Difference between revisions of "Hartley Shawcross"

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[[Hartley Shawcross]] was an MP and member of the House of Lords (he was knighted in 1945, and appointed GBE in 1974), but 'it was his performance as Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at the Nuremberg war crimes trial that was to be his greatest claim to fame.' He entered the Commons in 1945 and became Attorney-General in the Labour government of [[Clement Attlee]].  
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'''William Hartley Shawcross''' was an MP and member of the House of Lords (he was knighted in 1945, and appointed GBE in 1974), but was best known as the chief British prosecutor at Nuremberg. He entered the Commons in 1945 and became Attorney-General in the Labour government of [[Clement Attlee]]. His later move to the political right earned him the soubriquet 'Sir Shortly Floorcross'.
  
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==Nuremberg==
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==Early life and education==
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Shawcross made his name at the Nuremberg tribunal. The ''Telegraph'' obituary reported:
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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. He was educated at Dulwich College and Geneva University.<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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:Hartley Shawcross's five-hour opening speech at Nuremberg set out the legal justification for the proceedings. He showed that the Tribunal, far from being an instrument of vengeance set up by the victors, was administering rules of international law which had been established before the war, with the full concurrence of Germany. The writer Rebecca West described his final address as "full of living pity, which gave the men in the box their worst hour". Even the accused admired his intellectual grasp.
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==Early career==
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Shawcross developed an early interest in the Labour Party, becoming ward secretary of the party in Central Wandsworth at 16. He entered the legal profession after advice from [[Herbert Morrison]] that it was the best training for politics. Although he won first place in the bar examinations, he initially struggled to win briefs until 1927, when he took up a part-time lectureship at Liverpool University, and began to build up what became the leading practice on the Northern Circuit with [[David Maxwell Fyfe]].<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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:In 1974 Shawcross spoke on television about the men he had prosecuted at Nuremberg. Most of the defendants, he remembered, were the sort of people you would see on the Clapham omnibus, except for Hess and Ribbentrop, who looked rather more miserable.
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Shawcross became a King's Counsel in 1939, and was elected a Bencher of Gray's Inn.<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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:But Goering, Shawcross recalled, was quite different, a formidable personality and "agreeable" to boot. Taken off the bottle and drugs by his captors, he proved a formidable adversary, capable of running rings round Robert Jackson, the American prosecutor - though David Maxwell Fyfe somewhat redeemed the situation. Shawcross remembered how he had to be careful not to catch Goering's eye when he ran into difficulties. The former Reichsmarschall would "raise his eyebrow and shake his head in a rather smiling way, and it would be very difficult not to smile back".
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Shawcross joined the Emergency Reserve of Officers in 1938, but was subsequently rejected due to an old spinal injury. In 1939 he was appointed chairman of an Enemy Aliens Tribunal, and posted to Hampstead.<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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:Shawcross's success in obtaining convictions at Nuremberg was achieved despite his objection to capital punishment - a principle which can only have been enhanced by the inept performance of the American hangman: Ribbentrop was left flailing in the air for 20 minutes.
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In 1941, he became Recorder of Salford, the youngest Recorder ever appointed, holding the position until 1945. From 1940, however, Shawcross concentrated on government service, becoming Regional Commissioner for the North-Western Region from 1942 to 1945, and chairman of the Catering Wages Commission from 1943 to 1945. In 1946 he was appointed Recorder of Kingston upon Thames, a position he held until 1961.<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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:Nevertheless, Albert Speer was convinced by Shawcross's claim that he did not deserve to live. "I knew that the Russians would demand the death sentence for me," Speer remembered, "and after Shawcross's speech I thought they were right. How could we - just we - be allowed to remain alive after that?" Subsequently, Shawcross wanted to build on the precedent of Nuremberg and establish a permanent international tribunal to try war crimes. But when the question of prosecuting Second World War criminals was raised again in 1990, Shawcross stoutly resisted it as an act which would constitute an "indelible blot upon every principle of British law and justice". War crimes, he observed, were not confined to the enemy.<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
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==Member of Parliament==
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===Attorney-General===
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Shawcross was appointed Attorney-General in the [[Clement Attlee|Attlee]] government on 4 August 1945.<ref name="Butler23">David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts 1900-2000, Macmillan, 2000, p.23.</ref>
  
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==Career==
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Shawcross made his name at the Nuremberg Tribunal.  The ''Telegraph'' obituary reported:
  
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Very early in life he developed Labour sympathies, and at 16 he was acting as ward secretary for Labour in the Central Wandsworth constituency. Originally intending to become a doctor, he changed course after Herbert Morrison told him that the Bar was the best training for a fledgling politician.
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:Hartley Shawcross's five-hour opening speech at Nuremberg set out the legal justification for the proceedings. He showed that the Tribunal, far from being an instrument of vengeance set up by the victors, was administering rules of international law which had been established before the war, with the full concurrence of Germany. The writer Rebecca West described his final address as "full of living pity, which gave the men in the box their worst hour". Even the accused admired his intellectual grasp.<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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Though he achieved first place in the Bar final examinations, Shawcross found briefs hard to come by during his first three years in London. Relief came in 1927 in the form of a part-time lectureship at Liverpool University, which he doubled with a practice on the northern circuit.
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After [[Gustav Krupp von Bohlen]] was judged too ill to stand trial, Shawcross opposed indicting his son [[Alfried Krupp von Bohlen|Alfried]], arguing that a trial was "not a football match in which we could field a substitute." The younger Krupp was later indicted and served five years for war crimes.<ref>Paul Routledge, ''Public Servant, Secret Agent: The Elusive Life and Violent death of Airey Neave'', ''Fourth Estate'', 2003, p.165.</ref>
  
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Joining another future Attorney-General, [[David Maxwell Fyfe]], in Liverpool chambers, Shawcross built up the leading junior practice on the Northern circuit, gaining experience across the whole gamut of advocacy, from motor accidents to murder.
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Writers [[John Loftus]] and [[Mark Aarons]] have claimed that a friendship with Shawcross allowed [[Hermann Abs]] to escape prosecution after the war. The also charge that war crimes prosecutions petered out for lacking of funding during his tenure.<ref>John Loftus and Mark Aarons, ''The Secret War Against the Jews'', 1994, St Martin's Press, p.67.</ref>
  
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Sober and meticulous in court, Shawcross gave hints of a repressed theatrical sense: on Saturday mornings, accompanied by a vast St Bernard, he would appear in his Liverpool chambers dressed in canary pullover, light brown tweeds and - then a startling novelty - suede shoes. He also owned a Railton coupe of great speed, and an eight-metre yacht at his house in Cornwall. In 1939 he took Silk and was elected a Bencher of Gray's Inn.
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Shawcross later argued that prosecutions had been suspended in 1948, because of attacks on British troops by the Jewish underground in Mandate Palestine, stating:
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::"In the atmosphere of those days it would have been impossible to continue war-crimes trials, wherever the criminals happened to be."<ref>Glenn Frankel, [http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1990_707985/house-of-lords-stirs-debate-in-defeating-bill-to-t.html House of Lords stirs debate in defeating bill to try Nazis], ''Wahington Post'', 6 June 1990, archived at www.chron.com.</ref>
  
