by Bert Clough.
I have just written a monograph about the Burford Quaker, Socialist, and pacifist who championed access to the countryside. If any QSS member would like a copy (the price is only £5) then I will post it to them. Please write your name in the Comment box below and you’ll be contacted for your address.
“John Cripps was a leading member of Burford’s Quaker community. The son of Richard Stafford Cripps, Attlee’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, John became a close friend of Michael Foot when they were students at Oxford University. He also was a pivotal figure in championing the countryside, chairing the Countryside Commission. His great passions were to open the countryside to town dwellers and to improve the lot of rural workers.
Why did John Cripps choose Quakerism when his family were Anglicans? Was it not an irony that he was a conscientious objector when his father was minister for aircraft production in the war-time government? How did this self-effacing man help to open the countryside to town dwellers, against the vested interest of the landowners?
In this monograph, local historian and Quaker attender, Bert Clough also provides profiles of John Cripps’ illustrious family. They include his Christian Socialist father and mother, Sir Stafford and Dame Isobel, who did much to aid China and India. Other relatives discussed are John Cripps’s pacifist grandfather Lord Parmoor, who served in MacDonald’s first government, and his Christian Socialist sister, Peggy Appiah, who married a prominent Ghanian socialist.”
[Quaker Socialist, John Stafford Cripps (1912-93), was the son of the Cabinet Minister, Stafford Cripps. After taking a First in Greats at Balliol College, Oxford, he devoted most of his life to campaigning for countryside causes as editor of the influential Countryman magazine (1947-71). His grandmother by marriage, Marian Ellis, Lady Parmoor, worked with Ada Salter during the 1914 war, helping COs.]
Quaker Socialist Society 