Hastings Lees-Smith - Ministerial Office

Ministerial Office

The collapse of the Liberal Party in the 1924 general election meant that Lees-Smith was able to win his seat back and he was swiftly appointed to a front-bench role. When Labour returned to office in 1929 he was made Postmaster-General where he defended the nationalised Post Office and tried to smarten up the Post Office counters. In a reshuffle in March 1931 he was promoted to President of the Board of Education and sworn of the Privy Council. He had only a brief time in office before the government fell, and Lees-Smith refused to follow Ramsay Macdonald into the National Government.

Defeated again in 1931, Lees-Smith again won his seat back in 1935. He served on the front bench but was not invited by Winston Churchill to join the Coalition government in 1940; as one of the most senior Labour figures not in office, the responsibilities of running the party were given to him. In his partisan role he strongly supported Churchill's conduct as war leader at a time when the war did not always run in the Allies' favour.