ShortsBelfast
Well-known member
Came across William Courtenay Godolphin Shebbeare in my researches. A good short biography can be found online on Winchester College's WW2 Roll of Honour which is available online.
We often posit Evan Durbin as a lost hope of the Labour Party but what of this chap? His Communist Party membership would have been a disadvantage of course but it didn't stop Denis Healey. And quite the prewar record for a young man of 29, editor of Isis, President of the Oxford Union and leader writer for the Daily Herald. And Attlee knew him and would probably have offered him a junior Ministerial post. When Gaitskell died in 1963, Shebbeare would have been 47 and when Wilson stood down in 1976, he would have been 60. A possible prime minister or kingmaker?
We often posit Evan Durbin as a lost hope of the Labour Party but what of this chap? His Communist Party membership would have been a disadvantage of course but it didn't stop Denis Healey. And quite the prewar record for a young man of 29, editor of Isis, President of the Oxford Union and leader writer for the Daily Herald. And Attlee knew him and would probably have offered him a junior Ministerial post. When Gaitskell died in 1963, Shebbeare would have been 47 and when Wilson stood down in 1976, he would have been 60. A possible prime minister or kingmaker?