The Left Was Never Right was a book published in June 1945 by British Conservative politician Quintin Hogg which examined the speeches and policies of politicians from Britain's Labour Party and Liberal Party concerning British re-armament before World War II and the appeasement of Nazi Germany. These were contrasted to quotes by Conservative politicians such as Winston Churchill and Sir Austen Chamberlain supporting British re-armament and opposing the appeasement of Germany. The books dust-jacket quoted Jesus' remark that "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee" from the Gospel of Luke.
Hogg stated that books written by Victor Gollancz were "morally wicked, unpatriotic and factually incorrect. The Left Was Never Right was an attempt to set the record straight and to establish that unpreparedness before the war was largely the consequence of the policies of the parties of the Left". [1] It was the only book published which specifically countered books written by Gollancz such as Guilty Men . In his memoirs, Hogg wrote that although the book was "a success ... it was too little too late to counteract the impression made by the earlier Gollancz publications". [2]
Michael Mackintosh Foot was a British politician who was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983. Foot began his career as a journalist on Tribune and the Evening Standard. He co-wrote the 1940 polemic against appeasement of Hitler, Guilty Men, under a pseudonym.
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars. He was prime minister on three occasions, from May 1923 to January 1924, from November 1924 to June 1929, and from June 1935 to May 1937.
Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher and humanitarian. Gollancz was known as a supporter of left-wing politics. His loyalties shifted between liberalism and communism; he defined himself as a Christian socialist and an internationalist. He used his publishing house chiefly to promote pacifist and socialist non-fiction, and also launched the Left Book Club.
Quintin McGarel Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone, known as the 2nd Viscount Hailsham between 1950 and 1963, at which point he disclaimed his hereditary peerage, was a British barrister and Conservative Party politician.
Sir Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel,, styled as Lord Dunglass between 1918 and 1951 and the Earl of Home from 1951 until 1963, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1963 to 1964. He was the last prime minister to hold office while being a member of the House of Lords, before renouncing his peerage and taking up a seat in the House of Commons for the remainder of his premiership. His reputation, however, rests more on his two stints as Foreign Secretary than on his brief premiership.
Appeasement, in an international context, is a diplomatic negotiation policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power with intention to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy between 1935 and 1939 of the British governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and most notably Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Under British pressure, appeasement of Nazism and Fascism also played a role in French foreign policy of the period but was always much less popular there than in the United Kingdom.
Douglas McGarel Hogg, 1st Viscount Hailsham, was a British lawyer and Conservative politician who twice served as Lord Chancellor, in addition to a number of other Cabinet positions. Mooted as a possible successor to Stanley Baldwin as party leader for a time in the very early 1930s, he was widely considered to be one of the leading Conservative politicians of his generation.
Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden,, also known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a prominent British Conservative Party politician; he was effectively deputy prime minister to Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, although he only held the official title for a brief period in 1962–63. He was one of his party's leaders in promoting the post-war consensus through which the major parties largely agreed on the main points of domestic policy until the 1970s; it is sometimes known as "Butskellism" from a fusion of his name with that of his Labour counterpart, Hugh Gaitskell.
Douglas Martin Hogg, 3rd Viscount Hailsham, Baron Hailsham of Kettlethorpe, is a British politician and barrister. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in John Major’s second government as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food from 1995 to 1997, and was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1979 to 2010.
Viscount Hailsham, of Hailsham in the County of Sussex, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1929 for the lawyer and Conservative politician Douglas Hogg, 1st Baron Hailsham, who twice served as Lord High Chancellor of the Great Britain. He had already been created Baron Hailsham, of Hailsham in the County of Sussex, in 1928, also in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Hogg was the son of the merchant and philanthropist Quintin Hogg, seventh son of Sir James Hogg, 1st Baronet, whose eldest son James McGarel-Hogg, 2nd Baronet was created Baron Magheramorne in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1887.
The Carlton Club is a private members' club in the St James's area of London, England. It was the original home of the Conservative Party before the creation of Conservative Central Office. Membership of the club is by nomination and election only.
Guilty Men is a British polemical book written under the pseudonym "Cato" that was published in July 1940, after the failure of British forces to prevent the defeat and occupation of Norway and France by Nazi Germany. It attacked fifteen public figures for their failed policies towards Germany and for their failure to re-equip the British armed forces. In denouncing appeasement, it defined the policy as the "deliberate surrender of small nations in the face of Hitler's blatant bullying". A classic denunciation of the former government's policy, it shaped popular and scholarly thinking for the next two decades.
The Left Book Club is a publishing group that exerted a strong left-wing influence in Great Britain, during its initial run, from 1936 to 1948. It was relaunched in 2015 by Jan Woolf and Neil Faulkner, in collaboration with Pluto Press.
John Archibald Boyd-Carpenter, Baron Boyd-Carpenter, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Kingston-upon-Thames from 1945 to 1972, when he was made a life peer. He served in several ministerial roles throughout the Conservative governments of 1951 to 1964, and was Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General from 1962 to 1964.
Peter Dunsmore Howard was a British journalist, playwright, captain of the England national rugby union team and leader of Moral Re-Armament from 1961 to 1965. He also won a World Championship bobsleigh medal in 1939.
Edward Marjoribanks was a barrister and Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom.
Hogg is a Scottish, English or Irish surname.
The 1938 Oxford by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Oxford, held on 27 October 1938. The by-election was triggered when Robert Croft Bourne, the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament died on 7 August 1938. He had served as MP for the constituency since a 1924 by-election.
The National Government of 1931–1935 was formed by Ramsay MacDonald following his reappointment as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom by King George V after the general election in October 1931.
Gibson and Weldon was a law practice at 27 Chancery Lane in London and the name of its tutorial firm which from 1876 until 1962 prepared hundreds of thousands of future solicitors and barristers in England and Wales for their examinations. Gibson and Weldon also published the monthly journal Law Notes and a series of legal textbooks from adjacent offices at 25–26 Chancery Lane. The firm's principals were Albert Gibson (1852–1921) and Arthur William Weldon (1856–1943). After the death of Arthur Weldon the tutorial firm continued until 1962 when it was merged with the Law Society's own law school to form the College of Law.