Edward Shackleton

Edward Arthur Alexander Shackleton, Baron Shackleton OBE PC (born July 15, 1911 in London , † September 22, 1994 in Lymington , Hampshire ), was a British explorer and Labor Party politician .

Life

Three year old Edward Shackleton with his father in 1914

Shackleton was born in the London borough of Wandsworth as the third child of the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his wife Emily. In 1938 he married Betty Homan and the two became parents of two children, Charles Edward Ernest Shackleton and Alexandra Shackleton.

During his studies at Magdalen College in Oxford, he took part in an expedition from the University of Oxford to Sarawak in what is now Malaysia in 1932 as a surveyor . After graduating, Shackleton himself organized the Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition and appointed Gordon Noel Humphreys to lead it. Shackleton accompanied the expedition as assistant surveyor to Humphreys. The successes of this expedition were the naming of Mount Oxford (after the University of Oxford) and the British Empire Range .

During World War II , Shackleton joined the Royal Air Force in 1940 and then worked as an anti-submarine planner and intelligence officer. In 1945 he was awarded the Officer's Cross OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire ).

In 1946 Shackleton was elected Member of Parliament for the Labor Party in the Preston constituency. After a change in the constituencies, he was elected to Preston South in the 1950 election . In the 1955 elections he was defeated by the candidate of the Conservative Party , Alan Green , but received life membership in the House of Lords in 1958 through his ennoblement to Baron Shackleton von Burley in the county of Hampshire . During the tenure of Prime Minister Harold Wilson , Shackleton served in the Department of Defense from 1964 to 1967 under Denis Healey as a person in charge of the Air Force, then from 1967 to 1968 Minister without Portfolio and in 1968 finally Paymaster General . Since 1966 he was a member of the Privy Council .

From 1968 to 1970 he was leader of the Labor majority faction in the British House of Lords, and in the years thereafter he was leader of the opposition in the House of Lords. From 1968 to 1970 Shackleton also held the office of Lord Seal Keeper .

From 1971 Shackleton was chairman of the Royal Geographical Society . In 1994 he became president for life of the newly founded James Caird Society, which was named after the boat in which Edward Shackleton's father and his crew escaped from Antarctica (the boat was named after James Key Caird , 1837-1916, British industrialist and philanthropist). From 1962 until his death he was also the patron of the British Schools Exploring Society (BSES).

From 1973 Shackleton worked for RTZ Corporation Ltd. (previously Rio Tinto Zinc, now Rio Tinto plc. ), became Deputy Chairman of the Board in 1975, and held this post until his retirement in 1982. In 1975, in a study commissioned by the British Government, he recommended the airfield to improve the infrastructure of the Falkland Islands of Port Stanley and restrict fishing rights. He updated this report in 1982 on the occasion of the Falklands War .

Shackleton has received several honorary degrees, such as honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick (1978) and Southampton (1986). Lord Shackleton was also a Pro-Chancellor at the University of Southampton , and in this role was keen to further develop the Department of Geography. A building has been named after him at the University of Southampton, which houses the psychology department and the geography department.

Edward Shackleton died on September 22, 1994 at the age of 83.

Web links

• Obituary: Lord Shackleton. In: The Independent of September 24, 1994 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} aim25.ac.uk: SHACKLETON, Lord Edward Arthur (1911-1994), Biographical history (English)
2. ↑ parliament.uk: Shackleton; Lord; Edward Arthur Alexander (1911-1994) ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) 
3. ↑ ^{a b} archiveshub.ca.uk: Edward Shackleton collection  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)  
4. ↑ soton.ac.uk: Southampton University, Shackleton Building (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Hugh Fraser	Secretary of State for Air 1964-1966	Office abolished
Arthur Champion	Deputy Leader of the House of Lords 1967-1968	Malcolm Shepherd
Frank Pakenham	Lord Seal Keeper 1968	Fred Peart
George Wigg	Paymaster General 1968	Judith Hart
Frank Pakenham	Leader of the House of Lords 1968-1970	George Jellicoe
Fred Peart	Lord Seal Keeper 1968-1970	George Jellicoe