Charles Roden Buxton

Charles Roden Buxton
Member of Parliament for Elland
In office 30 May 1929 – 7 October 1931
Preceded by	William C. Robinson
Succeeded by	Thomas Levy
Member of Parliament for Accrington
In office 15 November 1922 – 16 November 1923
Preceded by	Ernest Gray
Succeeded by	J. Hugh Edwards
Member of Parliament for Ashburton
In office January 1910 – December 1910
Preceded by	Ernest Morrison-Bell
Succeeded by	Ernest Morrison-Bell
Personal details
Born	(1875-11-27)27 November 1875 London, England
Died	16 December 1942(1942-12-16) (aged 67) Peaslake, Surrey, England
Political party	Liberal (until 1917) Labour (from 1917)
Other political affiliations	Independent Labour Party
Spouses	Dorothy Frances Jebb ​ ​ (m. 1904)​
Children	2

Charles Roden Buxton (27 November 1875 – 16 December 1942) was an English philanthropist and radical British Liberal Party politician who later joined the Labour Party. He survived an assassination attempt during a mission to the Balkans in 1914.

Political career

He stood as a Liberal candidate in Hertford in 1906 and Ashburton in 1908. Eventually he was elected as a Member of Parliament in Ashburton in 1910 but lost his seat in the second election of that year. In 1914 he, along with his brother Noel, made his way to Bulgaria. They had stopped in Bucharest, Romania in October 1914. While there, an assassination attempt was made on them, by Turkish activist, Hasan Tahsin. He was shot through the lung, but survived. His brother also was wounded in the jaw. Tashsin was captured and sent to prison for five years.

A view of Vitosha from the boulevard named after the brothers Noel & Charles Buxton in Sofia, Bulgaria (42°39.943′N 23°16.521′E)

During the First World War, he was one of the minority arguing for a negotiated peace and was a founder member of the Union of Democratic Control.

In 1917, he left the Liberal Party and joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP). As secretary to the Labour Party's delegation to the Soviet Union in 1920, he was very impressed by what he saw, and wrote a book about it, In A Russian Village (1922).

1918 he contested Accrington for the Labour Party and lost, won the seat in 1922, and lost again in 1923. He won the seat of Elland in 1929, but was defeated in 1931 and 1935.

Buxton was always much more effective behind the scenes, acting as policy advisor on foreign and colonial issues to the Labour Party. He showed particular interest in the rights of indigenous people of Africa, and travelled widely in the continent.

Another of his interests was Esperanto, becoming president of the international society of Quaker Esperantists.

With Dorothy, he became a member of the Society of Friends. They were eager campaigners for peace, and were critical of what they perceived as the unfairness to Germany of the treaty of Versailles. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II they still argued that peace could be attained by responding to German grievances. The outbreak of war was a great disappointment to them both.

See also

• List of peace activists

References

• Griffiths, C. V. J. "Buxton, Charles Roden". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/74568. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• V. A. B. De Bunsen, Charles Roden Buxton: a memoir (1948)
• The Times, obituary of Charles Roden Buxton, 17 December 1942

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Charles Roden Buxton
• Buxton papers at London School of Economics (LSE) Archives