Kenneth Younger

Sir Kenneth Gilmour Younger KBE (15 December 1908 – 19 May 1976) was a British Labour politician and barrister who served in junior government posts during the Attlee government and was an opposition spokesman under Hugh Gaitskell but retired from Parliament early, disillusioned by party politics. Family Younger was the son of James Younger, 2nd Viscount Younger of Leckie and as such came from an upper-class background atypical of the Labour movement (he was also the brother of Conservative peer Edward Younger, 3rd Viscount Younger of Leckie and the uncle of future Conservative cabinet minister George Younger, 4th Viscount Younger of Leckie). The family lived at Gargunnock in Stirlingshire. After Winchester College and New College, Oxford, Younger read for the Bar and was called (Inner Temple) in 1932. Two years later he married Elizabeth Stewart. They had two daughters and one son (Sam, who became a BBC executive, and is now Chief Executive of the Charity Commission). Entry into politics During World War II, Younger served in the Intelligence Corps and rose to the rank of Major. At the end of December 1944 he was adopted as Labour candidate for Grimsby which was then held by Walter Womersley for the Conservatives with a small majority. In the 1945 general election Younger won easily. Philip Noel-Baker, who was Minister of State for Air, appointed Younger as his Parliamentary Private Secretary immediately after the election. This appointment did not stop Younger from trying to understand the lives of his constituents better: on 28 August 1945 he set sail on the steam trawler Marano from Grimsby as a 'spare hand' for an eight- or nine-day voyage to North Sea fishing grounds. Ministerial office His experience in intelligence led him to be appointed as Chairman of the UNRRA Committee of Council on Europe on 6 June 1946. Later that year he was named as part of the British delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, and on his return he opened an exhibition of the United Nations to the International Association of Journalists, also speaking to public meetings about the work of the UN. He was also a member of the Supreme Court Committee on Practice and Procedure. His abilities had caught the eye of Clement Attlee, and in a government reshuffle on 7 October 1947 he became Parliamentary Secretary to the Home Office.