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Sir (Arthur) Beverley Baxter, FRSL (8 January 1891 – 26 April 1964) was a Canadian born journalist and politician. He spent most of his career in the United Kingdom working for the Daily Express, and was a Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party from 1935 until his death. The Royal Society of Literature is the senior literary organisation in Britain. External link The Royal Society of Literature Categories: Literature stubs | Literature of the United Kingdom ...
January 8 is the 8th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1891 (MDCCCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar). ...
April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (117th in leap years). ...
1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ...
The Daily Express is a conservative, middle-market British tabloid newspaper. ...
A Member of Parliament, or MP, is a representative elected by the voters to a parliament. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Life in Canada
Baxter's father (James B. Baxter) was a Yorkshire-born Methodist who had emigrated to Canada, and Baxter was born in Toronto. He left school at the age of 15, to work as an office boy for a stockbroker. However, Baxter disliked the work and left soon after to work for the Nordheimer Piano and Music Company where he sold pianos. He was made personal assistant to the owner. In his spare time he composed music, sang in operas, and wrote a novel. Look up Yorkshire in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Methodism or the Methodist movement is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity. ...
A grand piano, with the lid up. ...
Wartime service He found that he enjoyed writing and was considering a professional career as a novelist when the First World War broke out. In 1915 he enlisted in the Canadian Military Engineers and served as a Lieutenant in the Infantry with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France. He was attached to the Royal Engineers for a time in 1918. Baxter received no decorations in the war, saying he was "neither sufficiently forward, nor far enough back". Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ...
Canadian Military Engineers // Canadian Military Engineers History Creation Following the Boer War the Canadian Government realized that more the defence of Canada required more than just a single infantry battalion and a few artillery batteries as part of the permament defence force. ...
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army. ...
Entry to newspapers After the end of the war, Baxter remained in Europe and settled in London. In 1920 he managed to get an interview with fellow Canadian Lord Beaverbrook, who was one of the British "press Barons" seeking to build up the circulation of the Daily Express to match that of Lord Northcliffe's Daily Mail. The interview led to an appointment as a leader-writer and occasional reporter. When something written by Baxter caught the approving eye of editor R. D. Blumenfeld, Baxter was put in charge of page 4 of the paper which included the editorial, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor. This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ...
William Maxwell Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, PC (May 25, 1879 – June 9, 1964) was a Canadian – British business tycoon and politician. ...
The Daily Express is a conservative, middle-market British tabloid newspaper. ...
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (July 15, 1865, Dublin - August 14, 1922, London) was an influential and successful newspaper owner. ...
The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, a tabloid, first published in 1896. ...
Baxter was made Managing Editor of the Sunday Express, then still a new paper which had yet to find its place, in 1922. Under Baxter's guidance the paper became considerably livelier and its features were remarked upon. After two years, Baxter was moved to the same position on the Daily Express, in effect as deputy to Blumenfeld. Baxter, who was nicknamed "Bax" within the office, got on well with both Blumenfeld and Beaverbrook. In 1924 Baxter married Edith Letson, a girl from Vancouver. The Daily Express is a British newspaper, currently tabloid, and it is owned by Richard Desmond. ...
The Daily Express is a conservative, middle-market British tabloid newspaper. ...
Vancouver (pronounced: ) is a city in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. ...
Editorship In 1929 when offered a considerable increase in salary to work for the Daily Chronicle group (Inveresk publications), Baxter made the move; however, within months Blumenfeld retired and he was persuaded back to follow him as Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Express. Baxter increased circulation, which for the first time it exceeded 1,000,000 under his stewardship; in 1933 it topped 2,000,000. The Daily Chronicle was a London newspaper company founded in 1872 that merged its publication with the Daily News to become the News-Chronicle and the company then absorbed The Star which it retained as an evening publication. ...
