Evan Durbin

Evan Frank Mottram Durbin (1906-1948) was a British economist and left-wing politician, whose writings combined a belief in central economic planning with a conviction that the price mechanism of markets was indispensable.

The historian David Kynaston has described Durbin as 'the Labour Party's most interesting thinker of the 1940s and arguably of the twentieth century'.

Early life

Durbin was born in 1906, the son of a Baptist minister. He was educated at Plympton and Exmouth Elementary Schools; Heles School, Exeter; Taunton School; and New College, Oxford University. At Oxford he studied zoology, followed by PPE. In 1929, he was awarded a Ricardo scholarship to study economics at University College, London.

Economic career

In autumn 1930 he was appointed to a lectureship in economics at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he remained until 1940. Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Economics, London School of Economics, 1930-1945.

Political career

Politically, Durbin defined himself as a 'militant Moderate'.

He was Parliamentary candidate (Labour) for East Grinstead, 1931, and Gillingham, Kent, 1935; temporarily on Economic Section of War Cabinet Secretariat, 1940-1942; temporary Personal Assistant to Clement Attlee, Deputy Prime Minister, 1942-1945.

Durbin became Labour MP for Edmonton, 1945-1948 and Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Works, 1947-1948.

On September 2, 1948, Durbin was drowned while rescuing one of his daughters from the sea at Strangles Beach, south of Bude, on the coast of Cornwall.

Legacy

Writing in the Times after Durbin's death, Hugh Gaitskell paid tribute to Durbin's 'clarity of purpose' and 'well defined set of moral values and social ideals'. Gaitskell wrote that Durbin 'insisted in applying the process of reasoning unflinchingly and with complete intellectual integrity to all human problems' - including a consistent opposition to the dictatorship of Stalin, for 'he would not sentimentalize about tyranny, which seemed to him equally odious everywhere'.

Despite his early death, Durbin continued to an influence on Labour Party thinking throughout the 1950s, particularly for Gaitskell (who became party leader in 1955) and Labour revisionist Anthony Crosland.

Durbin was also an important influence on the founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. For the SDP, Durbin's writing provided a model for a successful fight against the left within the Labour Party.

January 25,1999. DURBIN-Elizabeth. The dean, faculty, students and alumni of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU mourn the sudden passing of our esteemed colleague. Professor Durbin received her B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University, and her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University, as well as numerous academic honors, including a Fulbright Travel Grant and President's Fellowship from Columbia University. In addition to serving with distinction at NYU, Professor Durbin served as visiting professor to the Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration, the University of Rome and Bocconi University in Milan. A social activist and a champion of the rights of women and minorities, she devoloped an innovative curriculum on the role of women in management in the public sector at the Wagner School, and served as a convenor of the Children and Families at Risk in the City project at the NYU Taub Urban Research Center. She wrote extensively on the issues of poverty and welfare, and the political struggles of the British Labour Party. Her most recent book, "New Jersualems: The Labour Party and the Economics of Democratic Socialism," chronicled the British Labour movement through the 1930s, and in the post-war era. Her late father, Evan Durbin, was a Labour Party Member of Parliament and one of the leaders of a group of Labour Party economists who helped design the party's platform that was carried out by the post-war Labour government.

Publications

* "Purchasing power and trade depression: a critique of under-consumption theories" (Jonathan Cape, London and Toronto, 1933)
* "Socialist credit policy" (Victor Gollancz, London, 1934)
* "The problem of credit policy" (Chapman and Hall, London, 1935)
* (Editor) "War and democracy: essays on the causes and prevention of war" (Kegan Paul and Co, London, 1938)
* "How to pay for the war" (G Routledge and Sons, London, 1939)
* "Personal aggressiveness and war" (Kegan Paul and Co, London, 1939)
* "The politics of democratic socialism" (G Routledge and Sons, London, 1940)
* "What have we to defend? A brief critical examination of the British social tradition" (G Routledge and Sons, London, 1942)
* "Problems of economic planning" (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1949)

References

* [http://www.answers.com/topic/evan-durbin Biography of Evan Durbin] from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
*"Times Guide to the House of Commons", 1945
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