Арчибальд Феннер Броквей: социалист, пацифист и борец за независимость Индии.

British politician (1888–1988)

Archibald Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway (1 November 1888 – 28 April 1988) was a British socialist politician, humanist campaigner and anti war activist.

Brockway was born to Rev. William George Brockway and Frances Elizabeth Abbey in Calcutta, British India. He developed an interest in politics while attending the School for the Sons of Missionaries, then in Blackheath, London (now Eltham College), from 1897 to 1905. In 1908, Brockway became a vegetarian. Several decades later, during a debate in a House of Lords on animal cruelty, he said: "I am a vegetarian and I have been so for 70 years. On the whole, I think, physically I am a pretty good advertisement for that practice." After leaving school, he worked as a journalist for newspapers and journals including The Quiver, the Daily News and the Christian Commonwealth. In 1907, Brockway joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and was a regular visitor to the Fabian Society. He was appointed editor of the Labour Leader (the newspaper of the ILP, later called the New Leader) and was, by 1913, a committed pacifist. He opposed sending troops to France during the First World War and, through his position as editor of the Labour Leader, was outspoken in his views about the conflict. On 12 November 1914, he published an appeal for men and women of the military age to join him in forming the No Conscription Fellowship to campaign against the possibility of the government attempting to introduce conscription in Britain. Brockway acknowledged his wife, Lilla Brockway, had the foresight "that those who intended to refuse military service should band themselves together". Lilla acted as provisional secretary at their cottage in Derbyshire until the beginning of 1915, when the membership had grown so large that it had become necessary to open an office in London. In London, Catherine Marshall became the Fellowship's political secretary since she was adept at political strategy as the Parliamentary Secretary of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Shortly after his release, Brockway was arrested for a third time for his refusal to be conscripted, after being denied recognition as a conscientious objector. He was handed over to the Army and court martialled for disobeying orders. As if a traitor, he was held for a night in the Tower of London, in a dungeon under Chester Castle and in Walton Prison, Liverpool, where he edited an unofficial newspaper, the Walton Leader, for conscientious objectors in the prison. This led to his being disciplined, which in turn led to a 10 day prison strike by conscientious objectors before he was transferred to Lincoln Jail, where he spent some time in solitary confinement until finally released in 1919. In October 1950 he revisited the jail with Éamon de Valera, the Irish statesman. Following his release, Brockway became an active member of the India League, which advocated Indian independence. He became secretary of the ILP in 1923 and later its chairman. Years later, the Government of India honoured him with the third highest civilian award of the Padma Bhushan in 1989.

Brockway stood for Parliament several times, including at Lancaster in 1922 and against Winston Churchill at Westminster Abbey in a 1924 by election. In 1926, he became the first chairperson of War Resisters' International, serving in this post until 1934. In 1931 Brockway lost his seat and the following year he disaffiliated from the Labour Party along with the rest of the ILP. He stood unsuccessfully for the ILP in the 1934 Upton by election (Upton was a division of West Ham), placed a remote third with only a 3.5% share of the votes cast, and in Norwich in the 1935 election. He also wrote a book on the arms trade, The Bloody Traffic, published by Gollancz Ltd in 1934. According to David Howell, after 1932 Brockway "sought to articulate a socialism distinct from the pragmatism of Labour and the Stalinism of the Communist Party". In Brockway's science fiction novel, Purple Plague (1935), a sea liner is quarantined for a decade as a result of a plague. An egalitarian society emerges.

In May 1946, Brockway toured the British occupation zone in Germany as an accredited war correspondent, meeting German socialists and reporting on living conditions there; he wrote about the visit in German Diary, published by the Left Book Club. Brockway appeared in Hitler's Black Book that contained a list of British subjects and residents who would have been subject to arrest had the Nazis successfully invaded the UK. The contents of the book were not publicly known until after the Second World War. Brockway later rejoined the Labour Party. After the 1950 general election he returned to the House of Commons, following an absence of more than 18 years, as the MP for Eton and Slough. On 28 March 1950, he forced a debate in the House of Commons on the decision by the Labour Government of the UK to banish Seretse Khama from his homeland, while withholding recognition of him as the Chief of the Bamangwato people of the British protectorate which became Botswana, because he had married an English lady, an action that was an affront to the then pro Apartheid South African minority government under D. F. Malan, which, it became very clear, the UK government wished to appease. In 1951, Brockway was one of the four founders of the charity War on Want, which fights global poverty. He helped establish the Congress of Peoples Against Imperialism (est. 1945), an organisation he continued to work with throughout the 1950s. His activities there included protesting against the response of the government to the Mau Mau Uprising in the British Kenya Colony. In this area, he was a part of the larger Movement for Colonial Freedom. From the late 1950s he regularly proposed legislation in Parliament to ban racial discrimination, only to be defeated each time. He strongly opposed the use or possession of nuclear weapons by any nation and was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. On 18 July 1961, Brockway was chosen by Speaker Harry Hylton Foster to ask the first question at the very first Prime Minister's Questions in the current format. Brockway was a prominent member of the British Humanist Association and South Place Ethical Society where he became an Appointed Lecturer during the 1960s. He gave the 1986 Conway Memorial Lecture on 21 May 1986. The Lecture was titled M D Conway: His Life and Message For Today and was chaired by Michael Foot. The Brockway Room at Conway Hall in London is named after him. Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, who defected to the UK in 1985, alleged that Brockway had been a "confidential contact" of the KGB and had "accepted a great deal of hospitality from Soviet intelligence".

Brockway narrowly lost his seat in the House of Commons at the 1964 election, despite the national swing to Labour at that election, as he was portrayed by his opponents as being the principal cause of immigrants from the West Indies settling in Slough. He subsequently was created a life peer on 17 December 1964 taking the title Baron Brockway, of Eton and of Slough in the County of Buckingham, and took a seat in the House of Lords.

Brockway continued to campaign for world peace and was for several years the chairman of the Movement for Colonial Freedom. Other important posts held by him include the Presidency of the British Council for Peace in Vietnam, and membership of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association. The World Disarmament Campaign was founded by Brockway in 1979, together with Philip Noel Baker, to work for the implementation of the policies agreed at the 1978 Special Session on Disarmament of the UN General Assembly. Brian Harrison recorded an oral history interview with Brockway, in April 1980, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews. Brockway discusses his introduction to socialism, through Keir Hardie, and his interest in women's suffrage. Brockway died on 28 April 1988, aged 99. He was some six months shy of his centenary.