A Healthy Distaste for Lawyers

Hansard Excerpt 14 December 1945 of a speech by Lew Austin, MP. This gives his post-war stance on lawyers, and the preferential treatment they received when it came to serving or rather not serving their country.

In the words of Lew's son David Austin, a solicitor and the founder of the Sydney legal firm, Packer and Austin, this speech displays "my fathers eloquence in the House of Commons showing a healthy distaste for lawyers":

 

A labour party meeting in The Freemasons Arms, Hampstead, a smoky London pub, 1945. The man with his back to to the camera, smoking pipe, front right, bears a slight resemblance to Lew Austin.

Austin Tea Party: A rare personal photo from the Austin family archive. Chistmas 1963 in Hove, England. Lew Austin, seated (centre)  appears to be packing his pipe with tobacco after the family have enjoyed a festive meal together. 

 

2.22 p.m. 

 Mr. Austin (Stretford)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for. Hornsey (Mr. Gammans) for contributing to this Debate and enabling us to direct our minds to the more general question of releases from the Forces, instead of centralising the Debate on lawyers. I think there was one intervention from the hon. Member for Down (Dr. Little) who dealt with the question of the release of students at large. There was also a previous complaint that students of law had not been granted parity with other students in their release, and there is a very good reason for that. I think the hon. and gallant Member for South Croydon (Lieut.-Colonel Rees-Williams) listed a number of students who had had priority in release over students of law. Who were they? They were students of medicine who are very necessary in the life of our people. Then dentists are very necessary, because curing a toothache is more important than the headache which the lawyers are likely to give us. A veterinary surgeon is most important. A student of architecture is most important; accordingly—and quite rightly—the Ministry of Labour give precedence to those students over students of law who are not productive at all.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Rees-Williams

Would my hon. Friend say that an arts student was more important than a legal student?

§ Mr. Austin

With my great appreciation of the aesthetic side of life, I would certainly say that an art student is more important to the life of the community than a legal student, who only involves us in more longwinded difficulties. I think my hon. Friend probably has in mind other students of a different complexion. Art students contribute more to the gaiety, beauty and joyousness of life than these sombre advocates of the law who make a nuisance of our lives in the manner which we know so well. Great play has been made in the Debate of the fact that there was almost no deferment for members of the legal profession, and quite rightly, too. They have been of no productive use to the community in peacetime.

§ Mr. Paget

What does the hon. Gentleman think he is doing here if he has those 857 views on lawyers? What is the point of making laws if you are not going to allow them to be interpreted?

§ Mr. Austin

I welcome the interjection.??? hold the conviction that in previous Parliaments there were two elements which were predominant and which could very well be lessened. The first—and I say it without bias—was the trade union leader element, and the second was the lawyer element. We have, to a degree, dissipated the trade union leader element, and now I hope we shall deal with the lawyer element, because I feel we need in the House representatives from the man in the street who can put a plain and straightforward point of view with regard to simple law, moral and ethics.

§ Brigadier Low (Blackpool, North)

Would the hon. Gentleman perhaps start on the President of the Board of Trade?

§ Mr. Austin

I have a great admiration for the President of the Board of Trade, and I am not castigating the whole of the legal profession.

§ Mr. Harris

On a point of Order. Is this within the terms of the Motion?

§ Mr. Austin

I am addressing myself completely to the Motion. I am speaking from the point of view of the right of other members of the Forces to release, not only in parity with the members of the legal profession but to take precedence over members of the legal profession in regard to release. Some weeks ago I put down a Question as to whether the Minister of Labour would consider the release from the Forces of those who had served five years, and I maintain, with all due respect, that members of the Forces, whether they be dustmen, engineers, agricultural workers or miners, all have a greater right of precedence to release from the Forces, particularly if they have served live years, than members of the legal profession.

§ Mr. Janner

Does the hon. Gentleman not know that, in fact, preference has already been granted, and in common sense these men will not be able to deal with their various difficulties from the legal standpoint unless they have someone to help them?

§ Mr. Austin

I grant the point made by the hon Member for West Leicester (Mr. Janner) to a degree, but the fact is that 858 lawyers have been found necessary in the past because in the social structure there are certain inherent weaknesses, and we shall do our best to avoid those weaknesses in the future. It is a fact that the legal profession functions only on the basis of people's difficulties, whether it be between one person on another or between one business and another, and, accordingly, litigation is called for.

If we are to talk at all about the question of the release of members of the Forces, I think we ought to bear in mind the Debate that took place yesterday. We should bear in mind that of greater value to the economy of this country would be the release of any person who would be useful in our export trade. He should take precedence over any member of the legal profession, or of any other non-productive profession which has had no real constructive or useful place in the function of our society. Would hon. Members submit for one moment that a law student should take precedence in release over a miner or an agricultural worker, or any other member of the community who is concerned with productive work? I ask hon. Members who belong to the legal profession to bear this point in mind. The economy of this country needs, above all, productive workers, and the incidental fact that certain difficulties in the private lives of those productive workers may be alleviated by the intervention of members of the legal profession is a secondary consideration. I cannot see why priority of any kind should be granted to members of the legal profession in their release from the Forces. I ask the Minister of Labour to harden his heart against this plea, and to switch his activity to the further release of all those who can be of real service, particularly in industry, to the community.

