Ronald Cross

Sir Ronald Hibbert Cross, 1st Baronet KCMG , KCVO , PC (born May 9, 1896 in Pendleton ( Lancashire ), England , † June 3, 1968 in London ) was a British politician and Governor of Tasmania .

Life

Cross was born in 1896 to a wealthy miller family. While studying at Eton College he learned German , among other things , and then worked in banking.

During the First World War he was a fighter pilot with the Royal Flying Corps . In 1931 he was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative MP . During the Second World War he held the post of Minister of Economic Warfare (1939-1940) and Minister of Shipping (from 1940). After criticism of him in the press, he was removed from his post in 1941 and sent to Australia as high commissioner . On August 15, 1941, the hereditary title of Baronet , of Bolton-Le-Moors in the County of Lancaster , was raised to him in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom . In 1945 he lost his parliamentary mandate after his return to England, as his long absence had met with resentment in his constituency of Lancashire.

In 1950, Cross was re-elected to the House of Commons, but gave up his mandate a year later after he had been offered the position of Governor of Tasmania. In August 1951 he took office in Hobart .

In 1954 he was accepted as a Knight Commander in the Royal Victorian Order and in 1955 as a Knight Commander in the Order of St. Michael and St. George .

In 1958 he retired and returned to England. He died in Westminster on June 3, 1968 .

On his death in 1968 he left four daughters but no sons, so that his title of nobility became extinct.

Literature and web links

• Cross, Sir Ronald Hibbert . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1966–2012 (English).
• Rt. Hon. Sir Ronald Hibbert Cross, 1st and last Bt. On thepeerage.com
• Newspaper article about Ronald Cross in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .