Thomas Dugdale, 1st Baron Crathorne

Thomas Lionel Dugdale, 1st Baron Crathorne PC (born July 20, 1897 , † March 26, 1977 in London ) was a British politician of the Conservative Party .

Personal

Thomas Dugdale was the son of Captain James Lionel Dugdale of Crathorne Hall near Yarm in Yorkshire . He received his training at Eton and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst .

In 1916 he joined the army and served in the First World War in the Scots Grays and in the Second World War in the Yorkshire Hussars . From 1936 he was married to Nancy Tennant, daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet and his wife Marguerite. Nancy Dugdale was the youngest of 16 children from Tennant, who was 81 when she was born. One of her half sisters was the wife of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith . The Spiegel described Dugdale in 1954 that he " with his jovial, round face and his body looks like the real John Bull ". The family led a lively social life and hosted many prominent guests at Crathorne Hall such as Yehudi Menuhin and Edith Evans .

Thomas Dugdale had two sons. After his death in 1977, his son James followed him as a peer .

Political career

In 1929 Thomas Dugdale was elected to the British Parliament as a member of the Richmond constituency in North Yorkshire . He represented this constituency in the House of Commons for 30 years . Under various ministers, including Stanley Baldwin , he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary worked as well as Parliamentary Secretary . He later was chairman of the Conservative Party and the party's Agricultural Committee. In 1945 he was promoted to Baronet , of Crathorne in the County of York.

The Crichel Down Affair

After the Conservatives won the UK general election in 1951, Churchill appointed Dugdale Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. In 1954, however, he resigned from his post and took responsibility for the affairs of the Crichel Down estate in Dorset , which had preoccupied the public for months.

The estate was part of an area that had been bought by the British Aviation Department in 1937 to use it as a bomb training area. Almost half of the land that had to be forcibly given up belonged to Crichel Down, owned by Napier Sturt, 3rd Baron Alington . In 1950 the practice area was no longer needed and the Ministry of Aviation transferred the area to the Ministry of Agriculture. Captin George Martin, a former naval officer and son-in-law of Lord Alington, sought the buyback. The Ministry initially tried to manage Crichel Down as a model farm. Then the estate was leased to a farmer , bypassing the heirs .

Martin did not want to accept that, but for years the ministerial bureaucracy kept him off with new promises. “ This attitude of the officials, commented attorney Sir Andrew Clark in charge of the case, has reflected from the outset the determination of Labor politicians not to return into private hands anything that for any reason had become state property. But this attitude did not change when the socialist Attlee was replaced by the conservative Churchill. “Finally, Captain Martin was able to present himself to Dugdale, who ordered an investigation. The result was a white paper that found in this case an “ unspeakable entanglement of departments, ministries and commissions ”. It also turned out that the officials had misled Dugdale, from whom they had concealed the fact that Lord Alington had only sold his land under duress. Thereupon Thomas Dugdale announced his resignation as minister on July 20, 1954 (his birthday) in front of Parliament. No British minister since 1917 had personally announced his resignation in the House of Commons. Premier Churchill accepted and commented, "Highly chivalrous."

Historical processing

Dugdale's resignation has been seen as honorable, even heroic, in British history: a minister had taken responsibility for the actions of officials under his authority. Thirty years later, however, documents were published showing that Dugdale knew about the actions of his officials, approved them and, to some extent, blamed them. It also found that the investigation at the time was flawed and unbalanced, as it was led by a conservative politician who was strictly against officials and government interference.

Later years

Thomas Dugdale was peered in 1959 with the title Baron Crathorne , of Crathorne in the North Riding of Yorkshire . He became politically active in Europe by forming networks with parliamentarians in NATO and the Council of Europe .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Crathorne Hall at handpickedhotels.co.uk
2. ↑ Wedding Capt. Tommy Dugdale & Mrs. Nancy Gates 1936 . British Pathe. Retrieved October 21, 2013.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} The heirs of Crichel Down . The mirror v. July 28, 1954

literature

• Charles Kidd / David Williamson (Eds.): Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage . St Martin's Press. New York 1990

Web links

• Major Thomas Lionel Dugdale, 1st Baron Crathorne, on thepeerage.com , accessed September 18, 2016.
• Thomas Dugdale at Hansard (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Crathorne 1959-1977	James Dugdale