Peter Rawlinson, Baron Rawlinson of Ewell

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Anthony Grayson Rawlinson, Baron Rawlinson of Ewell Kt PC QC (born June 26, 1919 in Iping , West Sussex , † June 28, 2006 ) was a British lawyer , politician ( Conservative Party ) and writer . Rawlinson was nearly 23 years member of the House of Commons , while the office of the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home 1962-1974 Solicitor General for England and Wales , as well as during the tenure of Prime Minister Edward Heath from 1970 to 1974 Attorney General ( Attorney General ) and became a Life Peer member of the House of Lords in 1978 under the Life Peerages Act 1958 . As Solicitor General and Attorney General, he was involved in various important legal proceedings of the governments of the time, while as a writer, in addition to poems and non-fiction books, he also wrote seven novels that took place in the British legal system.

Life

Second World War, lawyer and unsuccessful lower house candidacy

Rawlinson, son of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Richard Rawlinson, began after the visit of the Benedictines operated Downside School in Stratton-on-the-Fosse in Somerset studying law at Christ's College of the University of Cambridge . However, he interrupted his studies because of his participation in World War II , in which he performed his military service after training as an officer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst with the Irish Guards . Most recently he was promoted to major and was mentioned in the war report because of his bravery during operations in the African campaign ( Mentioned in Despatches ). After the end of the war he continued his studies and received after completing his studies in 1946 as a barrister at the bar ( Inns of Court ) of Inner Temple .

A few years later he began his political career and ran in the general election on October 25, 1951 for the Conservative Party in the constituency of Hackney South , but was clearly defeated by the constituency holder of the Labor Party , Herbert Butler . While Butler received 39,271 votes (66.5 percent), he only got 18,003 votes (30.5 percent).

In 1955 Rawlinson was one of the defenders of Ruth Ellis , who murdered her lover and was the last woman to be executed in Britain . Public attention in the trial brought about a change in the legal system that resulted in a suspension of the death penalty ten years later in 1965 .

Member of the House of Commons and Attorney General

In the general election on May 26, 1955 , Rawlinson was elected as a candidate for the Conservative Tories for the first time as a member of the House of Commons, in the constituency of Epsom as the successor to his no longer-in-office friend Malcolm McCorquodale . He represented the constituency of Epsom until its dissolution before the general election on February 28th .

For his legal services he was appointed Crown Attorney ( Queen's Counsel ) in 1959 and then joined the office of the well-known Crown Attorney Gerald Gardiner , who was Lord Chancellor in the Labor Party government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson from 1964 to 1970 . The experience he gained at Gardiner soon made him a recognized barrister himself.

In 1962 he was also named a Bencher of the Inner Temple Bar Association, after having been an honorary judge ( recorder ) in Salisbury between 1961 and 1962 .

Solicitor General

Night of the Long Knives and the Vassall Affair

On July 19, 1962, Rawlinson was appointed by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to succeed John Hobson as Solicitor General of England and Wales and also held this position in the subsequent government of Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home until the Conservative Party was defeated in the general election on October 15, 1964 and his related replacement by Dingle Foot on October 18, 1964. Hobson himself was appointed attorney general by Prime Minister Macmillan as part of this extensive cabinet reshuffle known as the “Night of the Long Knives”.

On July 20, 1962 Rawlinson was beaten to the Knight Bachelor and from then on carried the suffix "Sir". In addition, he was appointed Privy Counselor (PC) on January 1, 1964 .

In November 1962, Rawlinson and Hobson had to take the case of the homosexual employee of Admiralty , John Vassall, concerned that the espionage for the Soviet Union was suspected. In this context, there were also investigations into ministers and civilian workers and the resignation of Tam Galbraith , who was previously Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty and, at the time of his resignation, Under-Secretary of State for Scotland . The charges were then refuted by a judicial investigation tribunal chaired by Cyril Radcliffe , so that Galbraith took over a junior ministerial office on May 3, 1963 as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport .

Profumo affair

Based on the experience in the Galbraith case, leading ministers and the legal representatives of the Crown were reluctant to react when there were suspicions of Secretary of State for War , John Profumo , in the course of the Profumo affair in early 1963 . Rawlinson was among those who questioned Profumo about his alleged relationships with model Christine Keeler .

