Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry

Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry

Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry KG , MVO PC (born May 13, 1878 , † February 10, 1949 , Mount Stewart , County Down ) was an Anglo-Irish and British politician .

Origin and education

Stewart was the first son of Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry and Lady Theresa Susey Helen Chetwynd-Talbot, daughter of Charles John Chetwynd-Talbot, 19th Earl of Shrewsbury . At first he carried the courtesy title of Viscount Castlereagh . He received his education at Eton and the Royal Military College Sandhurst .

Political career

Stewart was elected to the House of Commons for the Maidstone constituency in 1906 . During the First World War he returned to the British armed forces to assist in the excavation of troops in Ireland. With the death of his father in 1915, Stewart inherited his title of Marquess of Londonderry and his immense wealth, especially as a mine owner in County Durham . As a result, he turned more and more to British politics.

Vane-Tempest-Stewart took part in the Irish Constitutional Convention ( Irish Convention ) in 1917-18 and was then a member of the short-term Advisory Council of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in autumn 1918 . He was then a member of the Air Council as part of the Lloyd George coalition government . The promotion to Under-Secretary of State for Air in 1920 did not satisfy the Marquess and he used his connections in Northern Ireland in June 1921 to join the first regional government as Majority Leader in the Senate and Minister of Education. The draft of a Northern Irish Education Act of 1923 aimed at secularising the school system failed.

In 1926 Vane-Tempest-Stewart resigned as a member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland and took part in the clashes over the 1926 general strike in the role of moderate mine owner. In 1928, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin rewarded him with the cabinet post of First Commissioner of Works . Then in 1931 the Marquess was accepted into the National Government under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and Lord President Baldwin. This was the cause of a scandal, as many critics accused MacDonald of being too friends with Vane-Tempest-Stewart's wife.

After the election victory in 1931, he returned to the cabinet as Secretary of State for Air. This position gained importance with the deliberations of the League of Nations at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament. The marquess represented the disarmament policy of the British government externally, but opposed any measures in the cabinet that would jeopardize the deterrent value of the Royal Air Force . Because of this, he was attacked by Clement Attlee and the Labor Party and was a burden on the coalition government. In the spring he resigned from the Ministry of Aviation, but retained his cabinet rank as Lord Privy Seal and majority leader in the House of Lords .

In order to defeat his reputation as a warmonger, Vane-Tempest-Stewart tried diplomatic contacts. He accepted visits from leading members of the German government and in particular a much-discussed visit from Joachim von Ribbentrop , then German ambassador in London and later German foreign minister, in the spring of 1936 to his family home in Mount Stewart , and afterwards he briefed the British government. His promotion of German-British friendship ultimately exposed him to a far greater reproach than the one who had brought him to his appeasement efforts. The Marquess tried to explain his position in 1938 with the book Ourselves and Germany .

After Neville Chamberlain's resignation , Vane-Tempest-Stewart failed to get any concessions from his cousin, new Prime Minister Winston Churchill , who thought little of his abilities.

Divorced from office, he published his memoir, Wings of Destiny (1943) in 1943.

The Marquess of Londonderry was Chancellor of the University of Durham and the Queen's University of Belfast until his death .

family

The Marquess had been married to the Hon. Edith Helen Chaplin , eldest daughter of Henry Chaplin, 1st Viscount Chaplin and Lady Florence Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (daughter of George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 3rd Duke of Sutherland ) since 1899 . The couple had a son and four daughters. The marquess also had a daughter from a relationship with actress Fannie Ward .

His title passed to the Marquess' son, Edward Charles Stewart Robert "Robin" , upon his death .

swell

• NC Fleming: The Marquess of Londonderry: Aristocracy, Power and Politics in Britain and Ireland . London 2005.
• H. Montgomery Hyde : The Londonderrys: A Family Portrait . London 1979.
• Ian Kershaw : Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and the British Road to War . London 2004.
• Edith, Lady Londonderry: Retrospect . London 1938.
• Lord Londonderry: Ourselves and Germany . London 1938. German: "England looks at Germany". Essen 1938
• Lord Londonderry: Wings of Destiny . London 1943.

Web links

• Newspaper article about Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

predecessor	Office	successor
Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart	Marquess of Londonderry 1915-1949	Robin Vane-Tempest-Stewart