Howard Johnson (politician)

Howard Sydney Johnson (25 December 1910 – 13 September 2000) was a British solicitor and building society director who became an unorthodox Conservative Party Member of Parliament. Johnson, who considered himself a radical, espoused many positions which put him outside the mainstream including opposition to fox hunting and support for unilateral nuclear disarmament. After leaving Parliament he passed through the Liberal Party and eventually into supporting the Labour Party.

Johnson was a native of Brighton, and was born into a Conservative family. His mother's family had a long connection with Brighton council, having been councillors and aldermen. He went to Brighton College and Highgate School, and then trained as a solicitor; he qualified in 1933.

He set up and became senior partner in a Brighton-based solicitors' partnership, Howard Johnson & McQue, in 1933. Johnson acted mainly as a criminal defence solicitor, taking on hopeless cases and clients whom other solicitors avoided; he was said to have "almost invariably" declined to take a case for the prosecution. While representing suspected murderers and prostitutes, his courtroom behaviour was flamboyant.

While still a teenager, Johnson had joined the Territorial Army. He was called into the Royal Artillery in the regular army on the outbreak of war in 1939, and served in North Africa where he was injured in 1943 and invalided out with the rank of Major. Johnson returned to Brighton where he became involved in local politics; at the local elections in November 1945 he was elected as a Conservative to Brighton Borough Council from a ward in Kemp Town. On the council he specialised in housing and worked together with Lewis Cohen (the Mayor, and a Labour councillor) to support a local housing association. Johnson and Cohen also knew each other through business.

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