He believed Profumo's statement that he had no relationship with Keeler and represented this statement in a summary of the affair at a meeting of the House of Commons. However, on June 5, 1963, Profumo resigned from his ministerial office and admitted that he had lied to the House of Commons. The Prime Minister and his legal advisers have been sharply criticized for their gullibility and incompetence in handling the affair. However, the resignation offered by Rawlinson was rejected by Macmillan.

D Notice affair

After the resignation of Alec Douglas-Home as chairman of the Conservative Party in 1965, Rawlinson voted for Reginald Maudling instead of Edward Heath and retired after the election of Heath as front bencher of the Tory faction in order to devote himself more to his legal career.

In 1967 he defended the newspaper Daily Express in the D-Notice affair. The newspaper intended to publish an article that the Department of Defense would routinely review overseas cable reports from the General Post Office and telecommunications company Cable & Wireless plc . A D-Notice committee made up of Defense Department staff and journalists warned the editor-in-chief of the Daily Express that if published, the article could endanger the security of the UK. The newspaper nonetheless published the article despite severe criticism from Prime Minister Wilson and won the resulting lawsuit in which Rawlinson represented the newspaper.

Attorney General of England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Between 1967 and 1970 he was chairman of the Parliamentary Legal Committee and, after the resignation of John Hobson in 1967, also chief legal advisor to opposition leader Edward Heath's shadow cabinet .

On June 23, 1970, following the election victory of the Conservative Tories in the general election of June 18, 1970, Prime Minister Edward Heath appointed Attorney General for England and Wales ( Attorney General for England and Wales ), as expected , and held this post until the end of his term of office Heath after being defeated in the general election on February 28, 1974.

Important legal proceedings as Attorney General

A few days after taking office he led for the Crown case against the brothers Hosein for hijacking and murder of Muriel McKay that with the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch was confused. In September 1970, Arab terrorists were prevented from hijacking a plane belonging to the Israeli airline El Al that was attempting to make an unscheduled landing at London Heathrow Airport .

The government arrested the surviving hijacker, Leila Khaled, which raised questions about how to deal with terrorists taking over other planes and putting the lives of British nationals at risk. Rawlinson then ruled that Khaled could be released in exchange with other hostages, as the hijacking was not directed against a British plane and Britain's national interests were not affected.

In December 1970 he was a representative of the British government in the proceedings regarding the refusal of the extension of the residence permit and the expulsion of the German student leader Rudi Dutschke , who was recovering in Great Britain following the assassination attempt by Josef Bachmann on April 11, 1968.

In August 1972, the dictator of Uganda Idi Amin had Asians deported, many of whom had British passports and who subsequently wanted to enter Great Britain. Although the government intended to impose entry restrictions, Rawlinson advised the cabinet against it. These and other decisions led to criticism within the Conservative Party and the media.

Proceedings against The Sunday Times for articles on thalidomide

In September 1970 he was charged with the Times Newspapers Ltd after their Sunday newspaper The Sunday Times wrote a report about blemishes found in children whose mothers had taken the drug thalidomide . The newspaper had already published the first of a series of articles and had sent the second article to the attorney general and the drug manufacturer, the Distillers Company , for comment.

The Distillers Company complained that a number of the cases were already under review and that one publication would be likely to promote a public at the expense of another. The parties agreed that the government should produce a "friendly" test case, and Rawlinson sought a judicial ban on The Sunday Times' publication of the article . The House of Lords eventually approved a publication ban on grounds of contempt.

However, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg overturned this decision as it constituted a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights . British law was then brought into line with this decision.

His workload as Attorney General was particularly complex because the then Solicitor General Geoffrey Howe had to deal primarily with the legal preparation of the Industrial Relations Act , which is important for the economic order, as well as the accession of Great Britain to the European Communities .

Appointed Northern Ireland Attorney General and re-elected to the House of Commons in 1974

At the same time he was sent to his legal registration in Northern Ireland and the appointment as Attorney-General in Northern Ireland on 30 March 1972 in the wake of the conflict in Northern Ireland after the resolution of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the introduction of British direct rule over Northern Ireland ( Direct Rule ) at the same time as the successor to Basil Kelly also attorney General of Northern Ireland ( attorney General for Northern Ireland ) and remained in this position also to March 4, 1974. Shortly after his appointment was by the anarchist urban guerrilla group Angry Brigade made a bomb attack on his house, so he and his family after armed police protection received.

