Anthony Crosland

Abstract

Charles Anthony Raven Crosland was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, on 29 August 1918. His background was that of the work ethic, the strict moral code, the intense Christianity of the Plymouth Brethren. Later he rebelled: when made a Privy Councillor in 1965 he chose to affirm rather than to swear the Christian oath. The Christianity may have worn off but not the commitment to work (he spent 12 to 15 hours a day on The Future of Socialism and when a minister, unlike a great number of his colleagues, himself shared in the drafting of major State papers). Nor did the high moral standards: what his lifelong friend Philip Williams once said of Hugh Gaitskell may with equal justice be said of Crosland himself, that ‘if all politicians are either bishops or bookmakers, Gaitskell thepublic man sat firmly on the episcopal bench’.1