Harmar Nicholls, Baron Harmar-Nicholls

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Harmar Harmar-Nicholls, Baron Harmar-Nicholls JP (born November 1, 1912 in Darlaston , Staffordshire , † September 15, 2000 ) was a British Conservative Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons and a member of the European Parliament for 24 years and in 1975 when Life Peer became a member of the House of Lords under the Life Peerages Act 1958 . Nicholls dealt with housing construction, road safety and migration in the Dominions during his work as a Member of the House of Commons , but became known in particular for the fact that he won his constituency of Peterborough eight times in lower house elections with, in some cases, extremely narrow majorities, such as the General election of May 31, 1966 , when he won with a majority of only three votes after a total of eight vote counts.

Life

Studies, professional career and World War II

Nicholls, son of a miner and later innkeeper , graduated from the Queen Mary Grammar School in Walsall with a law degree . He became involved in politics early on during his studies and in 1937 became vice-chairman of the Junior Imperial League , today's youth association of the Conservative Party, in the West Midlands region . In 1938 he was elected a member of the borough council ( Urban District Council ) of Darlaston, a place in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall .

He graduated in 1941 and was admitted to the Bar ( Inns of Court ) of Middle Temple . He then did not work as a lawyer , but worked as a geodesist . During the Second World War he first served with the pioneers of the British Army and was last used as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in India and Burma . After his return to Great Britain in 1945 he became director of the painting company J & H Nicholls Paints Ltd and was for a time also president of the Wallpaper and Paint Retailers Association , the association of wallpapering and painting companies.

Unsuccessful candidacies for the House of Commons and MPs

After the end of the Second World War, Nicholls ran for a seat in the House of Commons in the general election on July 5, 1945 in the Nelson and Colne constituency , but was defeated by the constituency holder of the Labor Party , Sydney Silverman . After the death of the Labor politician John William Sunderland on 24 November 1945, he competed as his successor at the now necessary by -election ( by-election ) on 31 January 1946 at the constituency Preston , but lost again to the Labor candidate Edward Shackleton , which received 32,189 votes (55.6 percent), while he himself received 25,718 votes (44.4 percent). In 1949 he became chairman of the Darlaston Urban District Council.

As a candidate for the Conservative Tories , Nicholls was elected to the House of Commons for the first time in the general election on February 23, 1950 in the constituency of Peterborough and was a member of this until the October 10, 1974 elections . As a backbencher ( Backbencher ) he first appeared on the Congress of the Conservative Party in 1950 in appearance, when he called for the construction of 300,000 houses a year, a goal which ultimately during the tenure of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was reached. He also supported small businesses and advocated the emigration of British nationals to Canada , Australia and other Dominions.

Junior Minister and Baronet

After the Conservative Party's victory in the October 25, 1951 elections, he held several junior ministerial posts in the subsequent governments of Prime Ministers Winston Churchill , Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan. First, he was from 1951 to 1955 Parliamentary Private Secretary ( Parliamentary Private Secretary ) Deputy Postmaster General ( Assistant Postmaster General ) David Gammans and then from 1955 to 1957 Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food ( Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food ) Derick Heathcoat-Amory , before 1957-1960 Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of works (most recently Minister of works ) Hugh Molson or last John Hope was. During this time he took part in an exchange program at the Washington, DC- based Government Affairs Institute (GAI) in 1956 .

In the general election on October 8, 1959 , he was able to prevail in his constituency of Peterborough against the Labor politician Betty Boothroyd , who was later from 1992 to 2000 as speaker the first female speaker of the lower house and thus Parliament. After the election, Nicholls described Boothroyd as "a pretty fighter" ('a bonny fighter').

After leaving the government, he was given the hereditary dignity of Baronet , of Darlaston in the County of Stafford, on December 29, 1960 .

Narrow election win in the 1966 general election

In the general election of May 31, 1966, after seven recounts, it was found that his majority was only three votes. After the first vote count, his rival Labor Party candidate , Michael Ward , had a majority of 163 votes, which was confirmed at the first recount. Untold ballot papers were then found in a ballot box , which after a second recount resulted in a majority in favor of Labor of two votes. The third and fourth recounts changed their position and Nicholls was now more ahead with two and then six votes. A fifth recount brought the Labor candidate back into the lead by one vote, while a sixth recount confirmed Nicholls' lead by two votes. The seventh and final recount resulted in him gaining one vote and eventually three votes ahead of Ward. In the end there were 38 unclear ballots and the recount lasted from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.

The Federation of Trade Unions of Peterborough urged him to resign and in a by-election ( by-election to compete). However, his opponent Ward decided not to contest the election result.

As chairman of the National Broadcasting Development Committee ( National Broadcasting Development Committee ), Nicholls, who was also a member of the boards of Moss Empires and Radio Luxembourg , campaigned for commercial broadcasting in the mid-1960s.

Like numerous other MPs of his day, Nicholls, who was involved in the 1922 Committee consisting of conservative backbenchers from the Conservative Party faction , advocated the postponement of the death penalty after 1965 and called for its reintroduction in 1974 after a bombing by the Irish Republican Army (IRA ) a woman was killed and 41 people were injured in the Tower of London .

