Howard and Son – Rebels of a Kind

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(Free-Press-Release.com) January 17, 2012 -- The political career of Howard Gritten took off with the unseating of a powerful millionaire MP after a petition to Parliament exposed election shenagigans like those of Sam Weller in Pickwick Papers. Howard himself became an MP despite the express order of his party leader not to stand and Conservative Central Office supporting his opponent. Explicit details of his bizarre domestic life, unknown to his far-away constituents, are also revealed in this remarkable story by his son.

Howard and Son tells of a life which ranges over seven decades from the Franco-Prussian war to the middle of the Second World War and the tenure of at least eight British Prime Ministers with whom Howard was in contact at some stage of their careers. Because he was often at loggerheads with the leadership of his party and the whips, he remained a back-bencher for his eighteen years in Parliament.

He maintained that none of his contemporary MPs had stood anywhere in the UK nine times for the same constituency, eight of them hard-fought contests, including three in the same year; that he was the first MP to hold for his constituents what have long since been known as ‘surgeries’; and that he was the first to represent Britain’s millions of cyclists in Parliament. At an early age John Gritten found his father’s views, especially his incorrigible anti-Semitism, didn’t tally with his own experience; in adolescence he acquired independent views and as a young man chose a left-wing orientation.

Readers will find that many twenty-first century events, issues, situations and attitudes are echoes from those mentioned in this book – for example, advocacy of pre-emptive strikes on the pretext of national ‘self-defence’; the historical precedents for Tory and Liberal collaboration and Coalition Governments; and the attempts to restrict the power of the House of Lords; bans on local parties’ choice of candidates; and Tory intrigues, splits and rebellions.

‘The remarkable aspect of John Gritten’s biography of his father is the quality of the author’s writing style and research in embracing the political, social, indeed global picture of events that spread across an entire century from the mid-1800s to the Second World War.’ – Geoffrey Goodman, biographer, author of From Bevan to Blair, awarded the CBE for services to journalism.

JOHN GRITTEN, after serving in the Royal Navy throughout the war, resumed his career as a journalist: on Professor Joliot Curie’s World Council of Peace; and on national newspapers and news magazines. He is also the author of Full Circle, log of the Navy’s No 1 Conscript and A Musician Before his Time, Constantin Silvestri, Conductor, Composer, Pianist. He lives in London with his concert pianist wife, Anda Anastasescu.

PUBLICATION DATE 1st February 2012
ISBN: 9781780880631
Price: £12.99

Howard and Sons     Howard Gritten     JOHN GRITTEN     Matador Books     Troubador Publishing