John Freeman (British politician)

During World War II, Freeman saw active service in the Middle East, North Africa, Italy and North West Europe. He enlisted in the Coldstream Guards, was commissioned in the Rifle Brigade in 1940[3] and served in Britain's 7th Armoured Division (the "Desert Rats"). Bernard Montgomery called him "my best brigade major".[4] He was appointed MBE in 1943.

After his return to Britain, he was selected as Labour candidate for Watford and was elected as a Member of Parliament in the 1945 election.

In September 1947, he was appointed Vice-President of the Army Council, the supreme administering body of the British Army.[5]

Originally, Freeman was on the Bevanite left-wing of the Party, although also supported by Hugh Dalton who liked to go 'talent-spotting' among young MPs. He rose quickly through the ministerial ranks, but resigned along with Aneurin Bevan and Harold Wilson in 1951 over National Health Service charges. He stood down as an MP at the 1955 general election.

Freeman became a presenter of Panorama and was editor of the New Statesman from 1961 to 1965. He also presented the BBC television interview programme, Face to Face.[6]

In 1962, he described Richard Nixon, then bidding to become Governor of California, as “a man of no principle whatsoever except a willingness to sacrifice everything in the cause of Dick Nixon”. Later in the pages of the New Statesman he portrayed Nixon[7] as "a discredited and outmoded purveyor of the irrational and inactive" whose 1964 defeat would be a "victory for decency."[4] In the event Nixon did not run for President in 1964, but instead supported Barry Goldwater, who lost easily.

While Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, Freeman was appointed the High Commissioner to India (1965–1968). He was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1966, and then Ambassador to the United States (1969–1971). During his time in Washington he became fast friends with Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and a staunch fan of the Washington Redskins.[4]

Freeman became Chairman of London Weekend Television Ltd in 1971, serving until his retirement in 1984. During this period, he wrote an article in 1981 which criticised what he saw as the heavy-handed, interventionist broadcasting policy of the British government expressed in the ethos of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and expressed views that would soon come to be closely associated with Margaret Thatcher and the deregulatory, laissez-faire new school of Conservative Party politics. He was director of several other companies in this period and President of ITN (1976–1981).

From 1985 to 1990, he was Visiting Professor of International Relations at the University of California, Davis. Freeman was elected an honorary fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1968.