Harry Crookshank, 1st Viscount Crookshank

Henry Frederick Comfort Crookshank, 1st Viscount Crookshank CH , PC (* 27. May 1893 in Cairo ; † 17th October 1961 ) was a British politician of the Conservative Party .

biography

Churchill's Cabinet 1955; Crookshank is on the far right

After schooling at Eton College , he studied at Magdalen College of the University of Oxford . During the First World War, he did his military service in the British Army in the Grenadier Guards , the second oldest regiment of the Guards Division ( Guards Division ) . During a combat mission, Crookshank, who was last a captain, was so badly injured by shrapnel that he lost the ability to reproduce . After the end of the war, he entered the diplomatic service in 1919 .

His political career began Crookshank as a candidate of the Conservative Party for the first time in 1924 when he as a deputy in the lower house ( House of Commons ) has been selected and there until 1956 the constituency Gainsborough represented.

Ten years later he was selected by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald 1934 Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of the Interior ( Home Office appointed) before 1935-1939 Parliamentary Secretary for Mines in the governments of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain was. Then Prime Minister Chamberlain appointed him in 1939 as Financial Secretary to the Treasury and held this position in the war government of Chamberlain's successor Winston Churchill . At the same time he was Postmaster General between 1942 and 1945 and thus for the first time a member of the cabinet.

After the victory of the Tories in the general election in 1951 , Prime Minister Churchill appointed him Minister of Health before he was Lord Seal Keeper after a cabinet reshuffle between 1952 and the end of Churchill's tenure in 1955 . At the same time, Crookshank was from 1951 to 1955 chairman of the conservative majority faction in the lower house and thus Leader of the House of Commons .

After retiring from the House, he was in 1956 as Viscount Crookshank , of Gainsborough in the County of Lincoln to the hereditary peerage collected and thus a member of the upper house ( House of Lords ) . After the death of the childless Crookshank, who was also a member of the renowned London Carlton Club , the title of nobility expired.

literature

• Simon Ball: The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three Friends and the World They Made . Harper Perennial, London 2005, ISBN 978-0-00-653163-0 . (English speaking).

Web links

• Harry Crookshank, 1st Viscount Crookshank in nndb (English)
• Captain Harry Crookshank at Hansard (English)