text: Later political life A senior figure in the party, and a member of the Shadow Cabinet, Jowitt was careful to keep the Labour peers out of the conflict between the Bevanites and Gaitskellites in the early 1950s. The opposition to the Conservative government in the Lords was meagre but sometimes successfully rallied support from government backbenchers.
  In 1955, for instance, Jowitt led a successful rebellion in the Lords over a government bill to criminalise the medical use of marijuana. Jowitt was a prominent spokesperson against human rights abuses during the suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, teaming up with the Archbishop of Canterbury to launch a review of the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Colonel Arthur Young as Commissioner of Police in the colony. He stood down as leader in November 1955, at the age of 70.
  Family
  Jowitt married Lesley McIntyre, a daughter of James Patrick McIntyre, in 1913. He died at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in August 1957, aged 72. His peerages did not survive his death, as he had no male heirs.
  Publications
  Jowitt wrote two books on espionage and compiled a legal dictionary, which was published posthumously in 1959, completed by Clifford Walsh, and became a standard reference work. It remains in print as Jowitt's Dictionary of English Law.
  The Strange Case of Alger Hiss (1953. London: Hodder & Stoughton)
  Some Were Spies (1954. London: Hodder & Stoughton)
  Dictionary of English Law (1959. London: Sweet & Maxwell)