Parliamentary Clerks on the way to the halls of Westminster, 1945. Winston Churchill is in the background.

 

 

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/dec/14/solicitors-and-law-students#S5CV0417P0_19451214_HOC_120


Picture sources: 
  
1945 Labour party meeting in smokey London pub, The Freemasons Arms, Hampstead.
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Public_House_Debate- 

Clerks on the way to Parliament, 1945. Winston Churchill is in the background.
http://www.allposters.co.uk/-sp/Winston-Churchill-on-His-Way-to-the-Houses-of-Parliament-on-Ve-Day-For-Victory-Service-1945-Posters_i4173177_.htm

Herschel Lewis Austin

A rags to riches tale...


Herschel Lewis Austin (22 March 1911 – 8 April 1974)[1] was a British furniture-maker and Labour Party politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1950. Austin was born in Plymouth, England, the son of Austrian immigrants, who later anglicised their surname from the Austrian "Ornstein".



Sub Liet. H.L. Austin, in naval uniform, May 1944

Lew, as he was known, grew up in poverty in the East End of London. His father Mordechai (Max), a bamboo worker, died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 44, when Lewis was aged just 3, in 1914.

After leaving school at the age of 11, he educated himself as much as he could by attending night classes and visiting libraries when he wasn't working as an apprentice cabinet maker. He owed much of his wide-ranging education to Toynbee Hall, a benevolent institution still active in the East End. He later went into business with his three of his brothers, producing affordable furniture with what became Austinsuite furnishings, a precursor to the flatpack furniture later adopted by M.F.I. in the U.K.





The Austin factory staff at a works lunch.

During World War II, the family business, F Austin Leyton Ltd, manufactured military aircraft including the de Havilland Mosquito. Lew Austin was production manager. On one occasion Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian newspaper entrepreneur who was Minister of Aircraft Production in Churchill's war Ministry, visited the factory and was shown round by "Mr. Lew". After the visit one of the men's toilets had two articles graffiti on the wall. The first read "Lord Beaverbrook is a c**t" The second read "No I'm not".



F Austin (Leyton) advert

In 1944, after having previously been refused permission to leave his civilian employment, Lew Austin joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he served first on destroyers in the Mediterranean and then in the Fleet Air Arm, ending up in a staff position at a Naval headquarters at Lee on Solent rising to the rank of Sub Lieutenant (Sub.-Lt). He was also prominent in the Fabian Society along with his older brother, the late Frank Austin O.B.E., and was effectively headhunted for a direction shift into politics, after being told by a colleague, "You are wasted here, you're needed in the Labour Party".










With his agent Mr Carrington

He joined the party, and in Labour's landslide victory at the 1945 general election he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Stretford constituency in Manchester, defeating the sitting Conservative MP, Ralph Etherton.[2] He held his seat until the 1950 election, when he was beaten by the Conservative candidate Samuel Storey.[3]











With Samuel Storey

Born to an immigrant family originating from a rabbinic dynasty in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Ukraine, he was an ardent humanist. When campaigning for the seat he eventually won, late in 1945 when the ashes of World War II were still glowing, he was asked by a heckler at a political rally "what is the candidate's religion?". He replied "I have no religion; I am a free thinker. But I am a Jew and a carpenter and the son of a capenter but unlike another son of a capenter two thousand years ago I don't expect to be crucified for my beliefs."


His mother, Dora Ornstein

During his time in Parliament Lewis Austin was one of a dozen or so Jewish Members during the period when the British Mandate of Palestine ended and the state of Israel was born. He and his Jewish colleagues fought many battles in the party room over British policy on the Palestine issue. Austin, who regarded the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin as an antimsemite, once challenged Bevin to 'come outside' the party room. Austin had been a keen amateur boxer as a young man. He later told family members that Bevin had suggested "we can leave it to the Arabs to kick the bloody Jews into the sea".



Pulling on his pipe

At that time Austin published a circular entitled "the importance of being Ernest (Bevin)" which attacked Bevin and his policies roundly, and as result faced discipline from Transport House, headquarters of the Labour Party.

Austin gained something of a reputation as a leftwing firebrand while in Parliament, and some years later was detained on Ellis Island by US immigration for a number of days on suspicion of being a communist, at the height of the McCarthyist movement in the USA.

After his brief stint in politics, he moved with his wife and young family to Jamaica for a number of years, living in Montego Bay. It was there he took time out to reflect on his next career move. He later returned to the U.K., bring his family to the Hove area, near Brighton in Sussex. He then worked for a four to six month stint as a door-to-door salesman of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was discouraged from carrying this on by his wife, the late Irene Austin, later Dame Irene Murray, of the Knights of Saint John, Malta.






Irene Austin, later Dame Murray

He then set up his own business in dealing with Stocks and Shares, acting as a licensed dealer until his untimely death in April 1974, not long after the Black Monday stock market crash of Spring 1974.









Montego Bay, Lew Austin












Spot Valley, Lew Austin



Written by the family biographers.