William Morrison, 1st Viscount Dunrossil

William Morrison, 1st Viscount Dunrossil and his wife

William Shepherd Morrison, 1st Viscount Dunrossil GCMG , MC , KStJ , PC , QC (born October 8, 1893 in Oban (Scotland) , † February 3, 1961 in Canberra ) was a British politician of the Conservative Party , speaker of the House of Commons ( House of Commons ) and Governor General of Australia .

Family and career

Morrison's father worked as a miner in a diamond mine in South Africa until it was sold to the DeBeers company. He then settled as a farmer in Scotland.

In 1912 he began studying art and law at the University of Edinburgh . He then joined the British Army in World War I and then served in an artillery regiment in France , where he was awarded the Military Cross . In 1919 he was retired from military service with the rank of captain . He then resumed his studies and obtained a Master of Arts (MA) in 1920 .

Between 1922 and 1929 he was private secretary of the then Solicitor- General and Attorney General Thomas Inskip . In 1923 he was also admitted to the bar.

Political career

MP

Morrison began his political career in 1923 and 1924 with unsuccessful elections to the House of Commons for the Western Isles constituency .

In 1929 he was finally elected member of the House of Commons. There he represented the constituency of Cirencester - Tewkesbury . He was a member of the Conservative Party . During his membership in parliament, which lasted until 1959, he was nicknamed "Shakes" because of his initials WS and his preference for using Shakespeare quotes in his speeches.

Minister and opposition time

In 1931 he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney General by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald . In 1935, he was appointed to the cabinet of his successor, Stanley Baldwin , as finance secretary to the Chancellor of the Treasury . In 1936 he was appointed a member of the Privy Council . At the same time he became a minister himself for the first time and took over the management of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries until 1939 under Baldwin and his successor Arthur Neville Chamberlain .

During the Second World War he was under Chamberlain from 1939 to 1940 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of Food and then under Prime Minister Winston Churchill until 1943 Postmaster General . He was then Minister of Urban and Rural Planning until Churchill was defeated in the general election in 1945.

In these parliamentary elections he attacked Clement Attlee's Labor Party by criticizing their “ socialism ” and claiming that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had also started out as socialists. In 1947 he criticized the identity cards, which had already been introduced during the war, as a nuisance for law-abiding citizens and because of their alleged ineffectiveness.

Speaker of Parliament

After the election victory of the Conservative Party under Churchill in the general election in 1951, he was elected as the successor to the resigned Douglas Clifton Brown to spokesman (Speaker) of the House of Commons. In this election, there was for the first time a choice between two candidates, as the Labor Party claimed this office for itself after the election defeat and nominated the previous Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons James Milner for the office. In 1959 Morrison resigned from parliament and was replaced as speaker by his party friend Harry Hylton-Foster .

Member of the House of Lords and Governor General of Australia

After leaving the House of Commons, he was raised as a speaker in 1959, as usual, to the hereditary nobility . He then carried the title of Viscount Dunrossil , of Vallaquie on the Isle of Uist in the County of Inverness and as such belonged to the House of Lords .

In the same year he was appointed Governor General of Australia . At this point in time, the request of a local Governor General had arisen in Australia itself, but the then Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies , had to bow to the British proposal. On February 2, 1960, he took office as Governor General. On February 3, 1961, he died exactly one year and one day after taking office in Canberra . Morrison was the only Australian Governor General to die in office.

His title Viscount Dunrossil was taken over by his son John Morrison , the career diplomat and governor of Bermuda from 1983 to 1988 .

Web links

• David I. Smith: First Viscount Dunrossil . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1966–2012 (English).
• "Mr. Speaker Protests" , article in TIME-MAGAZINE from November 12, 1951
• "Reckless & Foolish Decision" , article in TIME-MAGAZINE from November 12, 1956

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Viscount Dunrossil 1959-1961	John Morrison