Leslie Plummer was in charge of the Overseas Food Corporation during the disastrous Tanganyika groundnut scheme in the late 1940s; later he became a Labour Party Member of Parliament where he pioneered attempts to outlaw racial discrimination.
27 Facts About Leslie Plummer
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Leslie Plummer was educated at Tottenham Grammar School in North London, and first worked on the managerial staff of the Daily Herald from 1919.
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Leslie Plummer was selected as Labour Party candidate for Birmingham Edgbaston in the mid-1920s but gave up the candidacy in May 1927.
4.
Leslie Plummer left the New Leader to set up The Miner, a journal for the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, in 1926.
5.
Leslie Plummer became an executive of the Daily Express group, and was a Director by 1941.
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Leslie Plummer prospered at the Daily Express group despite disagreeing on politics with the proprietor Lord Beaverbrook because of his own skill as an administrator and Beaverbrook's known liking for talent-spotting among left-wingers.
7.
Leslie Plummer left the Daily Express when he was named by John Strachey as chairman-designate of the Overseas Food Corporation at the end of 1947.
8.
The scheme was well advanced by the time Leslie Plummer moved in, but he was an enthusiastic supporter.
9.
Wakefield offered to resign only if Leslie Plummer did so as well; this was unacceptable to Strachey and Wakefield was dismissed.
10.
Leslie Plummer was criticised in an editorial in The Times for "failing to restore confidence in the higher conduct of the scheme".
11.
Leslie Plummer's appointment was called into question by Alan Lennox-Boyd because Strachey had been an old colleague of his in the Independent Labour Party.
12.
The next month, Leslie Plummer was criticised by the Conservatives for giving a contract for air transport to the nationalised British Overseas Airways Corporation rather than two private airlines which had submitted lower tenders, one of whom subsequently went out of business.
13.
In March 1950, in the House of Commons John Boyd-Carpenter asked the Minister of Food to make a statement about attempts made by Leslie Plummer to stop the publication of the book.
14.
Leslie Plummer announced his resignation in May 1950, with the new Minister of Food Maurice Webb explaining that the role of the Overseas Food Corporation had changed fundamentally in practice compared with the basis on which Leslie Plummer had accepted it.
15.
In 1951 Leslie Plummer was adopted as Labour Party candidate for Deptford.
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Leslie Plummer responded by saying that all his money was invested in a 900-acre farm in Essex and that although he despised the capitalist system, he had been "extremely fortunate under it and benefited from it".
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Leslie Plummer won the seat easily in the general election.
18.
Leslie Plummer made an early mark by proposing to make illegal the defamation of any body of persons, including a race.
19.
Leslie Plummer was critical of the policies of the Churchill government in Kenya where he felt the Mau Mau Uprising was rooted in poverty and Kikuyu prisoners were mistreated.
20.
Leslie Plummer firmly opposed commercial television, distrusting the motives of advertisers.
21.
Leslie Plummer claimed television companies would be tempted to use "the cheap stuff from America".
22.
Leslie Plummer introduced the Racial Discrimination Bill in 1957, aiming to make discrimination on racial grounds illegal; the Bill was talked out by Conservative MP Ronald Bell.
23.
Leslie Plummer accused the National Labour Party, a far right-wing group, of being behind a rise of antisemitism in London.
24.
Leslie Plummer was elected Vice-Chairman of the Parliamentary group on this subject in March 1961.
25.
Leslie Plummer was forced to apologise to Sir Robert Grimston, a Deputy Speaker, when he wrongly accused him of joining a pressure group for commercial radio.
26.
Leslie Plummer often took up issues of human rights abuses in Spain.
27.
On 15 April 1963, Leslie Plummer died suddenly in New York City, where he had gone for a lecture tour.