Reginald Bassett

For the American composer and orchestrator, see Reginald Hazeltine Bassett.

Reginald Bassett in 1950

Reginald Bassett (1901 - 1962) was an English historian and Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics.

He was educated at Ruskin College, Oxford and New College, Oxford. He was a lecturer under the Extra-Mural Studies Delegacy of the University of Oxford, lecturing mainly in Sussex. From 1945-50 he was a tutor at the London School of Economics for a course designed for students from trade unions. He was lecturer in political science from 1950–53, Reader in Political Science 1953-61 and Professor of Political Science 1961-62.

Bassett was a member of the Independent Labour Party. In 1931 he supported Ramsay MacDonald's design to a form the National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals. He later published a detailed history of the crisis of 1931, challenging the left-wing interpretation of it as a plot.

His famous article on Stanley Baldwin's "confession" of November 1936 over rearmament challenged the view of Winston Churchill that Baldwin claimed that an election in 1935 over rearmament would have been lost. Bassett showed that Baldwin was instead talking of 1933/34 when the public mood favoured disarmament as shown by the East Fulham by-election.

Works

• The Essentials of Parliamentary Democracy (1935).
• Democracy and Foreign Policy (1952).
• Nineteen Thirty-one: Political Crisis (1958).