Wilfrid Vernon

Major Wilfrid Foulston Vernon (1882 – 1 December 1975) was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) between 1945 and 1951.

Educated in the Stationers' Company's School and the City and Guilds Technical College in London, Vernon served in the RNVR during the First World War, before becoming a squadron major in the RNAS and was a major in the RAF in its early days.

During 1918 he worked in the flying boat section at Felixstowe air base and after the war became chief draughtsman for the British Aeroplane Company. From 1925 to 1937 he worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, from which he was dismissed for failing to take proper care of classified information.

During the Second World War he was involved in the foundation of the Osterley Park Home Guard School and worked as a lecturer in the War Office Home Guard School in Dorking and later became a WEA tutor.

He was elected MP for Dulwich in the 1945 general election, but lost the seat in the 1951 election. He later served as a member of the London County Council and as a councillor in Camberwell.

In January 1948 Vernon gave a speech on China in the House of Commons denouncing Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government and endorsing Mao Zedong's Communists. Vernon claimed that "the Chinese government are running one of the most ruthless and cruel police states in existence," and called for Britain to adopt "a policy of friendship and trade with the liberated areas" under Communist control.^[1]

He married in 1907 and again after the death of his first wife, in 1918. His second wife died in 1972. They had two children. He died in Bristol at the age of 93.

References

• Obituary, The Times, 3 December 1975
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

1. David C. Wolf, "To Secure a Convenience': Britain Recognizes China - 1950" Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 18, No. 2 (April 1983), p. 302

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Wilfrid Vernon