Winston Churchill visit with Gordon Campbell before Election Day, Burnley

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iBase ID

313219

Reference identifier

EBU-U01-P14-5-2

Title

Winston Churchill visit with Gordon Campbell before Election Day, Burnley

Place

Burnley

Personal names

Gordon Campbell, Winston Churchill, Mary Jeanne Davids

General notes

Winston Churchill visited Burnley in 1931 to support the Conservative candidate Gordon Campbell. The visit was documented in the photograph taken at Campbell's house. Gordon Campbell is seated in the middle with his wife on the left.

Born Croydon 6.1. 1886, 9th son and 13th of 16 children to a distinguished military family, after Dulwich College, Campbell joined the Navy as a cadet aged 14 in 1900. He receive rapid promotions, and as a Commander in 1917, was awarded a V.C. for sinking a German submarine, the details of which were kept secret at the time as Campbell was commanding a Q ship, one of the "Mystery Ships", submarine decoy ships, designed to look like a merchant ship to entice a German submarine to come within range of its concealed guns so it could be sunk. He ended the war highly decorated. Hampered by illness, he was retired in 1929 as Rear Admiral and in 1932, he was made Vice Admiral on the Retired list. He wrote a best selling memoir and was in demand as a public speaker. In 1931 he offered himself to Burnley as an unattached National candidate, gaining the support of the Conservatives and Liberals in the national interest, and defeated the incumbent leader of the Labour Party, Arthur Henderson, by 8209 votes. There was also a Communist Party candidate, an unemployed weaver, who stood in at the last moment when the intended communist candidate, Mrs. Rose Smith, was arrested and sentenced to 3 months hard labour for "inciting persons to interfere with the Police and being disorderly" outside a local mill. Despite heart problems Campbell stood again in 1935 as a Nationalist Liberal when he lost by 4,195 votes to Labour's Wilfrid Burke. At the outbreak of WW2, he rejoined the Navy as a Commander, but due to his ill health, from 1940-46 was employed in Admiralty staff posts. He died in Isleworth 3.10.1953 (obit. Burnley Express 7.10.53).

In 1911 he had married Mary Jeanne Davids, (pictured with him on election night) from a distinguished Guildford family, and they had a son and a daughter (Flora). His son, David, born 1915, was an Anglican priest and member of a monastic order, Society of St. John the Evangelist. When he died in 2010 he bequeathed all his father's medals to the order and in November 2017 the order sold them at auction, when Gordon Campbell's great-nephew Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza, paid a record £840,000, with the intention of offering them to a British museum for public display.

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Medium

Photographic print

Colour

Monochrome

Year of image

Mid 20th Century

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Subjects

Place Names > Burnley

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