Letters of Antony Lytton - Chapter IX

 

Declaration of Antony Lytton as MP - outside Hitchin Town Hall

Knebworth House Archives

In the spring of 1927, at the age of 24, Antony’s chief pre-occupation was to find employment.  He recognised the need to make money, but had no taste for the kind of life which money making necessitated.  He loved the active, outdoor life, and insisted he had no capacity for business. His first job in a stockbroker’s office was quite distasteful to him – using his position to influence friends to place orders.  After 3 months he left to join the Education Department in Conservative Central Office.  He wrote home

“I have a palatial office here-I am hampered by the one & only existing report on political activity in the Universities (1925) telling of an almost universal apathy towards politics.  My sympathy being altogether with the apathetic undergraduates, I am startling the Central office by suggesting that they are better got at through beer and football than by Conservative Associations.  I horrified my chief’s Private Secretary by saying the day of my arrival that the University apathy to politics seemed to me a really healthy sign!  He said that he knew he was a fanatic, but he believed that every individual in England should think about & care for nothing else.  I told him he needed a long holiday!  On the whole I’m afraid that I haven’t started too well”

The following year, 1928, his father then suggested he stand for Parliament, making politics his profession.  Antony wrote back

“I feel not sure about it yet, and so want to leave it until after the next Election.  It would mean £50 a year less than I get now, but the point is that I want to write.  I am going to start trying as soon as I am settled in London, and I don’t want definitely to association myself with any party until I know more.  If I wrote under my own name as a Conservative MP, I should have to write the kind of stuff I would be supposed to believe in. I am not sure about it yet, and don’t want to link up irrevocably with the party until I see how the writing goes.

I’m quite happy at this job, which isn’t too dull, is quite well paid, and I think a good political training-ground.  I want to do it for a year, try my hand at writing, and if that is a success, plant for it altogether, as it is what amuses me.  If it is a failure, well, I am no worse off, and anyway I should have to chuck this job if I was going to stand.”

 During the year, Antony moved to a flat in London, accompanied his father on a visit to the League of Nations in Geneva, and then at the end of that year, lost his job.  He accepted an invitation to stand for election in the Labour stronghold of Shoreditch, losing the election but gaining some experience of life in a poor London district

 “On Monday I dine with Lord Curzon and he is to take me down to the constituency.  I suppose they want to vet me before they settle on buying me definitely.  If I am passed as sound, I imagine there will be a certain amount of work to be done in the next month or so, and now that it looks so near I funk it!”

The chief event of 1929 was his sister Hermione’s engagement to Mr Cameron Cobbold, and then the wedding which took place the following April 1930 in Knebworth.  Later, in June 1930, Antony wrote to his sister

 “From now on I expect England to be at its best and loveliest, and the countryside at its most inviting.  There will be good summer scents, the hum of bees and the noise of the mowing machine.  Everything will grow so big that it seems strange and mysterious, and a little field will become a forest, and every green lane an adventure.  Then later on there will be the smell of hay everywhere in the air, and there will be lots of strawberries and cherries and peaches.  And all the time the sun will beat down remorselessly.  It is a pity that you aren’t still here.  But I have a strong feeling that everything is moving on and moving fast.  It is not long now and there won’t be a ‘here’ at all.  I feel everything has changed and is changing and I don’t like it, but I think I always expected it”

In 1931, Antony was finally elected to parliament, as Member for Hitchin.  He also joined the Auxiliary Air Force and started to train as a pilot with the 601 Squadron at Hendon.   He wrote to his naturally anxious mother

 “You musn’t really mind my doing this for two reasons (a) because it will take an edge off my delight and (b) because you wouldn’t really have it otherwise, for if you only bred sons who stayed at home and gardened you wouldn’t like that.  Incidentally, it isn’t any more dangerous than boxing and is good fun and excellent training, and supplies the two missing things in my life – a recreation which I enjoy and a kind of society which I love!”

Later that year Britain came off the Gold Standard, Parliament was dissolved and in October Antony was returned as a national Conservative MP with a majority of 17,000.  His party had a huge majority, largely composed on young men, there for the first time.  But he was now definitely and successfully launched on a political career.