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Arthur Greenwood was born in Leeds in 1880. After lecturing in economics at Leeds University, Greenwood became Secretary of Research and Information Department of the Labour Party (1920-22). In 1922 Greenwood was elected to represent Nelson and Colne in the House of Commons.
In the 1929 General Election the Labour Party won 288 seats, making it the largest party in Parliament. Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister and appointed Greenwood as Minister of Health.
The election of the Labour Government in 1929 coincided with an economic depression and Ramsay MacDonald was faced with the problem of growing unemployment. MacDonald asked Sir George May, to form a committee to look into Britain's economic problem. When the May Committee produced its report in July, 1931, it suggested that the government should reduce its expenditure by £97,000,000, including a £67,000,000 cut in unemployment benefits. MacDonald, and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, accepted the report but when the matter was discussed by the Cabinet, the majority voted against the measures suggested by Sir George May.
Ramsay MacDonald was angry that his Cabinet had voted against him and decided to resign. When he saw George V that night, he was persuaded to head a new coalition government that would include Conservative and Liberal leaders as well as Labour ministers. Most of the Labour Cabinet totally rejected the idea and only three, Philip Snowden, Jimmy Thomas and John Sankey agreed to join the new government.
Greenwood lost his seat at Nelson and Colne but was elected to represent Wakefield in April 1932. Three years later he was elected deputy leader and served under Clement Attlee for the next ten years. In the late 1930s Greenwood was an outspoken critic of Neville Chamberlain and his government's appeasement Foreign policy.
In 1936 the Conservative government feared the spread of communism from the Soviet Union to the rest of Europe. Stanley Baldwin, the British prime minister, shared this concern and was fairly sympathetic to the military uprising in Spain against the left-wing Popular Front government.
Leon Blum, the prime minister of the Popular Front government in France, initially agreed to send aircraft and artillery to help the Republican Army in Spain. However, after coming under pressure from Stanley Baldwin and Anthony Eden in Britain, and more right-wing members of his own cabinet, he changed his mind.
In the House of Commons on 29th October 1936, Clement Attlee, Philip Noel-Baker and Arthur Greenwood argued against the government policy of Non-Intervention. As Noel-Baker pointed out: "We protest with all our power against the sham, the hypocritical sham, that it now appears to be."
On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, an organization that had been set-up by the Socialist Medical Association and other progressive groups, was formed. Members included Arthur Greenwood, Lord Faringdon, Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, Harry Pollitt, Hugh O'Donnell, Mary Redfern Davies and Isobel Brown. Soon afterwards Kenneth Sinclair Loutitwas appointed Administrator of the Field Unit that was to be sent to Spain. According to Tom Buchanan, the author of Britain and the Spanish Civil War (1997), "he disregarded a threat of disinheritance from his father to volunteer."
In May 1940 Winston Churchill appointed Greenwood to the War Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio. He left office in February 1943 and for the rest of the war was acting leader of the Labour Party in the House of Commons.
In the 1945 General Election the Labour Party had its largest victory at the polls. In Attlee's government Greenwood served as Lord Privy Seal (July 1945 - April 1947), Paymaster General (July 1946 - March 1947) and Minister without Portfolio (April 1947 - September 1947).
Arthur Greenwood died on 9th June 1954.
(1) Herbert Morrison, An Autobiography (1960)
Arthur Greenwood, as deputy leader of the opposition, was made a member of Churchill's War Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio. This meant that tnere were no defined duties but he could become a co-ordinating minister.
In his earlier days Greenwood had done much able work for the Labour Party on research and policy. Arthur Henderson had made him chief of the research department. But by 1940 his grip was failing and for this reason he did not play a great part in the wartime administration. He resigned in February, 1943.
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