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Shawcross had enrolled on the Emergency Reserve of Officers in 1938, but was subsequently rejected due to an old spinal injury. In 1939 he was appointed chairman of an [[Enemy Aliens Tribunal]], and posted to Hampstead.
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After Nuremburg, Shawcross went on to become the principal British representative at the United Nations.<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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From 1941 to 1945 he was Recorder of Salford, the youngest Recorder ever appointed. From 1940, though, Shawcross abandoned his practice for government service.
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Shawcross was not always sure-footed in purely political matters.  The Conservatives charged him with having used the phrase "We are the masters now", in a speech during the Third Reading of a Bill of 1946. he claimed to have said "We are the masters at the moment", but acknowledged the episode as a slip.<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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He became Regional Commissioner for the North-Western Region from 1942 to 1945, and chairman of the Catering Wages Commission from 1943 to 1945. In 1946 he was appointed Recorder of Kingston upon Thames in 1946 (remaining until 1961).
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Shawcross led the prosecution in a number of other famous trials including those of the wartime traitor [[William Joyce]] and atomic spy [[Klaus Fuchs]].<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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After his appointment as Attorney-General, Shawcross led for the prosecution at several famous trials - notably those of [[William Joyce]] ("Lord Haw-Haw") for high treason, of John George Haigh for the murder of Mrs Olive Durand-Deacon, and of [[Klaus Fuchs]] for betraying secrets on atomic research to Russian agents. Shawcross had some hopes of succeeding [[Lord Goddard]] as Lord Chief Justice, but Goddard stayed so long in the office that they remained unfulfilled.
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In 1948, his investigation of bribery at the Board of Trade, then headed by [[Harold Wilson]] led to the resignation of Parliamentary Secretary [[John Belcher]].<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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As chairman of the Bar Council from 1952 to 1957, Shawcross was prominently involved when the Council came under pressure in 1957 for the use that had been made of information obtained by "tapping" telephone conversations. Shawcross was criticised for having passed on the content of these conversations to the Council, but argued that he had the authority of the [[Home Office]] for doing so; the motion against him was withdrawn.
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===Board of Trade===
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Shawcross was appointed President of the Board of Trade on 24 April 1951, following the resignation of his predecessor, [[Harold Wilson]].<ref name="Butler23">David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts 1900-2000, Macmillan, 2000, p.23.</ref><ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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In 1959 he was appointed an independent member of the Monckton Advisory Commission in Central Africa. The Prime Minister, [[Harold Macmillan]], had promised Sir [[Roy Welensky]] that the commission should exclude the possibility of secession from the Central African Federation, but he was able to enlist Shawcross as the lone Labour member only by agreeing in private that secession would not be excluded. As it turned out, ill-health forced Shawcross to resign after only a few months.
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===Opposition===
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Shawcross was prominent among members of the Labour Shadow Cabinet who threatened to resign in March 1955, if the parliamentary party did not back the expulsion of [[Aneurin Bevan]].<ref>Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, ''Smear! Wilson and the Secret State'', Fourth Estate Limited, 1991, p.14 .</ref>
  
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His chairmanship of the [[Royal Commission on the Press]] in 1961 and 1962 reflected his concern for the standards of journalism. In 1967 he became one of the directors of The Times responsible for ensuring its editorial independence, but he resigned on being appointed chairman of the [[Press Council]] in 1974.
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===Bar Council===
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Shawcross served as chair of the Bar Council from 1952 to 1957. He came under pressure in 1957, for passing on the contents of tapped phone conversations to the Council in an epsisode known as the Marrinan case, but escaped censure because he did so with the authority of the [[Home Office]].<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref><ref>[http://www.fipr.org/rip/Birkett.htm Report of the Committee of Privy Councillors appointed to inquire into the interception of communications], 1957, archived at the Foundation for Information Policy Research.</ref>
  
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In this office, which he held for four years, Shawcross was forthright in his condemnation both of journalists who committed excesses and of proprietors who profited from them. He also proved a doughty defender of press freedom. In October 1974 he poured scorn on a [[Labour Party]] pamphlet that recommended the application of "internal democracy" to editorial policy.
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==Later career==
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===Peerage===
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Shawcross resigned as an MP in 1958 and was made a life peer the following year, sitting as a crossbencher, a move which reflected his disillusionment with party politics.<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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"This means," he stated, "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."
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===Abs-Shawcroft Draft Convention===
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From 1958, Shawcross, then a director with [[Shell Petroleum]] worked with [[Hermann Abs]] of [[Deutsche Bank]] to develop a draft convention on foreign investments.<ref>Jan Ole Voss, The Impact of Investment Treaties on Contracts between Host States and Foreign Investors, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010, p.225.</ref>
  
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In a foreword to a report by Justice, the all-party lawyers' group, he called for a new Bill of Rights - "a new Magna Carta for the Little Man" - to ensure his right not to be pushed around by government officials.
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===Monckton Commission===
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Shawcross was appointed an independent member of the Monckton Advisory Commission in Central Africa in 1959, but had to resign after a few months due to ill health.<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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From 1969 to 1980 Shawcross was chairman of the [[Panel on Take-Overs and Mergers]]. His puritanical nature was outraged by the activities of the City slickers, and he expressed frustration that his powers did not always allow him to bring the "evil-doers" to account.
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===IRIS===
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According to Seumas Milne, an approach from Shawcross in the early 1960s helped to secure funding for the [[Industrial Research and Information Service]].<ref>Seumas Milne, The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, Verso, 2004, p.386.</ref>
  
