Peter Thorneycroft, Baron Thorneycroft

George Edward Peter Thorneycroft, Baron Thorneycroft CH , PC (born July 26, 1909 , † June 4, 1994 in London ) was a British politician .

biography

After visiting the Eton College he performed from 1930 to 1933 his military service with the Royal Navy Artillery of the British Army .

He began his political career in 1938 when he was elected representative of the Conservative Party to the House of Commons . There he initially represented the constituency of Stafford . In the general election in 1945 he was re-elected to represent the constituency of Monmouth and was a member of the House of Commons until 1966.

In October 1951 he was appointed President of the Board of Trade by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the latter's cabinet and held this office until January 1957 under Churchill's successor, Anthony Eden .

In January 1957, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord High Treasurer to the government. However, Thorneycroft resigned from these offices as early as January 1958, along with his Parliamentary Finance Secretary Enoch Powell and Parliamentary Economic Secretary Nigel Birch in protest against the government's plans to increase spending.

In 1960, however, he was reappointed as Minister of Aviation in the Macmillan government and, after a cabinet reshuffle, took over as Minister of Defense in 1962. He kept this in the subsequent government of Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home . From April to October 1964 he was finally briefly now under the new title Secretary of State for Defense still responsible for the defense policy of Great Britain.

On December 4, 1967, as a life peer with the title Baron Thorneycroft , of Dunston in the County of Stafford, was raised to the nobility and thereby a member of the House of Lords .

Between 1975 and 1981 he was Chairman ( Chairman ) of the Conservative Party.

Web links

• Peter Thorneycroft, Baron Thorneycroft in the nndb (English)
• Peter Thorneycroft at Hansard (English)