James Prior

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James "Jim" Michael Leathes Prior, Prior Baron PC (* 11. October 1927 ; † 12. December 2016 ) was a British politician of the Conservative Party .

biography

After attending the traditional, elite Charterhouse School , he did his military service in the British Army in the Royal Norfolk Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division . He then completed a degree in real estate management at Pembroke College of University of Cambridge , which he with a Bachelor of Arts graduated (BA Estate Management).

His political career began as a candidate of the Conservative Party for the first time in 1959 when he as a deputy in the lower house (House of Commons) has been selected and there until 1983 the constituency Lowestoft represented. He was then until 1987 a member of the lower house for the constituency Waveney .

After the Tories won the 1970 general election , Prime Minister Edward Heath appointed him Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in his cabinet. After a government reshuffle, he was Lord President of the Council from 1972 until the end of Heath's tenure in 1974 and at the same time leader of the conservative majority parliamentary group in the House of Commons ( Leader of the House of Commons ) . During this time he was a close confidante and advisor to the Prime Minister.

After Heath's defeat in the general election in February 1974 , he ran for the office of chairman of the Conservative Party. After Heath was defeated on February 4, 1975 in the 1st ballot for the election as chairman of the Conservative Party against his challenger Margaret Thatcher , the previous shadow opposition leader John Peyton entered in the 2nd ballot on February 11, 1975 against this as an opposing candidate. However, Peyton lost and achieved after Thatcher (146 votes) and the favorite by Heath William Whitelaw (79 votes) and Geoffrey Howe and Prior (19 votes each) only 11 votes and thus the last place of the five candidates in the second ballot.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher named Prior Minister of Employment after winning the general election on May 3, 1979 . After a government reshuffle, he was Minister for Northern Ireland from September 14, 1981 to September 11, 1984 . He tried to relax the Irish hunger strike of 1980/81 , which resulted from the Dirty Protest and which resulted in the death of the IRA activist and Northern Irish MP Bobby Sands .

After retiring from the House, he was on 16 October 1987 as a Life Peer with the title Baron Prior , of Brampton in the County of Suffolk , in the peerage collected and was thus the upper house (House of Lords) to. Most recently he was one of the members of the House of Lords on leave .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Former Conservative minister Lord Prior dies . BBC , December 12, 2016 (English).
  2. ^ Philip Cowley, Matthew Bailey: Peasants' Uprising or Religious War? Re-Examining the 1975 Conservative Leadership Contest . In: British Journal of Political Science . tape 30 , no. 4 . Cambridge University Press, October 2000, pp. 599-629 , JSTOR : 194287 (English).
  3. ↑ Thatcher's Class of '79: Jim Prior. BBC , accessed December 12, 2016.
  4. ^ JL Waine: The London Gazette . No. 51097, p. 12971 , October 21, 1987 (PDF; 90 kB; English).
personal data
SURNAME Prior, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Prior, Jim; Prior, James Michael Leathes, Baron Prior (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1927
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 2016