In the general election on February 28, 1974, Rawlinson was re-elected as a member of the House of Commons in the newly created constituency of Epsom and Ewell and with 35,823 votes (54.68 percent) was able to clearly beat his competitor from the Liberal Party , DJH Griffiths (18,899 Votes, 28.85 percent) and Labor , NJ Kearney (10,787 votes, 16.47 percent) prevailed. On April 6, 1978, he resigned from the House mandate, after which at the now necessary by -election ( by-election ) on 27 April 1978 his party colleague Archie Hamilton with 28,242 votes (63.61 percent) was elected as his successor.

Legal officer and member of the House of Lords

Rawlinson was then between 1975 and 1982 chairman of the Western Circuit , one of the six institutions overseen by the Lord Chancellor for regional legal administration in England and Wales, which also serves as the basis for legal administration and is composed of judges and lawyers. At the same time, he was Chairman of the Senate of Inns of Court and Bar from 1975 and 1976 and was the recorder of Kingston upon Thames in 1975 .

By a letters patent dated April 17, 1978, Rawlinson was raised to the nobility after his surrender of his mandate in the House of Commons as a life peer with the title Baron Rawlinson of Ewell , of Ewell in the County of Surrey, and belonged to the house until his death of Lords as a member. He was officially inducted as a member of the House of Lords on April 19, 1978 with the assistance of Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington and Quintin McGarel Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone .

In the following years he worked again as a lawyer and was, among other things, attorney in legal proceedings for the billionaire James Goldsmith , Indira Gandhi and Arnold Goodman, Baron Goodman . In 1980 he represented the Daily Mail in a defamation trial against the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon after the newspaper criticized the organization for destroying families. Rawlinson interviewed over 100 witnesses during the October 1980 to March 1981 trial - one of the longest libel trials in British legal history - and eventually won the case for the newspaper.

In 1983 he was also reader and 1984 Treasurer ( Treasurer ) of the Bar Association of the Inner Temple. Most recently he became a board member of The Daily Telegraph in 1985 and was president of the bar from 1986 and 1987.

Writing activity

Rawlinson had already published a volume of poetry entitled War Poems and Poetry Today during the Second World War in 1943 . In 1978 he published Public Duty and Personal Faith: the example of Thomas More, a work about the Lord Chancellor and humanist author Thomas More . After his autobiography A Price Too High: An Autobiography (1989), The Jesuit Factor was published in 1990 .

Since the early 1990s, he has written a total of seven novels that dealt with the British legal system as judicial thrillers.

Fonts

  • War Poems and Poetry Today , 1943
  • Public Duty and Personal Faith: the example of Thomas More , 1978
  • A Price Too High: An Autobiography , 1989
  • The Jesuit Factor , 1990
  • Colombia Syndicate , 1991
  • Hatred and Contempt , Orion Books Limited, 1992, ISBN 1-85797-152-3
  • His Brother's Keeper , Orion Books Limited, 1993, ISBN 1-85797-526-X
  • Indictment for Murder. A Mystery , St. Martin's Press, 1994, ISBN 0-31225-325-7
  • The Caverel Claim , St. Martin's Press, 1998, ISBN 0-31219-343-2
  • The Richmond Diary , St. Martin's Press, 2001, ISBN 0-31227-553-6
  • A Relic of War , Constable & Robinson Limited, 2004, ISBN 1-84119-780-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 42740, HMSO, London, July 24, 1964, p. 5909 ( PDF , accessed November 24, 2013, English).
  2. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 43200, HMSO, London, December 31, 1963, p. 1 ( PDF , accessed November 24, 2013, English).
  3. ↑ A RISK FOR ENGLAND: SPIEGEL editor Dieter Brumm on the London Dutschke Tribunal . In: Der Spiegel of December 21, 1970 (No. 52/1970)
  4. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 47495, HMSO, London, March 20, 1978, p. 3573 ( PDF , accessed November 24, 2013, English).
  5. ↑ London Gazette . No. 47519, HMSO, London, April 24, 1978, p. 4731 ( PDF , accessed November 24, 2013, English).
  6. ^ Entry in Hansard (April 19, 1978)
personal data
SURNAME Rawlinson, Peter, Baron Rawlinson of Ewell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rawlinson, Peter Anthony Grayson, Baron Rawlinson of Ewell (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British lawyer, politician (Conservative Party), member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Iping , West Sussex
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 2006