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Shawcross observed that those of his friends who retired tended to feature in the obituaries columns shortly afterwards, and he succeeded in postponing that accolade by accepting a multitude of appointments. By his own reckoning "a bit of a hypochondriac", he was chairman of the Medical Research Council from 1961 to 1965, and an honorary fellow of the [[Royal College of Surgeons]]. In 1965 he joined [[Morgan Guaranty Trust]], serving as chairman of its International Advisory Council from 1967 to 1974, and afterwards as a special adviser.
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===Media regulator===
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Shawcross chaired a Royal Commission on the Press in 1961-2. From 1967 to 1974, he was a director of ''[[The Times]]''. From 1974 to 1978, he was chairman of the [[Press Council]].<ref name="TelgraphObit">[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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Shawcross was Chancellor of [[Sussex University]] from 1965 to 1985, and chairman of the Board of Governors of [[Dulwich College]]. He was president of the [[British Hotels' and Restaurants' Association]] (1959 to 1971), and chairman of [[Thames Television]] (1969 to 1974).
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===Wilson rumours===
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During the period around 1968, [[Harold Wilson]] believed that Shawcross was maneuvering alongside [[Cecil King]] and [[Lord Robens]] for a coalition government.<ref>Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, ''Smear! Wilson and the Secret State'', Fourth Estate Limited, 1991, p.176.</ref>
  
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He also collected an impressive series of directorships, among them at [[Shell]] (1961-72); [[EMI]] (1965-81); [[Rank-Hovis McDougall]] (1965-79); [[Times Newspapers]] (1967-74); [[BSA]] (1968-73); [[Hawker Siddeley Group]] (1968-82); and the ''[[Observer]]'' (1981-93).<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
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In 1974, at the height of the smear campaign against [[Harold Wilson]], hinted about high-level bribery at the Board of Trade in the 1940s, in allegations that were taken to refer to Wilson.<ref>Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, ''Smear! Wilson and the Secret State'', Fourth Estate Limited, 1991, p.10.</ref> After writing a letter to ''[[The Times]]'', Shawcross became a guest at ''[[Private Eye]]'' lunches, where he discussed Wilson's social connections during his time at the timber firm [[Montague Meyer]].<ref>David Leigh, The Wilson Plot, Mandarin, 1989, p.248.</ref>
  
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==Later life==
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===Take-overs panel===
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From 1969 to 1980, he was chairman of the [[Panel on Take-Overs and Mergers]].
  
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===Family values activism===
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Shawcross was an early 'patron' of the [[Responsible Society]] founded in 1971 (later known as [[Family and Youth Concern]]).<ref name="love73">Valerie and Denis Riches ''Built on Love'', Oxford: Family Publications, 2007, p. 73.</ref>
  
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===SDP===
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Shawcross joined the [[SDP]] in 1983.<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
  
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===Countryside Alliance===
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After his appearance as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg, Shawcross took up the post of principal British delegate to the United Nations, where he again won admiration, this time for his ruthless exposure of the Soviet foreign minister Molotov's humbug over disarmament.
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Although he was not strong enough to take part in the [[Countryside Alliance]]'s Liberty and Livelihood march in 2002, he made a point of signing its "Marching in Spirit" register.'<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
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Nevertheless, Shawcross's political career soon ran into difficulties. His smooth efficiency in dealing with legal problems was exemplary - as he showed again in 1948 with his masterly handling of witnesses at the tribunal which led to the resignation of Harold Belcher, Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade, for taking bribes. But in purely political matters Shawcross showed a surprising tendency to make errors of judgment, and became a target for angry criticism both inside and outside the Commons.
 
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The Conservatives charged him with having used the phrase "We are the masters now", in a speech during the Third Reading of a Bill of 1946 to reform trades union law. Shawcross pointed out that the remark followed from his use of a quotation from Alice in Wonderland: " 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be the Master - that is all.' " And Shawcross answered the question: "We are the Masters at the moment."
 
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Whatever the actual phrasing, he later admitted that he had made a disastrous political error. "I've said a lot of bloody stupid things in my life," he observed, "and I think that was the most stupid thing I've ever said." To make matters worse, he came to think that the aim of the Bill - to increase trades union powers - was another grave mistake.
 
