George Chetwynd

Sir George Roland Chetwynd, CBE (14 May 1916 – 2 September 1982) was a British lecturer, politician and public servant. He defeated Harold Macmillan in order to get elected as a Member of Parliament, but later left Parliament to become Director of the North East Development Council for five years in the 1960s.

Chetwynd was the son of a miner, and was brought up in north Warwickshire. An academically gifted child, he passed the Eleven plus and attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Atherstone; he then won a place at King's College London where he obtained a BA (Hons.) in History and a postgraduate scholarship in the same subject. He joined the Labour Party in 1936 and earned a living by being a lecturer for the Workers Educational Association.

In 1940, during World War II, Chetwynd enlisted in the Royal Artillery. Two years later he was commissioned into the Royal Army Educational Corps where he trained troops; by the end of the war he held the rank of Captain. At the 1945 general election, Chetwynd fought as the Labour Party candidate against the rising Conservative minister Harold Macmillan; in one of the first results to be declared, he won with a majority of 8,664.

He made his mark in Parliament as a generally loyal supporter of the government, which was put under pressure from the left. He saw nothing inconsistent in membership of the United Nations while retaining strong armed forces for the United Kingdom. Although initially opposed to the continuation of national service in peacetime, he later came round to support it. He also spoke in favour of the Town and Country Planning Bill in 1947. In March of that year he appealed for greater efforts to build new factories on Tees-side. In March 1948 he signed an all party motion calling for a 'Council of Western Europe' to prepare the way for an organic federation of European states. Chetwynd was approached to sign a telegram to Pietro Nenni, a Communist-allied Italian socialist, but refused to have anything to do with it.

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