Leslie Hale, Baron Hale

Hale was the son of Benjamin George Hale, a managing director.^[2] He went to the Ashby Grammar School and trained to be a solicitor in Leicester.^[3] Thereafter Hale practised first in his hometown Coalville, later in Nuneaton and finally in London.^[3]

Hale joined Leicestershire County Council in 1925, aged twenty-three.^[3] Four years later he contested Nottingham South unsuccessfully for the Liberal Party.^[4] Hale entered the British House of Commons as a Labour member in 1945, having been elected as one of the MPs in of the two-member constituency of Oldham.^[4] He represented this constituency until 1950, when it was abolished and split into two divisions.^[4] Hale was subsequently returned to Parliament for Oldham West, a seat he held for eighteen years until 1968,^[4] when he resigned for health reasons.^[5] On 24 April 1972, he was created a life peer with the title Baron Hale of Oldham.^[6]

Hale acted as the solicitor for the Spiritualists National Union, and spoke in Parliament for the repeal of the Witchcraft Act 1735 in favour of the Fraudulent Mediums Act.^[7]

In 1926 Hale married Dorothy Ann Latham; the couple had a son as well a daughter.^[2] He died in 1985.^[1]

• Thirty Who Were Tried; (1955)
• John Philpot Curran; (1958)
• Blood on the Scales; (1960)
• Hanged in Error; (1961)
• Hanging in the Balance; (1962)