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Shawcross was sworn of the Privy Council in 1946, but his propensity to ruffle feathers remained evident - and appeared all the odder because his character was innately courteous and kindly.
 
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In 1946 his comments on alleged distortion and suppression by the "gutter Press" necessitated an apology to Lord Kemsley, while his criticism of judges in the Chancery Division ended in another apology, this time to the House of Commons. Further protest greeted his statement that complaints by the Housewives' League were "impertinent".
 
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Shawcross was appointed President of the Board of Trade in April 1951, after the resignation of Harold Wilson, but his term of office ended with the defeat of the Labour government in the General Election that October.
 
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By that time he had already begun to move to the Right. Though he had originally been on the firebreathing wing of his party, and strongly pro-Russian, his experience of Soviet delegates soon disillusioned him.
 
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When Shawcross resigned as an MP in 1958 (he had represented St Helens since 1945) he pleaded private and family reasons, but it had long been known that he disagreed with many Labour policies; indeed, he had been christened by Bernard Levin "Sir Shortly Floorcross". He later explained that he left party politics mainly because "I found it utterly tedious to have to conform to the doctrine that it is the duty of the opposition to oppose".
 
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Created a life peer as Lord Shawcross in 1959, he sat as a crossbencher in the Lords. Though he spoke frequently, and often controversially, outside the chamber, his reluctance to take up the cudgels with former colleagues meant that he waited 15 years before making his maiden speech, on Hong Kong.
 
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By the 1970s Shawcross had become something of a Jeremiah: Britain was threatened by crime, and must reform; by the prospect of totalitarianism, and must unite under a national government; by the trivialisation of sex, and must abstain from page three of the Sun. He himself, he vouchsafed, received "no pleasure from the photographs of naked breasts".
 
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In 1983 Shawcross joined the Social Democrats, claiming that the founders of the new party were following the lead he had given. But the person he really admired was Mrs Thatcher.
 
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Hartley William Shawcross was born on February 4 1902 at Giessen, in Germany, where his father was Professor of English Literature. Shawcross pere was also the leading English authority on Goethe and Schiller.
 
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The family seems to have originated in Denmark and settled in the 14th century at a village called Shallcross in Derbyshire. Subsequently, Shawcrosses were established in Cheshire and Lancashire; Hartley's grandfather was a millowner who was three times mayor of Rochdale.
 
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Shortly after Hartley's birth, his parents returned to England, and settled in London, with a cottage in Ashdown Forest, Sussex. The boy was brought up in the stern Liberal tradition, as befitted one whose mother had worked for John Bright. His formal education took place at Dulwich and at Geneva University.
 
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==Family values activism==
 
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Shawcross was an early 'patron' of the [[Responsible Society]] (later known as [[Family and Youth Concern]]).<ref name="love73">Valerie and Denis Riches ''Built on Love'', Oxford: Family Publications, 2007, p. 73.</ref>
 
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==Affiliations==
 
==Affiliations==
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[[Responsible Society]] | 'Although he was not strong enough to take part in the [[Countryside Alliance]]'s Liberty and Livelihood march in 2002, he made a point of signing its "Marching in Spirit" register.'<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
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*[[Medical Research Council]] - Chairman 1961-1965
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*[[Royal College of Surgeons]] - Honorary Fellow
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*[[Morgan Guaranty Trust]], chairman of International Advisory Council 1967-1974, subsequently a special adviser.
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*[[Sussex University]] - Chancellor 1965-1985,
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*[[Dulwich College]] - chairman of the Board of Governors
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*[[British Hotels' and Restaurants' Association]] - President 1959-1971
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*[[Thames Television]] - Chairman 1969-1974
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*[[Shell]] Director 1961-72
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*[[EMI]] Director 1965-81
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*[[Rank-Hovis-McDougall]] - Director 1965-79
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*[[Times Newspapers]] Director 1967-74
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*[[BSA]] - Director 1968-73
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*[[Hawker Siddeley Group]] - Director 1968-82
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*[[The Observer]] - Director 1981-93<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003</ref>
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*[[Responsible Society]]
  
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===Connections===
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===Family===
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*[[William Shawcross]], son
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[[William Shawcross]], son
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*[[Ellie Shawcross]], grand-daughter
  
