Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead GCSI , PC , KC (born July 12, 1872 in Birkenhead , Cheshire , †  September 30, 1930 in London ) was a British politician ( Conservative Party ) and lawyer.

Live and act

Youth and career as a lawyer (1872–1906)

Lord Birkenhead was born Frederick Edwin Smith on July 12, 1872 in Birkenhead, Cheshire. He attended the Birkenhead School. He then attended Wadham College , Oxford , which he graduated in 1896. As a result, he taught law at the University of Oxford until 1899 as a lawyer ( barrister ) to the bar in Gray's Inn was appointed. To this day, the scholarships awarded by the chamber, the so-called FE Smith Birkenhead Award Scholarships, remember the famous member. In a few years he made a name for himself as a brilliant lawyer.

Career as a parliamentarian (1906–1914)

FE Smith as a young MP, drawing by Leslie Ward (c. 1908)

In 1906 Smith was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative MP for Walton, a constituency in the Liverpool borough . There he first drew attention to himself through his maiden speech , which the press as well as parliamentary colleagues found brilliant in which he sharply attacked the government. For the rest of his career, he was able to maintain the reputation of a rhetorically brilliant and, in his replicas, extremely quick-witted parliamentary speaker. He was also seen as a skilled conversationalist in private settings.

Within the Conservative Party, Smith soon rose to be one of the most energetic leaders of the party's unionist wing, who took sharp turns against Irish independence. He also fiercely opposed party leader Arthur Balfour , whom he considered too hesitant. After Andrew Bonar Law was elected leader of the Conservative parliamentary group, the aspiring Smith became the youngest part in his shadow cabinet.

Government member (1914–1928)

At the beginning of World War I , Smith was given responsibility for the government's official press office. In this role he was responsible for the war-related censorship of newspapers in Great Britain. At times he also served as a staff officer in the Indian Corps in France. After the formation of the coalition government in May 1915, he was appointed Solicitor General and soon succeeded Sir Edward Carson as Attorney General . In 1916 he pushed through the conviction and execution of the Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement , who was accused of conspiracy with the war opponent for arms smuggling.

In 1919 Smith was ennobled as Baron Birkenhead and accepted into his government as Lord Chancellor by Prime Minister David Lloyd George . In 1921 he was responsible for the House of Lords rejecting a motion that criminalized lesbianism . As a justification, he stated that "999 out of 1000 women had never heard of such practices". Also in 1921 he was involved in the conclusion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty , which led to the establishment of the independent Irish Free State . In 1921 Smith was promoted to Viscount Birkenhead and in 1922 to Viscount Furneaux , of Charlton, and Earl of Birkenhead . Together with Lloyd George and Churchill, he was the driving force behind a bellicose policy towards Turkey after it emerged victorious from the Greco-Turkish War . This led to the Chanak crisis . After a backbencher revolt in the Conservative Party at the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922, Birkenhead resigned together with Austen Chamberlain, Lord Balcarres and Sir Robert Horne and refused to allow the new Conservative party leader Andrew Bonar Law to participate in the formation of the government. From 1924 to 1928 Smith served as Minister of India affairs member of the second government Baldwin . During this time Birkenhead became a member of the Freemasons' Association , his lodge was the Royal Colonial Lodge No. 3556 . He later held the position of Grand Overseer in the Grand Lodge of England .

Last years (1928–1930)

After retiring from politics, he became rector of Aberdeen University , member of the management team at Tate & Lyle and high steward at Oxford University.

Smith was known for his excessive lifestyle. Together with Winston Churchill - with whom he founded the Other Club and whose closest personal and political friend he was - and other friends he consumed considerable amounts of alcohol and tobacco, especially heavy cigars. Most biographers attribute his early death in 1930 to this lifestyle.

family

In April 1901, Smith married Margaret Eleanor Furneaux. The marriage had three children: Eleanor Smith, Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, and Pamela Smith.

Evaluation by contemporaries and historical research

Winston Churchill dedicated a chapter to Smith in his 1937 book Great Contemporaries . He praised Smith's courage, loyalty, joy of competition, and alert mind. Margot Asquith, on the other hand, criticized the fact that “his own cleverness would sometimes go to his head”.

When Smith claimed in the discussion about the Welsh Church Act 1914 that this was a law that shook the conscience of every Christian community in Europe, Gilbert Keith Chesterton responded with the ironic poem Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom , in which he addressed Smith in a litany manner .

In the film Chariots of Fire he is played as Lord Birkenhead by Nigel Davenport .

Publications

• Great contemporaries . 1924 (biographical sketches of well-known personalities)
• Law, Life and Letters . 2 volumes, 1927.
• The World in 2030 AD . 1930 (Utopian writing with illustrations by E. McKnight Kauffman)

literature

• Earl of Birkenhead : Frederick Edwin Earl of Birkenhead. Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill . 2 volumes. Butterworth, London 1933–1935 (biography penned by his son).
• Birkenhead, Frederick Edwin Smith . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 30 : Abbe - English history . London 1922, p. 457 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
• John Campbell: FE Smith: First Earl of Birkenhead. Jonathan Cape, London 1983.

Web links

• Literature by and about Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert A. Minder: Freemason Politicians Lexicon . Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2004, ISBN 3-7065-1909-7 .

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Earl of Birkenhead 1922-1930	Frederick Smith