His father John Lawson was a sailor and miner who had begun working in a colliery by the age of nine, sailed round the world by eleven, and later served in the Royal Naval Reserve.

He began attending union meetings, including the annual Durham Miners' Gala, where in later years he met the likes of Will Crooks, Ellen Wilkinson, Ernest Bevin and George Lansbury.

With five members of the family now working at the colliery, the Lawsons had a higher status and moved into a house closer to the pit, with a front room.

He discovered a socialist bookshop in Newcastle, where he met many like-minded people, and read books on economics and society, including those of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin.

In 1905 Lawson became an active speaker for the ILP, expounding socialism and the Labour Representation Committee to the miners of Durham, who had traditionally supported the Liberal Party.

This was a significant expense that would be compounded by living costs, and as Lawson was determined that he would only ever work as a miner there was no obvious advantage to university study.

Canon William Moore Ede, a county councillor and later Dean of Worcester, convinced him to go and helped raise some of the fees; Lawson and his wife sold their furniture and saved what they could, and the rest was paid by his parents.

Whilst campaigning in the general election in December, Lawson was asked by friends in Chester-le-Street to stand for the position of checkweighman at Alma Colliery.

Elected and paid by hewers, as a checkweighman he would be responsible for ensuring miners received the full amount due for the coal they dug and would act as their legal representative.

Jack Lawson followed his example, volunteering for service; experienced with horses, he was assigned as a driver with the Royal Field Artillery, serving in France.

Returning to work at Alma Colliery and as a county councillor, he started to have health problems and was sick during the council elections the following year.

In April 1939, during the build-up to the Second World War, Sir John Anderson, the Home Secretary, appointed Lawson as Deputy Commissioner for Civil Defence in the Northern Region.

This region covered Durham, Northumberland and the North Riding; Lawson oversaw preparations for aerial bombardment and possible invasion, and the organisation of shelter and relief when bombing began.

[4] With Labour's victory in the general election of July 1945, Lawson was appointed Secretary of State for War, with a seat in Attlee's Cabinet.

During the closing months of the war, he travelled thousands of miles, visiting troops in India and the Far East, and speaking at military functions and mass meetings.

His refusal to stick to the scheduled, whitewashed routes on official visits, insistence on seeing everything for himself, and willingness to stop and listen to everyone he met, made him unpopular with senior officers.

Lawson oversaw planning for post-war operations, including the occupation of Germany, and for the mass demobilisation, ensuring it happened quickly and smoothly.

However, from the summer of 1946, Lawson found his job increasingly difficult: he suffered severe health problems and had to go into hospital, retiring from the front bench in October.

Alan Brooke the wartime Army CIGS found Lawson charming and a religious man of high principles; but he had not the faintest idea of what his job required, and did not read papers sent to him.

He resigned from parliament in December 1949 on appointment as vice-chairman of the National Parks Commission, he was made a hereditary peer as Baron Lawson, of Beamish in the County of Durham, in March 1950.

[citation needed] His personal papers, including correspondace political, official, and personal, including a file of constituency correspondence for 1926–7, appointments diaries, journals, accounts and recollections by Lawson of politicians, politics, and travels abroad on official missions, fragments of an autobiography continuing A man's life, drafts of publications, speeches, broadcasts, sermon notes, cuttings and photographs - are held at the Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections.

Related collections also can be found at Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College, London: Bryant Papers D/4, letters from Jack Lawson, early 1940s.