Reginald Fletcher

Reginald Thomas Herbert Flechter, 1st Baron Winster (born March 27, 1885, † June 7, 1961 in Uckfield, Sussex) was a British politician (Liberal Party, Labor Party). He officiated a. a. as British Governor of Cyprus and Minister for Civil Aviation.

Life and activity

Fletcher was a son of the mathematician Nicholas Fletcher (1848-1905) and his wife Dinah, Wright († 1912).

Flechter took part in the First World War as an officer in the Navy. He was used in Gallipoli, among others, and achieved the rank of commander. Later he was a member of the British foreign intelligence service MI6.

On the occasion of the British general election in 1923, Flechter was elected as a candidate for the Liberal Party in the Basingstoke constituency as a member of the House of Commons , the British Parliament. In the general election of 1924, he lost his seat in parliament again when he was defeated by the conservative Arthur Richard Holbrook .

After joining the Labor Party in 1929, Flechter managed to return to the House of Commons as a member of the House of Commons in the 1935 general election, to which he was now a member of the Nuneaton constituency until 1942. In 1942 he left the House of Commons as a result of his elevation to the nobility (as Baron Winster, of Witherslack in the County of Westmorland) and the associated promotion to the House of Lords. Since 1945 he was also a member of the Privy Council , the British Privy Council .

At the end of the 1930s, Fletcher was classified as an important target by the National Socialist police forces: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be in the case A successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special SS commandos with special priority.

During the Second World War Flechter acted in addition to his parliamentary membership as a parliamentary Under-Secretary of the First Lord of the Admiralty (Minister of the Navy).

From August 4, 1945 to October 4, 1946, Flechter served as Minister of Civil Aviation in the government of Clement Attlee . He was then appointed British Governor of Cyprus, a post he held from 1946 to 1949. He arrived on March 27, 1947 on the island

Since Flechter was childless, his title of nobility expired with his death.

literature

• Ivor Bulmer-Thomas: "Fletcher, Reginal, Thomas Herbert, Baron Winster (1885-1961)", in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .

Web links

• Newspaper article about Reginald Fletcher in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Fletcher on the special wanted list GB .