Victor Mishcon, Baron Mishcon

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Victor Mishcon DL QC (* 14. August 1915 in London , † 27. January 2006 ) was a British solicitor and politician of the Labor Party , which many years in local politics in the London County Council (LCC) and Greater London Council (GLC), ran four times unsuccessfully for a member of the House of Commons and in 1978 as a Life Peer due to the Life Peerages Act 1958 member of the House of Lordshas been. As a solicitor, he looked after numerous well-known personalities in his own law firm for over fifty years.

Life

Studies, solicitor and career in local politics

Mishcon, the son of a rabbi in Brixton and a teacher who graduated after attending the City of London School (CLS) to study law . After graduating in 1937, at the age of 22, he opened his own law firm as a solicitor because of the hostility towards Jews that existed at the time .

After the end of World War II , Mishcon began his political career for the Labor Party in local politics and was initially a member of the council of the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth between 1945 and 1949 . In addition, he also became a member of the London County Council (LCC) in 1946 and represented the interests of Brixton in this until the LCC was dissolved in 1965 . During this time in 1947 he became the youngest chairman of the finance committee of this body. As the successor to Ivy Molly Bolton, he was also chairman of the LCC between 1954 and his replacement by Norman George Mollett Prichard in 1955. In 1958 he became chairman of the LCC's fire services committee.

One of his best-known clients was Ruth Ellis , who murdered her lover and was the last woman to be executed in Great Britain after the death penalty was imposed . The day before the execution, she informed Mishcon that the gun she used to murder her lover David Blakely had been given to her by her former lover Desmond Cussen, who had driven her to Hampstead , where she shot and killed the racing driver Blakely. She hadn't testified against Cussen at the trial because it would have looked treacherous. Mishcon reported this to the Home Office , whereupon the long-time Permanent Under-Secretary of State , Frank Newsam , who was at the horse race in Ascot at the time, was informed . However, the police failed to track down Cussen to confirm this. However, no suspension of execution was granted. Six months asked for the execution on July 13, 1955 Minister of the Interior ( Home Secretary ) Gwilym Lloyd George to the Director of Public indictments ( Director of Public Prosecutions ) whether charges have been brought for aiding and abetting against Cussen, but this was not done.

As a solicitor, he also advised the financier Maxwell Joseph , who founded the Grand Metropolitan hotel chain through numerous hotel acquisitions . The purchases of hotels such as the Norfolk Hotels were criticized by many Labor members of the period as capitalism , while Mishcon called them “a perfectly honorable commercial transaction”.

Unsuccessful lower house candidacies

During that time, Mishcon also ran four unsuccessful MPs for the House of Commons , first in the February 23, 1950 elections . In the election he was defeated by the candidate of the Conservative Party Donald Kaberry , who got 24,161 votes (57.8 percent), while he received only 14,562 votes (34.84 percent).

In the subsequent general election on October 25, 1951 , he suffered a defeat in the constituency of Bath against James Pitman , the candidate of the Conservative Tories , who received 27,826 votes (55.26 percent), while Mishcon only got 22,530 (44.74 percent) ) came.

In addition, he was a member of a government commission from 1953 to 1954, which dealt with the situation in local public transport in London. Between 1954 and 1957 he was also a member of a Royal Commission on Homosexuality and Prostitution ( Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution ), which presented the 1959 Wolfenden Report named after chairman John Wolfenden . In it, the commission suggested the legalization of private homosexual acts between consenting adults over the age of 21. This recommendation was incorporated into law a few years later through the Sexual Offenses Act of 1967.

Subsequently, Mishcon ran in the elections on May 26, 1955 for the first time in the constituency of Gravesend against the Conservative Party politician Peter Michael Kirk . Kirk received 22,058 votes (46.22 percent), while he himself only received 19,149 votes (40.13 percent).

In the elections of October 8, 1959 , he ran for the last time for a House of Commons mandate. Again he was defeated by Kirk in the constituency of Gravesend : This time Kirk got 27,124 votes (52.08 percent) and Mishcon 24,962 votes (47.92 percent).

As a representative of the Labor Party, Mishcon was elected a member of the newly established Greater London Council (GLC) in 1964 and was a member until 1967. During this time he also served as chairman of the general affairs committee of that body. At the same time he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Royal National Theater between 1965 and 1967 and also became a member of the Advisory Board of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) in 1966 . He was also a member of the London Tourist Board from 1965 to 1967 .

Engagement in Jewish organizations, member of the House of Lords and senior partner of the law firm Mishcon de Reya

Mishcon was also involved in various Jewish organizations and was both Vice President and President of the Association of Jewish Youth and between 1967 and 1973 Vice President of the Council of Deputies of the Jews of Great Britain. In addition, he campaigned for Judeo-Christian dialogue in his role as Vice-Chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, a position he held from 1976 to 1977. He was also chairman of the British Council of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem . Among the many charitable causes he supported was the founding of the Manfred Altman Library at University College London . Previously, he was Manfred Altman's successor as chairman of the Institute for Jewish Studies located there.

By a letters patent dated May 10, 1978, Mishcon, who was a member of the South Bank Theater Board between 1977 and 1982 , was raised to the nobility as a life peer with the title Baron Mishcon , of Lambeth in Greater London, and remained in the nobility until his death the House of Lords as a member. His official introduction ( Introduction ) as a member of the House of Lords took place on June 28, 1978 with the support of Anthony Greenwood, Baron Greenwood of Rossendale and Max Rayne, Baron Rayne .

During this time he was between 1983 and 1992 spokesman for the opposition Labor Group in the House of Lords for Legal Affairs and as such at the same time " Lord Chancellor " in the shadow cabinet of his party and was then replaced by Derry Irvine, Baron Irvine of Lairg in these functions.

In the mid-1980s, Mishcon played a leading role in secret meetings between Israel and Jordan . There were several private meetings in his country house between the King of Jordan Hussein I , whose daughter Princess Basma was a school friend of his daughter, and Shimon Peres , the then Foreign Minister of Israel .

He ran the law firm Mishcon until it merged into the law firm Mishcon de Reya in 1988, of which he became a senior partner. After his retirement, he became a consultant to this law firm in 1992.

Mishcon's other well-known clients included Peter Palumbo, Baron Palumbo and Jeffrey Archer , whom he represented in a lawsuit in which the writer was awarded £ 500,000 in damages for an alleged relationship with a prostitute. Mishcon also served as Archer's legal advisor in a 2001 criminal case in which Archer was eventually sentenced to four years' imprisonment for perjury in the previous trial.

He also advised the sons of the publisher Robert Maxwell , who were arrested in 1992 for a pension fund affair and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, but were acquitted in 1996. His law firm was also hired by Diana, Princess of Wales to conduct the divorce proceedings, although Mishcon was only an advisor to the firm at that point.

Mishcon has received several awards for his services and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Birmingham in 1991 . On 28 April 1992, he was among one of the first - and still few - Solicitors that the Attorney-General ( Queen's Counsel have been appointed). Mishcon, who also became the commander of the North Star Order , was also honored with the Order of the Star of Ethiopia in 1954 and the Order of the Star of Jordan in 1995 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ London Gazette . No. 47531, HMSO, London, May 12, 1978, p. 5717 ( PDF , accessed November 29, 2013, English).
  2. ^ Entry in Hansard from June 28, 1978
  3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 52909, HMSO, London, May 1, 1992, p. 7629 ( PDF , accessed November 29, 2013, English).
personal data
SURNAME Mishcon, Victor, Baron Mishcon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Brixton
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 2006
Place of death London