planning for post-war operations, including the occupation of Germany, and for the mass demobilisation, ensuring it happened quickly and smoothly. He also served as one of Attlee's key allies in the Cabinet, particularly during early conflicts with Herbert Morrison. 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. In 1949, on Attlee's recommendation, the King appointed Jack Lawson as Lord Lieutenant of Durham. 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. Lords Lieutenant are unpaid, and Lawson, one of the first working-class men to hold such a position, received income support. He attended the House of Lords but did not take a front-bench position. Still a close friend of Attlee, he provided moral support during struggle to hold the Labour Party together during the 1950s. His protégé, Sam Watson, became General Secretary of the Durham Miners and one of the most influential trade unionists in the party. Lawson retired as Lord Lieutenant in 1958 and died in 1965, at the age of 83. His hereditary peerage became extinct on his death. The Lord Lawson of Beamish Community School is named in his honour. He was for years on friendly terms with the historian Sir Arthur Bryant, despite the latter's more right-wing outlook. Books John James Lawson (1944). A man's life. Hodder & Stoughton, 1944 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. Little of significance seems to have survived, however, from his periods of ministerial