Hastings Lees-Smith
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The Right Honourable Hastings Lees-Smith |
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|---|---|
 |
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| Postmaster General | |
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In office 7 June 1929 – 2 March 1931 |
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| Monarch | George V |
| Prime Minister | Ramsay MacDonald |
| Preceded by | Sir William Mitchell-Thomson, Bt |
| Succeeded by | Clement Attlee |
| President of the Board of Education | |
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In office 2 March 1931 – 24 August 1931 |
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| Monarch | George V |
| Prime Minister | Ramsay MacDonald |
| Preceded by | Sir Charles Trevelyan, Bt |
| Succeeded by | Sir Donald Maclean |
| Leader of the Opposition | |
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In office 1940–1941 |
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| Monarch | George VI |
| Preceded by | Clement Attlee |
| Succeeded by | Frederick Pethick-Lawrence |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
26 January 1878 British India |
| Died | 18 December 1941 (aged 63) |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Labour |
| Alma mater | Queen's College, Oxford |
Hastings Bertrand Lees-Smith PC (26 January 1878 – 18 December 1941) was a British Labour politician who was briefly in the cabinet as President of the Board of Education in 1931. He was the acting Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party (as chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party) from 1940 during the time Clement Attlee was in government.
Lees-Smith was from an Army family; his father was a Major in the Royal Artillery, and he was born in British India. He was educated Aldenham School, as a cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and Queen's College, Oxford. Rejecting a military career for himself he chose academia and was appointed as a Lecturer in Public Administration at the London School of Economics in 1906; he remained there throughout his political career. He was also Chairman of the Executive Committee of Ruskin College, Oxford, from 1907 to 1909. He resigned on appointment as Professor of Public Administration at the University of Bristol. In 1909 he went on an extended tour of India to lecture at Bombay on economics and advise on economics teaching; as a result of his experiences he wrote Studies in Indian Economics. He joined a territorial regiment in 1915, and was wounded as a stretcher bearer on the Western Front and invalided out of the armed forces in 1917. In 1938 he distributed 40 British passports to German Jews in Frankfurt thus aiding their escape.
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