James Chuter Ede

James Chuter Ede, Baron Chuter-Ede, (11 September 1882 – 11 November 1965) was a British teacher, trade unionist and Labour politician. He served as Home Secretary under Prime Minister Clement Attlee from 1945 to 1951, becoming the longest-serving Home Secretary of the 20th century.

Early life
Chuter Ede was born in Epsom, Surrey, the son of James Ede, a grocer of Unitarian religious convictions, and his wife Agnes Mary (née Chuter). He was educated at Epsom National School, Dorking High School for Boys, Battersea Pupil Teachers' Centre, and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied natural sciences. He then worked as a teacher, becoming an assistant master at a council elementary school in Mortlake (1905–1914).

During the First World War he served in the East Surrey Regiment and Royal Engineers, reaching the rank of Acting Regimental Sergeant Major. After the war he was active within the National Union of Teachers.

Political career
Initially a Liberal, he became a member in 1908 of Epsom Urban District Council and in 1914 of Surrey County Council. During World War I he moved to the Labour Party. He was charter mayor of Epsom and Ewell in 1937.

After fighting Epsom in 1918, he was first elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for Mitcham, at a by-election in March 1923. However, he lost the seat in December at the 1923 general election. He returned to Parliament at the 1929 general election, for the Tyneside seat of South Shields, but was defeated again at the 1931 election. He was re-elected at the 1935 general election, and held the seat until his retirement from the Commons at the 1964 general election.

In the wartime coalition he held junior ministerial office as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education. He was Home Secretary in the 1945 Labour government of Clement Attlee, and concurrently Leader of the House of Commons in 1951. He was closely involved in the drafting of the Butler Education Act and the Criminal Justice Act 1948, and established the Lynskey tribunal under Sir George Lynskey in 1948 to investigate allegation of corruption among ministers and civil servants. In 1964 he left the Commons and was created a life peer as Baron Chuter-Ede, of Epsom in the County of Surrey.

Capital punishment
In 1938, Chuter Ede voted for a motion in favour of abolishing the death penalty for murder. This did not result in any change in the law but, when he was Home Secretary, his own Criminal Justice Bill in 1948 was successfully amended by MPs who wished to abolish hanging. However, by this time Chuter Ede, in line with the policy of the Attlee Government, opposed the reform. For a while he agreed to commute every death sentence to life imprisonment, but the House of Lords then rejected the amendment, and the Criminal Justice Act 1948 did not abolish capital punishment. He permitted hangings to continue.

In 1950 Timothy Evans was convicted of murdering his own daughter, and Chuter Ede approved his death sentence. In 1953, after John Christie had been convicted and hanged for a murder committed in the same house (and it was clear he had committed several others), Chuter Ede eventually concluded that he had made the wrong decision in regard to Evans.

He took part in the campaign for a pardon for Evans, and ended his career supporting the cause of abolition. In November 1965, capital punishment for murder was abolished by the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, and Evans's body was transferred to consecrated ground, a few days before Chuter Ede's death. His campaign was described as "the last struggle of a liberal nonconformist of the old school".

Family
Chuter Ede married Lilian Mary, daughter of Richard Williams, in 1917. She died in 1948. Lord Chuter-Ede survived her by 17 years and died at Ewell, Surrey, in November 1965, aged 83. Chuter Ede Education Centre in South Shields is named after him. It was formerly a comprehensive school.