Austen Albu

Austen Harry Albu (21 September 1903 – 23 November 1994)[1] was a British[2] Labour Member of Parliament for Edmonton for 25 years.

Austen Albu
Minister of State for Economic Affairs
In office
27 January 1965 – 7 January 1967
Prime MinisterHarold Wilson
Preceded byAnthony Crosland
Succeeded byThomas Urwin
Member of Parliament
for Edmonton
In office
13 November 1948 – 8 February 1974
Preceded byEvan Durbin
Succeeded byTed Graham
Personal details
Born21 September 1903
Died23 November 1994(1994-11-23) (aged 91)
NationalityBritish
Political partyLabour (until 1981)
SDP (1981-88)
SpouseMarie Jahoda

Personal life

Albu was born in London in 1903 to Ferdinand and Beatrice Albu. He was educated at Tonbridge School, Kent, and the City and Guilds College.[3]

He married his first wife, Rose Marks, in 1929. They had two sons before her death in 1956.[3] In 1958, he married the Anglo-Austrian social psychologist Marie Jahoda.[4]

Career

During the 1930s and early 1940s, Albu worked at Aladdin Industries in Greenford. In the later 1940s, he was Deputy President of the Governmental Sub-Commission of the British Control Commission in Germany during the Allied occupation following World War II, where he advocated the establishment of a centrally planned economy for the country, thus favouring the social democratic approach.[5] Returning to Britain in 1947, he was the Deputy Director of the British Institute of Management for a short period until his election to parliament.[3]

Albu first won his Edmonton seat at a by-election in 1948, and held it until his retirement at the February 1974 general election. From 1965 to 1967, he was the Minister of State for Economic Affairs. He later joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP).[6]

He was a Fellow of Imperial College of Science and Technology.[3] He was also a writer of several essays, the most cited being Socialism and the study of man. He is also attributed as one of the authors of New Fabian Essays (1952).[7]

References
  1. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "E" (part 1)
  2. William D. Rubinstein, Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein, The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History, Palgrave Macmillan (2011), p. 20
  3. "The Papers of Austen Albu". Churchill Archives Centre (ArchiveSearch). Archived from the original on 1 December 2020. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
  4. Haines, Catharine M. C.; Stevens, Helen M. (2001). International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-57607-090-1.
  5. Hook, James C. Van (2004). Rebuilding Germany: The Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945–1957. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 66. ISBN 0521833620.
  6. Ivor Martin Crewe, Anthony Stephen King (1995). SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party. Oxford University Press. p. 94. ISBN 9780198280507.
  7. Laidler, Harry W. (4 July 2013). History of Socialism: An Historical Comparative Study of Socialism, Communism, Utopia. Oxon: Routledge. p. 865. ISBN 978-1-136-23143-8.


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