Marcus Lipton

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Marcus Lipton OBE (29 October 1900 – 22 February 1978) was a British Labour Party politician.

Lipton was educated at Bede Grammar School, Sunderland, and Merton College, Oxford with a scholarship. He studied law and was called to the Bar in 1926. He was a Corporal in the Royal Army Pay Corps Territorial Army and was commissioned into the Army Educational Corps in 1941, rising to Lieutenant-Colonel by the end of the Second World War.

Lipton ran a free advice surgery in Brixton, south London from 1933, and was elected to Stepney Borough Council in 1934; he became an alderman of Lambeth Council in 1937 serving until 1959. He was elected Member of Parliament for Brixton in the 1945 general election. In 1974, the seat became Lambeth Central.

Lipton used parliamentary privilege to question Prime Minister Anthony Eden about the alleged Third Man, Kim Philby. Philby used the press and the law to force Lipton to withdraw his comments, although Philby was subsequently unmasked as a Soviet spy.

In 1964 Lipton brought up the case of the missing Lionel Crabb, again using parliamentary privilege.

Lipton was still a Member of Parliament at his death in 1978. In the last years of his life, he had notably criticised pop/rock acts as diverse as the Sex Pistols and the Bay City Rollers. A youth centre in Lambeth is named after him.

[edit] References

• (1955) The Times House of Commons 1955. The Times. 
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Nigel Claudian Dalziel Colman	Member of Parliament for Brixton 1945–1974	Succeeded by (constituency abolished)
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Lambeth Central 1974–1978	Succeeded by John Tilley