Electoral defeat in October 1974, member of the House of Lords

In the elections of February 28, 1974 , he finally won after four recounts against Ward with a majority of 22 votes, before Ward finally defeated him eight months later in the elections of October 10, 1974 with a majority of 1,848 votes and Nicholls after 24 years lost his lower house mandate. After these elections, he demanded - albeit unsuccessfully - the formation of a Conservative Party / Labor Party coalition to combat the high inflation that was weighing on the economy. He justified this request as follows:

“Unions distrust the Tories, and managers and investors distrust socialism . The antidote to this distrust could be a temporary truce in Westmister and in the speeches of the political parties. "
'Unions distrust the Tories, and managers and investors distrust socialism. The antidote to this distrust may well be a temporary truce at Westminster and at the hustings by the political parties. '

After retiring from the House of Commons Nicholls was the temporarily also magistrate ( Justice of the Peace ) from Staffordshire , was by a Letters Patent of 10 January 1975 as a Life Peer with the title Baron Harmar-Nicholls , of Peterborough in the County of Cambridgeshire, in the peerage collected and was until his death at the House of Lords as a member. At the time of his death, he had served in the UK Parliament for nearly fifty years .

Eurosceptic and member of the European Parliament

In addition, Baron Nicholls, who had been a well-known representative of Euroscepticism within the conservative Tories since the early 1960s , Anthony Foster:, was elected member of the first European Parliament in the 1979 European elections and represented the Greater Manchester South constituency in it until the 1984 European elections .

During his membership he spoke out against a common internal market and in favor of an Atlantic free trade area. In this regard, he advised the leading politicians of the Conservative Party:

"Our leaders should not give the impression that they are so married to Europe that they are even so unable to look at other options."
'Our Leaders should not give the impression of being so wedded to Europe that they were unable even to consider other possibilities.'

After five years of membership in the European Parliament , he saw his belief confirmed in the fact that the European Parliament “was not suited to stand the test of time for the reason that the one ingredient that is crucial to success did not exist - the ingredient was a natural affinity between the member states "('was not likely to pass the test of time, on the grounds, that the one ingredient which is vital for its success did not exist - that ingredient was a natural affinity between the member states').

In addition to his political activities, Nicholls was also active in the private sector and was also chairman of the board of directors of insurance companies, the Nicholls and Hennessy Hotels . He was also temporarily chairman of the Malvern Theater Festival .

His marriage to Dorothy Edwards in 1940 resulted in two daughters, including actress Sue Nicholls , who has played the role of 'Aubrey Roberts' since 1979 in the television series Coronation Street , which has been running since December 9, 1960 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Young: The Hugo Young Papers: Thirty Years of British Politics - off the record , 2008, 0-14190-360-0.
  2. ↑ Beatrix Campbell: Iron Ladies: Women and the Tory Party , 2013, ISBN 0-34900-416-1 , p. 1955.
  3. ^ David Seawright: The British Conservative Party and One Nation Politics , 2010, ISBN 0-82648-974-5 , p. 49.
  4. ^ DR Thorpe: Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan , 2010, ISBN 1-40905-932-4 , p. 264 u. a.
  5. ^ Giles Scott-Smith: Networks of Empire: The US State Department's Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France, and Britain, 1950-1970 , 2008, ISBN 9-05201-256-3 , pp. 378, 386, 432.
  6. ^ David Kynaston : Modernity Britain: Opening the Box, 1957-1959 , 2013, ISBN 1-40883-982-2 .
  7. ↑ London Gazette . No. 42209, HMSO, London, December 2, 1960, p. 8221 ( PDF , accessed November 2, 2013, English).
  8. ↑ Colin Rallings, Michael Thrasher (Editor): British Electoral Facts, from 1832 to 2006 , 2007 S. 294th
  9. ^ Daniel Blythe: X Marks the Box , table The Numbers Game: Close Shaves - Parliamentary Majorities of less than ten votes since 1918 , 2010, ISBN 1-84831-180-X .
  10. ^ Robert Chapman: Selling the Sixties: The Pirates and Pop Music Radio , 2012, ISBN 1-13489-624-7 .
  11. ^ Mark Jarvis: Conservative Governments, Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957-1964 , 2005, ISBN 0-71907-082-1 , p. 151.
  12. ^ John Campbell: Edward Heath: A Biography , 2013, ISBN 1-40903-996-X , p. 172.
  13. ^ Robert J. Lieber: British Politics and European Unity: Parties, Elites, and Pressure Groups , 1970, ISBN 0-52001-675-0 , p. 47.
  14. ^ Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics: Opposition to Europe in the British Conservative and Labor Parties Since 1945 , 2004, ISBN 0-20340-2-669 , p. 47.
  15. ^ NJ Crowson: The Conservative Party and European Integration Since 1945: At the Heart of Europe , 2006, ISBN 1-13414-704-X , p. 163 u. a.
  16. ^ NJ Crowson: The Conservative Party and European Integration Since 1945: At the Heart of Europe , 2006, ISBN 1-13414-704-X , p. 181.
  17. ^ NJ Crowson: The Conservative Party and European Integration Since 1945: At the Heart of Europe , 2006, ISBN 1-13414-704-X , p. 208.
personal data
SURNAME Nicholls, Harmar, Baron Harmar-Nicholls
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nicholls, Harmar, Baron Harmar-Nicholls (full name); Sir Harmar Nicholls, 1st Baronet
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Conservative Party politician, Member of the House of Commons, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Darlaston , Staffordshire
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 2000