Politics
Along with Pearson, Brittain formed the Tariff Reform League. This led him into Conservative politics. At the 1918 general election he received the "coupon" as the Coalition Conservative candidate for the newly created seat of Acton, Middlesex. He won the seat and held it until 1929, when an increase in the industrial working population of the constituency and a swing against the incumbent Conservative government saw him defeated by James Shillaker of the Labour Party. He is best remembered for steering the Protection of Birds Act 1925 (sometimes called the "Brittain Act") through parliament.
He was created KBE in 1918 for services in the First World War, and a CMG in 1924. He was also honoured by several continental countries for his international services. He visited 90 countries, crossed the Atlantic by sea more than 70 times and had been entertained in all 50 states of the USA.
Read more about this topic: Harry Brittain
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.”
—Cecil Parkinson (b. 1932)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“I have come to the conclusion that the closer people are to what may be called the front lines of government ... the easier it is to see the immediate underbrush, the individual tree trunks of the moment, and to forget the nobility the usefulness and the wide extent of the forest itself.... They forget that politics after all is only an instrument through which to achieve Government.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)