Early career Ramsbotham was elected
Member of Parliament (MP) for
Lancaster in 1929. In 1931 he was appointed
Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education by
Ramsay MacDonald, a post he retained when
Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister in June 1935, and then served as
Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries between November 1935 and July 1936. In September 1936 he was made
Minister of Pensions by Baldwin. He continued in this office when
Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister in May 1937. In June 1939 he was appointed
First Commissioner of Works and sworn of the
Privy Council.
President of the Board of Education Ramsbotham entered the Cabinet (but not the small inner
War Cabinet) in April 1940 as
President of the Board of Education. He remained in this office after
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940. In June 1940
Cardinal Arthur Hinsley, leader of the English Catholic Church, led a deputation to Ramsbotham to demand financial support for Catholic schools. Ramsbotham acknowledged that in principle the Catholic schools needed help but made no firm commitment, and stressed that greater state control over their schools, which the Catholic hierarchy did not want, would be the
quid pro quo. Ramsbotham spoke to the
Lancashire NUT in Morecambe (reported in
The Times on 17 March 1941). He wanted the school leaving age raised from 14 to 15, and thereafter to 16, as soon as possible, and day continuation classes up to the age of 18 (classes of this kind had been proposed in the
1918 Fisher Act and in subsequent reform proposals, but had not been implemented due to cost constraints - the same was true of the raising of the leaving age). All depended on how quickly schools could be repaired (both from war damage, and the previous poor state of many church schools), which would mean competing with housing for building priorities. Ramsbotham's department produced a set of proposals for reform, called "The Green Book" after its cover, in June 1941. The Green Book was supposedly confidential but was widely distributed among opinion formers, as Lester Smith put it, “in a blaze of secrecy”, and was later used as the basis for talks with
local education authorities (LEAs) and teaching unions. Paragraph 137 proposed compensating for greater state control of
church schools by partially lifting the
Elementary Education Act 1870's ban on denominational instruction in
state schools, to allow such teaching from the age of 11. Paradoxically this was not good enough for the churches, as the proposal for separate state schools from the age of 11 would
reduce their control over children aged 11–14, who up until that time had been educated in church schools.
R. A. Butler later wrote in his memoirs that the Green Book failed on the issue of denominational teaching in state schools. The Roman Catholic hierarchy rejected the Green Book out of hand. The Green Book was soon overshadowed by the Five Points, the Protestant Churches' proposals on Religious Education in state schools which had been issued in February. Although many of Ramsbotham's proposals would later be incorporated into Butler's
1944 Act, Churchill nursed memories of the controversy over the
1902 Act and did not favour major education reform at this stage. He used the March speech as an excuse to remove him – he was succeeded by Butler in July 1941 and sent to the House of Lords as a viscount.
Peerage In August Ramsbotham was raised to the peerage as
Baron Soulbury, of Soulbury in the County of Buckingham, and made Chairman of the
Assistance Board, a post he held until 1948. Chairman of the
Soulbury Commission 1944–45. Between 1949 and 1954 he served as
Governor-General of Ceylon. He was appointed a
GCMG in 1949 and a
GCVO on 20 April 1954. On 10 June of that year, he was further honoured when he was created
Viscount Soulbury, of Soulbury in the County of Buckingham. ==Family==