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Tom Horabin

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Tom Horabin
Liberal Chief Whip
In office
2 August 1945 – 21 March 1946
Preceded byPercy Harris
Succeeded byFrank Byers
Member of Parliament
for North Cornwall
In office
13 July 1939 – 3 February 1950
Preceded byFrancis Dyke Acland
Succeeded byHarold Roper
Personal details
BornThomas Lewis Horabin
1896 (1896)
Merthyr Tydfil, Mid Glamorgan, Wales
Died26 April 1956(1956-04-26) (aged 59–60)
Folkestone, Kent, England
PartyLabour (from 1947)
Other political
affiliations		Independent (1946-47)
Liberal (until 1946)

Thomas Lewis Horabin (28 December 1896 – 26 April 1956)[1] was a British Liberal Party politician who defected to the Labour Party. He sat in the House of Commons from 1939 to 1950.

Early life

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Horabin was born in Merthyr Tydfil[2] and educated at Cardiff High School, and during the First World War he served from 1914 to 1918 with the Cameron Highlanders.[3] After the war he went into business, and became chairman of Lacrinoid Ltd, which made buttons and other synthetic products.[2] Later he worked as a business consultant,[3] and worked with a company formed in 1948 to develop trade with Yugoslavia.[2]

Political career

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Following the death of Liberal Member of Parliament (MP), Sir Francis Acland in 1939, Horabin was selected by North Cornwall Liberals to defend the marginal seat at the resulting by-election. Along with his party leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, he was a vocal opponent of Chamberlain's Nazi appeasement policy. This issue was central to the debate in the by-election, which he won with an increased majority of 1,464 in a straight fight with the Conservatives.[4] He was also a strong advocate, along with Sir Stafford Cripps, of a Popular Front of left-of-centre parties coming together to defeat the Conservative led National government. He continued to hold the seat until 1950.[1]

In 1944 he authored Politics Made Plain. What the next general election will really be about, a book published by Penguin which urged voters to reject Churchill and the Conservatives at the general election. He was re-elected in 1945 and appointed Liberal Chief Whip by the new Liberal leader, Clement Davies.[3] However, he became frustrated with some of the pro-Conservative sympathies of some of his colleagues. He resigned his post and his party's whip in 1946 to sit as an Independent.[3]

In January 1947, he was seriously injured when a BOAC aircraft in which he was a passenger crashed in Kent.[5] He later sued BOAC for damages, and after hearings in the High Court, the case was settled in November 1952 when he accepted £3,017 in damages.[6]

In November 1947 Horabin took the Labour whip.[7] The North Cornwall Liberals wanted him to resign the seat and seek re-election, but he refused, saying that the principles for which he stood had been set out clearly in his address to voters at the general election.[8]

At the 1950 election, Labour invited him to defend North Cornwall as a Labour candidate, but he refused on the grounds that he would then be campaigning against people who had previously campaigned for him.[2] A further factor was that his injuries in the crash had been severe, keeping him away from Parliament for a year,[7] and a campaign in the scattered North Cornwall constituency might have been too great a strain.[2] Instead he fought Exeter as the Labour candidate, but lost to the sitting Conservative MP John Cyril Maude.[9]

Horabin died in Folkestone on 26 April 1956, aged 60.[2] Having married in 1920, he left a widow, two sons and a daughter.[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "C" (part 6)
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "Mr. T. Horabin Former M.P. For North Cornwall". The Times. London. 30 April 1956. p. 13, col E. Retrieved 8 February 2011. (subscription required)
  3. ^ a b c d Stenton, Michael; Lees, Stephens (1981). Who's Who of British Members of Parliament: Volume IV, 1945–1979. Brighton: The Harvester Press. p. 172. ISBN 0-85527-335-6.
  4. ^ Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. p. 312. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
  5. ^ "Air Crash Near Folkestone Six Persons Killed, M.P. Among Injured Passengers". The Times. London. 13 January 1947. p. 2, col C. Retrieved 8 February 2011. (subscription required)
  6. ^ "High Court Of Justice Queen's Bench Division, Dakota Crash In 1947: Settlement Of Action, Horabin v. British Overseas Airways Corporation". The Times. London. 7 November 1952. p. 11, col G. Retrieved 8 February 2011. (subscription required)
  7. ^ a b "Mr. T. L. Horabin, M.P. Reasons For Joining Labour Party". The Times. London. 19 November 1947. p. 2, col B. Retrieved 8 February 2011. (subscription required)
  8. ^ "Mr. Horabin's Change of Party Reply To N. Cornwall". The Times. London. 28 November 1947. pp. 6, col E. Retrieved 8 February 2011. (subscription required)
  9. ^ "Labour Victories on Minority Vote Split Vote Decisions at Bristol". The Times. London. 25 February 1950. p. 4, col B. Retrieved 8 February 2011. (subscription required)

Further reading

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