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Hartley Shawcross

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Person.png Hartley Shawcross   Amazon C-SPAN IMDB Powerbase WikiquoteRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(lawyer, politician)
Hartley William Shawcross, Baron Shawcross.png
In 1954
Born4 February 1902
Died10 July 2003 (Age 101)
NationalityUK
Alma materDulwich College, London School of Economics, University of Geneva
ChildrenWilliam Shawcross
Member ofEuropean Atlantic Group, The Other Club
PartyLabour Party, Social Democratic Party (UK)
Attorney General for England and Wales and Labour politician. Attended the 1967 Bilderberg meeting.

Employment.png President of the Board of Trade Wikipedia-icon.png

In office
24 April 1951 - 26 October 1951
Preceded byHarold Wilson

Employment.png Attorney General for England and Wales Wikipedia-icon.png

In office
4 August 1945 - 24 April 1951

Employment.png Member of Parliament for St Helens

In office
5 July 1945 - May 1958

Hartley William Shawcross, Baron Shawcross, known from 1945 to 1959 as Sir Hartley Shawcross, was an English barrister and Labour politician. He also was Attorney General for England and Wales and was lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal. He attended the 1967 Bilderberg meeting. By the 1980s, Shawcross was sympathetic towards Margaret Thatcher and the Social Democratic Party.[1]

Early life and education

Shawcross was born on 4 February 4 1902 at Giessen, Germany, where his father, the leading English authority on Goethe and [Schiller]], was Professor of English Literature.[2] Shawcross attended Dulwich College, the London School of Economics and the University of Geneva and read for the Bar at Gray's Inn.[3]

Career

During his initial career as a barrister, Shawcross was part of the legal team hired by the colliery owners at the inquiry into the Gresford Colliery disaster in 1934, Stafford Cripps in counterpart representing the miners' union.[4]

He joined the Labour Party and was Member of Parliament for St Helens, Lancashire, from 1945 until 1951.

Attorney General

He was knighted in 1945 upon his appointment as Attorney-General[5] and named Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at the Nuremberg trials.

As Attorney-General, he prosecuted William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") and John Amery for treason, Klaus Fuchs and Alan Nunn May for giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, and John George Haigh, 'the acid bath murderer'.[1]

During the committal hearing for the suspected serial killer doctor John Bodkin Adams in January 1957, he was seen dining with the defendant's suspected lover, Sir Roland Gwynne (Mayor of Eastbourne from 1929–31), and Lord Goddard, the Lord Chief Justice, at a hotel in Lewes.[6] The meeting added to concerns that the Adams trial was the subject of concerted judicial and political interference.

Later activities

In 1951, he replaced Harold Wilson as President of the Board of Trade after Wilson and the Bevanite members of the Cabinet resigned in protest of the introduction of prescription charges for the National Health Service by Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell.[7]

After an absence of more than ten years he resumed his practice at the Bar, and was soon reputed to be the highest-paid barrister in the country, where "millionaires jostled for his services."[8]

Shawcross resigned from Parliament in 1958, saying he was tired of party politics.

He became a director of Shell, and worked hard and travelled widely in the interests of that corporation.[8]

According to Seumas Milne, an approach from Shawcross in the early 1960s helped to secure funding for the Industrial Research and Information Service,[9] which formed 'cells' to combat communists in the trade unions.[10]

In 1961, he was appointed the chairman of the second Royal Commission on the Press. In 1967 he became one of the directors of The Times. He resigned on being appointed chairman of the Press Council in 1974.[11]

From 1974 to 1978, he was chairman of the Press Council and is described as "forthright in his condemnation both of journalists who committed excesses and of proprietors who profited from them" and as a "doughty defender of press freedom".[11] In October 1974, he poured scorn on a Labour Party pamphlet that recommended the application of "internal democracy" to editorial policy, saying "This means that... there would be some sort of committee consisting at the best of a mixture of van drivers, press operators, electricians and the rest, with no doubt a few journalists, but more probably composed of trade union officials, to deal with editorial policy."[11]

He was instrumental in the foundation of the University of Sussex and was chancellor of the university from 1965–85.

In 1957, he was among a group of British lawyers who founded JUSTICE, the human rights and law reform organisation and he became its first chairman, a position he held until 1972.[12]

Shawcross held a number of company directorships including with EMI, Rank Hovis MacDougall, Caffyns Motors Ltd, Morgan et Cie SA, and Times Newspapers, and chairman of Upjohn & Co Ltd. He was chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce's Commission on Unethical Practices and of Morgan Guaranty Trust Company's Internal Advisory Council.[13]


 

Event Participated in

EventStartEndLocation(s)Description
Bilderberg/196731 March 19672 April 1967St John's College (Cambridge)
UK
England
Possibly the only Bilderberg meeting held in a university college rather than a hotel (St. John's College, Cambridge)
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References

  1. Jump up to: a b https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fref%3Aodnb%2F92268
  2. Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  3. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 106th edition, Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1999, p. 2594
  4. http://www.dmm.org.uk/ukreport/5358-01.htm Section B of report.
  5. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/37243/page/4345
  6. Cullen, Pamela V. (2006). A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams. London, UK: Elliott & Thompson.
  7. http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-1-349-25305-0
  8. Jump up to: a b https://wp.fpp.co.uk/old-web/History/Nuremberg/Times110703.html
  9. Seumas Milne, The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, Verso, 2004, p.386.
  10. https://powerbase.info/index.php/The_Clandestine_Caucus#The_social_democratic_network
  11. Jump up to: a b c https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html
  12. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lord-shawcross-qpcv873fc02
  13. Mosley, Charles, ed. (1982). Debrett's Handbook 1982, Distinguished People in British Life. Debrett's Peerage Limited. p. 1405.