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Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, known as Dick Crossman, (15 December 1907 – 5 April 1974) was a British politician and writer. He was a prominent member of the Labour Party, a socialist intellectual and a Zionist.

The son of a judge, he grew up in Oxfordshire and attended Winchester College. He studied Classics at New College, Oxford, receiving a double first and becoming a Fellow in 1931. He was a councillor on Oxford City Council, becoming head of the Labour group in 1935.

At the outbreak of World War II he joined the Civil Service, serving in the Psychological Warfare Department under Robert Bruce Lockhart. During this time he produced anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts for Radio of the European Revolution, set up by the Special Operations Executive. He eventually became Assistant Chief of the Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF and was awarded an OBE for his wartime service. In the spring of 1945 he was one of the first British officers to enter the concentration camp at Dachau.

He entered the House of Commons in 1945, as Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry East, a seat he would hold until shortly before his death in 1974. During 1945-46 he served, on the nomination of the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, as a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine. The committee's report, submitted in April 1946, included a recommendation for 100,000 Jewish "displaced persons" to be permitted to enter Palestine. The recommendation was rejected by the British government, after which Crossman strongly opposed British policy in Palestine, incurring Bevin's enmity. This may have been among the factors preventing Crossman from achieving ministerial rank during the 1945-51 government.

He was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party from 1952 until 1967, and Chairman of the Labour Party in 1960-61. On the left wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party, in 1947 he was a co-author of the Keep Left pamphlet, and later a prominent Bevanite. He was Labour's spokesman on Education before the 1964 General Election, but upon forming the new Government Harold Wilson appointed Crossman Minister of Housing and Local Government. In 1966 he became Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons.

He was Secretary of State for Health and Social Security from 1968 to 1970, in which position he worked on an ambitious proposal to supplement Britain's flat state pension with an earnings-related element. The proposal had not, however, been passed into law at the time the Labour Party lost the 1970 general election.

He resigned from the Labour front bench in 1970 to become editor of the New Statesman magazine, where he had been assistant editor from 1938 to 1955. He left the New Statesman in 1972. He died of cancer in April 1974.

Crossman was a prolific writer and editor. He is most famous for his colourful and highly subjective three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, covering his time in government from 1964 to 1970, published despite a legal battle by the government to prevent their publication. He also edited The God That Failed, a collection of anti-Communist essays published in 1949.

Contents 1 Quotation 2 Works 3 Further reading 4 External links

The Civil Service is profoundly deferential – 'Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister!'

• Plato Today New York: Oxford University Press (1939).
• The Politics of Socialism New York: Atheneum (1965).
• The Myths of Cabinet Government Cambridge: Havard University Press (1972).

• Anthony Howard (1990) Crossman: The Pursuit of Power, Jonathan Cape
• Tam Dalyell (1989) Dick Crossman: A Portrait

• Tam Dalyell on Richard Crossman on BBC Radio 4
• Biography from Spartacus Educational
• Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, London

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Coventry East 1945–February 1974	Succeeded by (constituency abolished)
Political offices
Preceded by George Brinham	Chair of the Labour Party National Executive Committee 1960–1961	Succeeded by Harold Wilson
Preceded by Herbert Bowden	Lord President of the Council 1966–1968	Succeeded by Fred Peart
	Leader of the House of Commons 1966–1968
Preceded by: Kenneth Robinson Minister of Health	Secretary of State for Social Services 1968–1970	Followed by: Sir Keith Joseph
Preceded by: Judith Hart Minister of Social Security
Media Offices
Preceded by Paul Johnson	Editor of the New Statesman 1970–1972	Succeeded by Anthony Howard