Cranley Onslow

Cranley Onslow Gordon Douglas Baron Onslow of Woking, KCMG PC (* 8. June 1926 , † 13. March 2001 ) was a British politician of the Conservative Party . He was an MP for the constituency of Woking from 1964 to 1997 .

life and career

Onslow was related to the Earl of Onslow and was named after one of the earldom's subordinate titles, Viscount Cranley . His parents were Francis Robert Douglas Onslow (1878-1938) and Mabel Strachan († 1974). He had a younger brother, Ian Denzil Onslow (1929-2013).

He attended Harrow School and then Sandhurst . In 1944 he entered the military and was a lieutenant in the Queen's Own Hussars . After completing his military service, he studied history at Oriel College, Oxford . Onslow then joined MI6 as a field agent and also served in Burma .

In 1955 he married Lady June Hay, daughter of George Harley Hay-Drummond, 14th Earl of Kinnoul .

Onslow left the civil service in 1960 and became politically active, first he was elected to the Dartford Rural Council and later to the Kent County Council . In 1963 he was selected to succeed Harold Watkinson as MP for Woking and was elected in the 1964 general election the following year .

After his election, he demonstrated his right-wing views by calling for lower taxes for the middle class and a reduction in development aid. He also took an impartial interest in aviation and chaired a related committee. He was later Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Aerospace from 1972 to 1974 in the government of Edward Heath .

In the government of Margaret Thatcher , he became Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1983 , but resigned a year later. In 1984 he was elected chairman of the 1922 committee and from then on was considered the most powerful backbencher of his party. In this office he informed Thatcher of the wish of the backbenchers that Leon Brittan should resign because of the Westland affair and in the election for party chairmanship in 1990 that many wanted a wider range of candidates, whereupon she withdrew. This angered many of Thatcher's allies and in 1992 he was forced to resign from chairmanship.

He was then appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George . After leaving the House of Commons in 1997, he was named Life Peer as Baron Onslow of Woking , of Woking in the County of Surrey . In 1988 he became a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.

Web links

• Guardian Obituary
• Cranley Gordon Douglas Onslow, Baron Onslow of Woking, on thepeerage.com , accessed August 18, 2015.

predecessor	Office	successor
Harold Watkinson	Member of the House of Commons for Croydon North West 1964–1997	Humfrey Malins
Edward you Cann	Chairman of the 1922 Committee 1984–1992	Marcus Fox