Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin

Who was Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin?

Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin CH, was a British Labour Party politician.

Silkin worked as a solicitor, before becoming a member of the London County Council in 1925. He chaired the LCC Town Planning and the Housing and Public Health Committees and was a member of the Central Housing Advisory Committee. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Peckham in 1936, and was a member of the Select Committee on National Expenditure. He was Minister of Town and Country Planning in the Government of Clement Attlee from 1945 until he retired in 1950.

Silkin was raised to the peerage as Baron Silkin, of Dulwich in the County of London, in 1950. He was further honoured in 1965 when he was made a Companion of Honour. Of his three sons, his eldest, Arthur, a civil servant, disclaimed the peerage. The other two, Samuel and John, both followed him into Parliament and became members of the Privy Council as well as Government Ministers. Although Samuel refused a knighthood as Attorney-General, he eventually became a life peer as Baron Silkin of Dulwich, of North Leigh in the County of Oxfordshire.