922–2011) and Avrion (1928–2022), both professors of zoology. Their daughters were Lois and Valentine, the latter of whom married the historian Mark Arnold-Forster.

External links

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