In my way,

by George Brown

The political memoirs of Lord Baron George-Brown, PC (2 September 1914 – 2 June 1985), a British Labour politician, who served as the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1960 to 1970, and served in a number of positions in the Cabinet, most notably as Foreign Secretary, in the Labour Government of the 1960s. He was a leader of the right-wing element of the Labour Party, and an effective, if aggressive, election campaigner, but was ultimately unable to cope with the pressures of high office without excessive drinking. He was always known as 'George Brown' and for this reason he insisted on combining his first name and surname in his peerage title—so as to be familiarly referred to as 'Lord George-Brown'—which was created on 6 November 1970.

299 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Rupert Hague-Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book. Written in 1970, by a man thinking well ahead of his time, Lord George-Brown was a Labour politician known for his strong views and alleged heavy drinking. Volatile (he describes himself as “emotional”), George Brown was Foreign Secretary for a short period before resigning on point of principle over the way he felt Harold Wilson was acting as an “autocratic” Prime Minister. Although I have always been a Conservative supporter, I enjoyed this book as George Brown talks presciently about the USA pulling out of Europe and the importance of Britain being in the EU (then known as the “Common Market”). He was clearly an outspoken man, not shy of giving his views, and although he did not have a formal education, was also clearly possessed of high intellect. However, as with many highly intelligent people, he had his flaws - and a high consumption of alcohol was alleged to be one of them. The leading English satirical magazine “Private Eye” invented the term “tired and emotional” to describe some of Brown’s more outlandish behaviour, after imbibing alcohol.
His tenure as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was longer than his tenure as Foreign Secretary and his loyalty to the Labour Party and its ideals can’t be questioned.
Unfortunately there are very few English politicians around today like George Brown, and we are poorer for that.
A very readable account with prescient views of the future world, many of which have come to pass. His undoing as a politician was his battles with Harold Wilson, ones he was never to win, particularly over Wilson style of leadership, which Brown felt was autocratic and lacked subtlety. He stresses that on the night he resigned as Foreign Secretary he had not drink any alcohol and did not mount a rebel style insurrection against the PM’s decision (under American pressure) to announce a bank holiday the following day to stabilise the pound. His “gripe” was that Wilson had not consulted the Cabinet about the decision and that was the culmination of a number of decisions by Wilson where the Cabinet had not been consulted properly or at all.
Well worth a read.

[Harald · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author was a controversial and well-known Labour politician until he resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1968, but now mostly forgotten just as some of the causes he fought for. Yet, he is often a witty and insightful author of these memoirs published in 1970. His views on the role of Great Britain in Europe is particularly interesting and relevant with reference to Cameron's isolationist policies that Brown surely would have argued strongly against. At the back of the book is a copy of UN Security Council resolution 242 which is still the basis of the Great Powers' policy in the Middle East.

[Gramarye · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a personal memoir than a political memoir in this book by the late Labour politician. Quite old-fashioned compared to most of the tell-all memoirs that are published nowadays, and probably not of interest to non-historians -- more interesting, perhaps, to consider everything that the author chose to leave out rather than the content he included.