Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour in the 1929 Labour government, but refused MacDonald's invitation to join the National Government following the split in 1931. The 1931 general election was disastrous for Labour, and Lawson was one of only two Durham Labour MPs to keep their seats, out of seventeen who won there in the 1929 election. During the 1930s, Lawson supplemented his income as an MP by writing. He published his autobiography, A Man's Life, in 1932, intended as a record of the family life of miners. He followed this with a novel about miners, Under the Wheels, and biographies of Peter Lee and Herbert Smith. He also wrote for newspapers and periodicals. Elder Statesman When Attlee became leader of the Labour Party in 1935, he created a new Defence Committee for the party, appointing Lawson along with A. V. Alexander and Manny Shinwell. In April 1936, Lawson wrote a column in the Sunday Sun criticising the National Government's policy of appeasement: Entitled "Watch Winston", it predicted the government's policy of appeasement would result in war, and that Winston Churchill, at that time a marginal figure, would return to become Prime Minister. 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. Lawson later refused the offer of a position in government to continue his work in civil defence. His third daughter, Alma, was a gunner in the ATS; his son Clive, born in 1932, was killed by a bomb in 1942. 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. However, he was very popular with soldiers, who were glad that one of their own was now in the War Office. Lawson oversaw