Richard Law, 1st Baron Coleraine

Who was Richard Law, 1st Baron Coleraine?

Richard Kidston Law, 1st Baron Coleraine PC was a British Conservative politician. He was the youngest son of former Conservative Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law and his wife Annie. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St. John's College, Oxford.

He was elected as Member of Parliament for Hull South West in the 1931 general election and held that seat until 1945. In 1940 he was appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office and was then transferred to the job of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs until 1943. He was then Minister of State until 1945, when in Churchill's caretaker government he was Minister of Education. In November 1945 became the MP for Kensington South, which he held until February 1950.

In 1950 he published Return from Utopia, which stated his belief that trying to use the power of the state to create any sort of Utopia on earth is not just unattainable but positively evil because one of the first principles to be sacrificed is the principle of freedom and individual choice. In the book Law argued:

To turn our backs on Utopia, to see it for the sham and the delusion that it is, is the beginning of hope.