Frank Wise (British politician)

rdf:langString Frank Wise (British politician)

rdf:langString New position

rdf:langString Member of Parliament for Leicester East

rdf:langString Midlands Division representative on the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party

rdf:langString Chairman of the Socialist League

rdf:langString Edward Frank Wise CB (3 July 1885 – 5 November 1933) was a British economist, civil servant and Labour Party politician. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1929 to 1931. As a civil servant at the National Insurance Commission, War Office and Ministry of Food and Board of Trade he was instrumental in introducing state control for the requisitioning of raw materials at the War Office and of prices and the meat trade at the Ministry of Food. Following the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, he was a Delegate to the Supreme Economic Council and led the negotiations for the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement 1920–21. He was an adviser to David Lloyd George at the Genoa Conference (1922). He controversially resigned from the UK Civil Service to become the Director of the Soviet Union's Trade Office Centrosoyuz in 1923. Wise was elected as an Independent Labour Party Member of Parliament for Leicester East at the May 1929 general election, but lost his seat at the subsequent general election in October 1931. He was a prominent member of the ILP but resigned when it disaffiliated from the Labour Party in 1932, becoming the first chairman of the Socialist League. He had a close relationship with Jennie Lee, which ended in 1933 with his sudden death at Wallington Hall, the home of Sir Charles Trevelyan.