Leslie Plummer
| Sir Leslie Plummer | |
|---|---|
| Chairman of the Overseas Food Corporation | |
|
In office 16 February 1948 – 30 June 1950 |
|
| Succeeded by | Sir Eric Coates |
| Member of Parliament for Deptford | |
|
In office 25 October 1951 – 15 April 1963 |
|
| Preceded by | |
| Succeeded by | John Silkin |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
2 June 1901 Demerara, British Guiana |
| Died | 15 April 1963 (aged 61) New York City |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse(s) | Beatrice Lapsker |
| Residence | Hampstead |
| Occupation | Newspaper executive |
Sir Leslie Arthur Plummer (2 June 1901 – 15 April 1963), known to his friends as Dick Plummer, was a British farmer, newspaper executive and politician. He was in charge of the Overseas Food Corporation during the disastrous Tanganyika groundnut scheme in the late 1940s; later he became a Labour Party Member of Parliament where he pioneered attempts to outlaw racial discrimination.
Plummer was born in Demerara, British Guiana, where his father was working. He was educated at Tottenham Grammar School in North London, and first worked on the managerial staff of the Daily Herald from 1919. In 1922 he became general manager for the New Leader, a paper edited by H. N. Brailsford as the party journal of the Independent Labour Party. Plummer shared the left-wing sentiments of the ILP. In 1923 Plummer married Beatrice Lapsker. They had no children.
Plummer was selected as Labour Party candidate for Birmingham Edgbaston in the mid-1920s but gave up the candidacy in May 1927. He left the New Leader to set up The Miner, a journal for the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, in 1926.
He became an executive of the Daily Express group, and was a Director by 1941. In 1943 he was general manager of the company. Plummer prospered at the Daily Express group despite disagreeing on politics with the proprietor Lord Beaverbrook because of his own skill as an administrator and Beaverbrook's known liking for talent-spotting among left-wingers.
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