 
==Resources==
 
==Resources==
 
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
 
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1435769/Lord-Shawcross.html Lord Shawcross] ''Daily Telegraph'', 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
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*Jonathan A. Bush, [http://content.ebscohost.com/pdf23_24/pdf/2009/CAV/01Jun09/41529811.pdf?T=P&P=AN&K=41529811&S=R&D=aph&EbscoContent=dGJyMMTo50SeqLY40dvuOLCmr0qeprdSs6u4SLGWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGssk2xqLJNuePfgeyx44Hy THE PREHISTORY OF CORPORATIONS AND CONSPIRACYIN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW: WHAT NUREMBERG REALLY SAID],  ''Columbia Law Review'', 109 (2009): 1094-262.
  
 
==Notes==
 
==Notes==
 
<references/>
 
<references/>
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[[Category:Old Alleynians|Shawcross, Hartley]][[Category:Lawyers|Shawcross, Hartley]][[Category:Labour Party|Shawcross, Hartley]][[Category:MP|Shawcross, Hartley]][[Category:House of Lords|Shawcross, Hartley]] [[Category:British Politician|Shawcross, Hartley]]

Latest revision as of 14:43, 3 March 2015

William Hartley Shawcross was an MP and member of the House of Lords (he was knighted in 1945, and appointed GBE in 1974), but was best known as the chief British prosecutor at Nuremberg. He entered the Commons in 1945 and became Attorney-General in the Labour government of Clement Attlee. His later move to the political right earned him the soubriquet 'Sir Shortly Floorcross'.

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. He was educated at Dulwich College and Geneva University.[1]

Early career

Shawcross developed an early interest in the Labour Party, becoming ward secretary of the party in Central Wandsworth at 16. He entered the legal profession after advice from Herbert Morrison that it was the best training for politics. Although he won first place in the bar examinations, he initially struggled to win briefs until 1927, when he took up a part-time lectureship at Liverpool University, and began to build up what became the leading practice on the Northern Circuit with David Maxwell Fyfe.[1]

Shawcross became a King's Counsel in 1939, and was elected a Bencher of Gray's Inn.[1]

Shawcross joined the Emergency Reserve of Officers in 1938, but was subsequently rejected due to an old spinal injury. In 1939 he was appointed chairman of an Enemy Aliens Tribunal, and posted to Hampstead.[1]

In 1941, he became Recorder of Salford, the youngest Recorder ever appointed, holding the position until 1945. From 1940, however, Shawcross concentrated on government service, becoming Regional Commissioner for the North-Western Region from 1942 to 1945, and chairman of the Catering Wages Commission from 1943 to 1945. In 1946 he was appointed Recorder of Kingston upon Thames, a position he held until 1961.[1]

Member of Parliament

Attorney-General

Shawcross was appointed Attorney-General in the Attlee government on 4 August 1945.[2]

Shawcross made his name at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Telegraph obituary reported:

Hartley Shawcross's five-hour opening speech at Nuremberg set out the legal justification for the proceedings. He showed that the Tribunal, far from being an instrument of vengeance set up by the victors, was administering rules of international law which had been established before the war, with the full concurrence of Germany. The writer Rebecca West described his final address as "full of living pity, which gave the men in the box their worst hour". Even the accused admired his intellectual grasp.[1]

After Gustav Krupp von Bohlen was judged too ill to stand trial, Shawcross opposed indicting his son Alfried, arguing that a trial was "not a football match in which we could field a substitute." The younger Krupp was later indicted and served five years for war crimes.[3]

Writers John Loftus and Mark Aarons have claimed that a friendship with Shawcross allowed Hermann Abs to escape prosecution after the war. The also charge that war crimes prosecutions petered out for lacking of funding during his tenure.[4]

Shawcross later argued that prosecutions had been suspended in 1948, because of attacks on British troops by the Jewish underground in Mandate Palestine, stating:

"In the atmosphere of those days it would have been impossible to continue war-crimes trials, wherever the criminals happened to be."[5]

After Nuremburg, Shawcross went on to become the principal British representative at the United Nations.[6]

Shawcross was not always sure-footed in purely political matters. The Conservatives charged him with having used the phrase "We are the masters now", in a speech during the Third Reading of a Bill of 1946. he claimed to have said "We are the masters at the moment", but acknowledged the episode as a slip.[7]

