William Shawcross
William Shawcross is a British journalist. He is the chairman of the Charity Commission.
Shawcross was one of a number of people invited to meet US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a stopover at Heathrow on 13 September 2005.[1]
Contents
Education
Shawcross was born in Britain in 1946.[2] Shawcross attended Eton, where he was in the same year as Defence Minister Lord Astor of Hever.[3]
Charity Commission
He was named by the Cabinet Office as the proposed chair of the Charity Commission in August 2012.[4]
At a hearing of the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee to examine his appointment, the chair Bernard Jenkin noted:
- One or two of us have to put some interests on the record, however peripheral they may be. You are a Director and Trustee of the Henry Jackson Society. The Henry Jackson Society provides the Secretariat for the All- Party Parliamentary Group on Homeland Security, of which I am Chairman. I also published a pamphlet in co-operation with the Henry Jackson Society a couple of years ago.[5]
Robert Halfon stated: "I should declare that I was a founding patron of the Henry Jackson Society when it was first set up and I am fairly involved with the organisation."[5]
A third committee member, Paul Flynn added: I think perhaps I had better say that the Henry Jackson Society organised a meeting at which I was a prime speaker, to my astonishment.[5]
Shawcross stated during proceedings:
- Obviously I would wish to resign all my memberships of the Henry Jackson Society and other charities with which I am involved. I think the Henry Jackson Society is a great society and I am very pleased that they had you come to speak, Mr Flynn. Henry Jackson himself was a great American senator who stood not just for right‑wing views but for freedom and liberty everywhere. That is what the society stands for now. I would do everything necessary and speak to the chief executive of the Charity Commission to make sure I was seen to be always acting in an independent manner.[5]
In an October 2012 article on Labour 'fifth columnists' in the charitable sector, Fraser Nelson, wrote:
- Cameron is, now, taking this more seriously. He has been trying to build his own alliance of reformers and called a group of them to sit round his Cabinet table last year, but little came of it. He has also appointed a No 10 official to handle public appointments, and the selection of the writer William Shawcross to run the Charities Commission is a declaration of intent. But Labour spent more than a decade placing its supporters in quangos and tweaking charity laws, while Tories tend not to think of politics in this way.[6]
Nelson's comment was put to Shawcross in an interview with Third Sector magazine:
- Shawcross elects not to get drawn in. "Fraser Nelson’s a very good journalist. It was a very interesting article. What else can I say?" Does he agree with its analysis about charities’ anti-government stance? "I don’t know yet. But I think there is a very interesting discussion to be had about the way charities relate to government, and are increasingly dependent on governments of left, right and centre.[7]
Publications
- Dubcek, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1970.
- Crime & Compromise: Janos Kadar and the Politics of Hungary Since Revolution, Dutton, USA, 1974.
- Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, Simon & Schuster, USA, 1979.
- The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and the Modern Conscience, Simon & Schuster, USA, 1984.
- The Shah's Last Ride: The Story of the Exile, Misadventures and Death of the Emperor, Chatto & Windus, UK, 1989.
- Murdoch: The Making of a Media Empire, Chatto & Windus, UK, Simon & Schuster, USA, 1992.
- Cambodia's New Deal: A personal report on the Cambodian scene, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1994.
- Deliver Us From Evil, Bloomsbury, UK, Simon & Schuster, UK 1999.
- Queen and Country, BBC, 2002.
- Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq, Atlantic Books, 2003.
- Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, Macmillan, 2009.
External resources
- William Shawcross Curriculum vitae
- Vibeka Mair, Shawcross 'too outspoken' to be Commission chair, MPs worry, civilsociety.couk, 5 September 2012.
- Marko Attila Hoare, Alan Mendoza’s Henry Jackson Society and William Shawcross’s Charity Commission, 13 November 2012.
Affiliations
- Article 19 - Chairman
- RESPONSE - Chairman
- International Crisis Group - Board member since 1995, and member of Executive Committee since 2000.
- High Commissioner for Refugees - Member of the Informal Advisory Group, 1995-2000.
- Disasters Emergency Committee - Member of Council since 1997.
Connections
- Hartley Shawcross - Father
- Ellie Shawcross - Daughter[8]
Notes
- ↑ Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail, 14 September 2005.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Curriculum vitae, williamshawcross.com, archived at the Internet Archive, 26 May 2011.
- ↑ Laura Pitel, Royal biographer in line to head Charity Commission; William Shawcross nominated by Cabinet Office, The Times, 30 August 2012.
- ↑ Stephen Cook, Is William Shawcross the right person for the commission job?, Third Sector, 30 August 2012, accessed 31 August 2012
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE, Public Administration Committee, House of Commons, 5 September 2012.
- ↑ Fraser Nelson, Gordon Brown’s secret army could defeat the Coalition’s welfare and education reforms, Telegraph, 25 October 2012.
- ↑ Stephen Cook, Interview: William Shawcross, Third Sector, 5 November 2012.
- ↑ Next’s Lord Wolfson ties the knot, Retail Week, 28 June 2012.
