John Richard Anthony Oldfield

Who was John Richard Anthony Oldfield?

John "Jack" Richard Anthony Oldfield, was a British landowner and politician.

The son of Major H E Oldfield of the Royal Field Artillery, his father was killed in action two days before his first birthday during the Second Anglo-Boer War. With his widowed mother he moved home many times, spending much time at Doddington Place Gardens, Kent, which had been purchased by his grandfather and aunt in 1906.

Educated at Eton College, Oldfield was commissioned as an officer in the Grenadier Guards in the latter stages of the First World War. In 1920 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. He also took an interest in social matters, and began voluntary work at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London and joined the Labour Party in the early 1920s.

At the 1929 general election he was elected as member of parliament for South East Essex. With the formation of the Second Labour Government he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Thomson. Thomson was killed when the R101 airship crashed on its maiden voyage in October 1930, and Oldfield returned to the backbenches.