Shawcross led the prosecution in a number of other famous trials including those of the wartime traitor William Joyce and atomic spy Klaus Fuchs.[1]

In 1948, his investigation of bribery at the Board of Trade, then headed by Harold Wilson led to the resignation of Parliamentary Secretary John Belcher.[8]

Board of Trade

Shawcross was appointed President of the Board of Trade on 24 April 1951, following the resignation of his predecessor, Harold Wilson.[2][9]

Opposition

Shawcross was prominent among members of the Labour Shadow Cabinet who threatened to resign in March 1955, if the parliamentary party did not back the expulsion of Aneurin Bevan.[10]

Bar Council

Shawcross served as chair of the Bar Council from 1952 to 1957. He came under pressure in 1957, for passing on the contents of tapped phone conversations to the Council in an epsisode known as the Marrinan case, but escaped censure because he did so with the authority of the Home Office.[1][11]

Later career

Peerage

Shawcross resigned as an MP in 1958 and was made a life peer the following year, sitting as a crossbencher, a move which reflected his disillusionment with party politics.[12]

Abs-Shawcroft Draft Convention

From 1958, Shawcross, then a director with Shell Petroleum worked with Hermann Abs of Deutsche Bank to develop a draft convention on foreign investments.[13]

Monckton Commission

Shawcross was appointed an independent member of the Monckton Advisory Commission in Central Africa in 1959, but had to resign after a few months due to ill health.[1]

IRIS

According to Seumas Milne, an approach from Shawcross in the early 1960s helped to secure funding for the Industrial Research and Information Service.[14]

Media regulator

Shawcross chaired a Royal Commission on the Press in 1961-2. From 1967 to 1974, he was a director of The Times. From 1974 to 1978, he was chairman of the Press Council.[1]

Wilson rumours

During the period around 1968, Harold Wilson believed that Shawcross was maneuvering alongside Cecil King and Lord Robens for a coalition government.[15]

In 1974, at the height of the smear campaign against Harold Wilson, hinted about high-level bribery at the Board of Trade in the 1940s, in allegations that were taken to refer to Wilson.[16] After writing a letter to The Times, Shawcross became a guest at Private Eye lunches, where he discussed Wilson's social connections during his time at the timber firm Montague Meyer.[17]

Take-overs panel

From 1969 to 1980, he was chairman of the Panel on Take-Overs and Mergers.

Family values activism

Shawcross was an early 'patron' of the Responsible Society founded in 1971 (later known as Family and Youth Concern).[18]

SDP

Shawcross joined the SDP in 1983.[19]

Countryside Alliance

Although he was not strong enough to take part in the Countryside Alliance's Liberty and Livelihood march in 2002, he made a point of signing its "Marching in Spirit" register.'[20]

Affiliations

Connections

Resources

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts 1900-2000, Macmillan, 2000, p.23.
  3. ↑ Paul Routledge, Public Servant, Secret Agent: The Elusive Life and Violent death of Airey Neave, Fourth Estate, 2003, p.165.
  4. ↑ John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews, 1994, St Martin's Press, p.67.
  5. ↑ Glenn Frankel, House of Lords stirs debate in defeating bill to try Nazis, Wahington Post, 6 June 1990, archived at www.chron.com.
  6. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  7. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  8. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  9. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  10. ↑ Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State, Fourth Estate Limited, 1991, p.14 .
  11. ↑ Report of the Committee of Privy Councillors appointed to inquire into the interception of communications, 1957, archived at the Foundation for Information Policy Research.
  12. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  13. ↑ Jan Ole Voss, The Impact of Investment Treaties on Contracts between Host States and Foreign Investors, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010, p.225.
  14. ↑ Seumas Milne, The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, Verso, 2004, p.386.
  15. ↑ Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State, Fourth Estate Limited, 1991, p.176.
  16. ↑ Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State, Fourth Estate Limited, 1991, p.10.
  17. ↑ David Leigh, The Wilson Plot, Mandarin, 1989, p.248.
  18. ↑ Valerie and Denis Riches Built on Love, Oxford: Family Publications, 2007, p. 73.
  19. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  20. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
  21. ↑ Lord Shawcross Daily Telegraph, 12:02AM BST 11 Jul 2003
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