Geoffrey Garratt
Geoffrey Theodore Garratt was a British farmer, journalist and political activist.
Born in Oxfordshire, Garratt was educated at Rugby School and then attended Hertford College, Oxford. In 1912, he joined the Indian Civil Service, based in Bombay. He was placed in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers in 1915, and from 1916 was on active service with the 21st Cavalry, taking part in the Mesopotamian campaign.
After the end of World War I, Garratt returned to the civil service, but he resigned in 1922, unhappy about the amount of money being spent on prestigious projects while poverty was widespread in the country. He found work as the Berlin correspondent of the Westminster Gazette.
Garratt returned to the UK in 1923, settling in Cambridgeshire. There, he took up farming, and also became politically active. He joined the Independent Labour Party, and stood unsuccessfully for the Labour Party in Cambridgeshire at the 1924, 1929 and 1931 United Kingdom general elections, and then The Wrekin at the 1935 United Kingdom general election, and in the 1937 Plymouth Drake by-election. In 1925, he was elected to Cambridgeshire County Council. Although his farming was largely a hobby, he has been described as "almost... the party's official spokesman to the farming community".
In the 1930s, Garratt worked for the Manchester Guardian, covering Indian nationalism, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, and the Winter War. Based on his experiences, he wrote Mussolini's Roman Empire, and also edited The Legacy of India.
During World War II, Garratt was placed in charge of a group of German volunteers doing war work for the British government. In April 1942, Stafford Cripps asked for him to visit him, in London; en route, Garratt was killed in a bomb explosion.