That year Baxter left the newspaper industry to work as Public Relations counsel for the Gaumont British Picture Corporation Ltd. In 1935 his autobiography, "Strange Street" was published; it illuminated the internal rivalries of Fleet Street newspapers and was well-reviewed. He was recuited by Allied Newspapers to be an Editorial Adviser in 1938 but did not hold this post for long. Gaumont is a French film production company and is the worlds oldest film company. ...
Cover of An autobiography, from the Greek auton, self, bios, life and graphein, write, is a biography written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled as told to or with). The term dates from the late eighteenth century, but the form is much older. ...
Fleet Street in 2005 Fleet Street is a famous street in London, England, named after the River Fleet. ...
Transfer to politics Baxter was interested in politics and was selected as Conservative Party candidate for Wood Green in suburban London in 1935. The 1935 general election was called inconveniently for him as he was touring in Canada at the time and had to be sent a telegram urging him to return immediately; he won the seat with a majority of over 21,000. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Wood Green was a constituency which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1918 until it was abolished for the 1983 general election. ...
Stanley Baldwin Clement Attlee The UK general election held on 14th November 1935 resulted in a large, though reduced, majority for the National Government now led by Stanley Baldwin. ...
Telegraphy (from the Greek words tele = far away and grapho = write) is the long distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters, originally over wire. ...
Parliamentary contribution His maiden speech in December 1935 argued that the problems of depressed areas in Britain could be alleviated by encouraging emigration to the other countries of the British Empire, and he returned to this theme in several later speeches. He used his experience in the film industry when the issue of a Films Council to encourage more production in Britain was debated; Baxter called for a "dictator approved by the industry" to take charge.
During the debates about foreign policy in the late 1930s, Baxter was strongly associated with support for appeasement. In a debate in July 1938 he called for the United Kingdom to go to Germany helpfully, and not to block Germany wherever she tried to expand. He drew a parallel between Germans and Britons, saying that the two had the same human ambitions and sense of destiny. While a Member of Parliament Baxter often wrote features which were published in various newspapers (especially the Daily Sketch), and he became known as one of the most eloquent and persuasive supporters of the government. The Daily Sketch was a national tabloid newspaper founded in Manchester in 1909 by Sir Edward Hulton. ...
Second world war In the early days of the war, Baxter obtained a pledge from the government that there would be no repeat of an incident when the police went to newspaper offices to check on the contents of the next days' papers. He supported Neville Chamberlain in the Norway debate of May 1940, and the next morning protested vigorously about the attacks on Chamberlain's character, urging him not to regard the vote as one of censure but to show the courage of David Lloyd George; Chamberlain however decided otherwise and resigned that day. Arthur Neville Chamberlain PC (18 March 1869–9 November 1940), known as Neville Chamberlain, was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. ...
The Norway Debate was a famous debate in the British House of Commons that took place on May 7 and May 8, 1940. ...
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, OM, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British statesman who guided Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations through World War I and the postwar settlement as the Liberal Party Prime Minister, 1916-1922. ...
Despite his allegiance to Chamberlain, the incoming Churchill government appointed Baxter to an unofficial post with the Ministry of Aircraft Production where he was responsible for keeping up production of aero-engines. He became as strong a campaigner for the new Prime Minister as he had been for the old; when Sir John Wardlaw-Milne put down a motion of no confidence after the loss of Libya in June 1942, Baxter put down an amendment assuring Churchill of "unqualified support in the introduction of any measures .. for the intensified prosecution of the war". In April 1941 Baxter was in the minority, but with the government, in opposing a motion to keep theatres and cinemas closed on Sundays. A Motion of No Confidence, also called Motion of Non Confidence is a parliamentary motion traditionally put before a parliament by the opposition in the hope of defeating or embarrassing a government. ...
'Brendan and Beverley' However, Baxter's previous support for Chamberlain was not forgotten. In 1944, Michael Foot, then writing one of the many follow-ups to "Guilty Men", imagined a joint effort by a Chamberlain supporter and a Churchill supporter to write a counter. Foot characterised the two as Mr Tadpole and Mr Taper, the two petty politicians in Benjamin Disraeli's "Coningsby", and while disingenuously insisting that they were fictitious, identified them by titling the book "Brendan and Beverley". Michael Foot For other people named Michael Foot, see Michael Foot (disambiguation). ...
Guilty Men was a polemic book published in the summer of 1940 in the United Kingdom, which attacked the leading politicians of the 1930s for failing to confront Nazi Germany. ...
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (December 21, 1804 - April 24, British Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and author. ...
Coningsby or The New Generation, an English political novel by Benjamin Disraeli published in 1844. ...
Brendan Bracken (15 February 1901 - 8 August 1958) was an Irish-born British Conservative cabinet minister. ...
Post-war Baxter survived the 1945 general election with a majority reduced to under 6,000. Despite having no official role he was mentioned as a potential future Conservative Party leader by Sir Hartley Shawcross in July 1946. Baxter was part of the large Conservative rebellion against the Anglo-American loan in December 1945, and in 1948 was one of eight Conservatives to oppose Marshall Aid. However, he supported suspension of capital punishment. Clement Attlee Winston Churchill The United Kingdom General Election of 1945 held on 5 July 1945 but not counted and declared until 26 July 1945 (due to the time it took to transport the votes of those serving overseas) was one of the most significant general elections of the 20th...
Hartley Shawcross, Attorney-General of England and Wales 1945-51 The Right Honourable Hartley William Shawcross, Baron Shawcross, PC, GBE KC (February 4, 1902–July 10, 2003), was a British barrister and politician and the lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal. ...
U.S. postage stamp issued 1997 honoring the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. ...
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, now abolished has a long history, from before the United Kingdom existed. ...
Southgate At the 1950 general election, Baxter moved constituencies to fight instead at Southgate. He was never endangered at any election there. After Churchill returned to power in 1951, Baxter condemned the Foreign Office under the previous Labour government for having been "like a branch of the State Department". The United Kingdom general election in 1950 was the first general election ever after a full term of a Labour government. ...
Enfield Southgate is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...
The United States Department of State, often referred to as the State Department, is the Cabinet-level foreign affairs agency of the United States Government, equivalent to foreign ministries in other countries. ...
Baxter was given a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours list of 1954. He continued to support the abolition of capital punishment and acted as a sponsor of Bills to that effect brought in by the Labour MP Sydney Silverman, and spent a great deal of the late 1950s campaigning for a reduction in theatre tax. In 1959 he signed a motion deploring the call by some Labour MPs for televising the proceedings of the House of Commons. A statue of an armoured knight of the Middle Ages For the chess piece, see knight (chess). ...
Sydney Silverman was elected as British MP in the 1945 General election for Nelson & Colne, holding the seat at the subsequent general elections in 1950 and 1951. ...
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...
Last years In 1961 Baxter broke the whip to support a Conservative backbench amendment to restore corporal punishment for young offenders. He was very concerned at the Macmillan government's application to join the European Communities lest it damage ties with the Commonwealth, and abstained rather than support the government when it was put to the vote in August 1961. Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain intended to correct behavior or to punish. ...
Motto: In varietate concordia 2 Anthem: Ode to Joy 3 Commission seat Brussels Official languages 23 Member states 27 Presidencies - Commission José Manuel Barroso - Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering - Council Frank-Walter Steinmeier - European Council Germany Formation - Treaty of Rome 25 March 1957 - Maastricht Treaty 7 February 1992 Area - Total...
In poor health, Baxter announced that that Parliament was to be his last. He was criticised in January 1963 by the television programme "That Was The Week That Was" for having made no speeches since the 1959 general election. Baxter died before Parliament was dissolved, but no byelection to replace him was held due to the imminence of the general election. That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, was a satirical television comedy programme that aired on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. ...
This United Kingdom general election was held on October 8, 1959, and marked a third successive victory for the ruling Conservative party, led by Harold MacMillan. ...
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