Woodrow Wyatt, Baron Wyatt of Weeford

Woodrow Lyle Wyatt, Baron Wyatt of Weeford (born July 4, 1918 , † December 7, 1997 in London ) was a British journalist and politician.

Life

Woodrow Wyatt was the son of a preschool director and got his first name after US President Woodrow Wilson . He attended Eastbourne College in the south of England before moving to Oxford to study law at Worcester College . Even before the UK officially entered the war, he enrolled as a soldier in World War II . He served as a major in the Suffolk Regiment and was involved in the Allied landings in Normandy , which earned him a mention in the official war report. He was then posted in India , where lively contact with representatives of the Indian National Congress led the British secret service to assess him as a possible communist .

family

Wyatt was related to the musician Robert Wyatt , a cousin of the cricketer Bob Wyatt and a descendant of the famous Wyatt family of architects .

He was married a total of four times.

• In 1939 he married Susan Jaqueline Cox , whom he had met while studying at Oxford. She left him during his army service in favor of a civil servant. The marriage ended in divorce in 1944.
• In 1948 he married his secretary Alix Robbins (according to other sources, Nora Robbins ). The couple separated after five years and divorced in 1956.
• In 1957 he married Lady Moorea Hastings , daughter of Francis Hastings, 16th Earl of Huntingdon . From this marriage a son was born. Pericles Plantagenet James Casati Wyatt was born in 1963 and initially grew up with relatives. After divorcing Moorea in 1966, Wyatt was given custody of the child, which was a peculiarity at the time. Pericles later lived as a bar owner in California .
• In 1966 he married Veronica Banszky von Ambroz (née Racz) , the Hungarian widow of a surgeon. From the marriage, which lasted until Wyatt's death, a daughter was born in 1968. Petronella Wyatt followed in her father's footsteps professionally, writing for the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator , of which she was deputy editor-in-chief. She also appeared in the British public through an affair with the then MP and later Prime Minister, Boris Johnson . In 1999 she published a biography of her father under the title Father, dear father: Life with Woodrow Wyatt .

In addition to his marriages, Wyatt had numerous affairs, which he describes in his autobiography Confessions of an Optimist .

Career

As a politician

Wyatt's political career began in 1945, when he in the general election for the Labor Party took and in his constituency Birmingham Aston prevailed surprising. In his early days as a parliamentarian, he belonged to the left wing of his party and was involved, for example, in the Keep Left group . In the course of his career, however, his political orientation should increasingly swivel to the right. In 1951 he took on the role of Under-Secretary of State , a minor ministerial role , in the War Department . After only six months in office, however, the Clement Attlee government fell and Wyatt returned to the lower ranks.

In the course of the general election in 1955 , the Birmingham Aston constituency was dissolved and Wyatt could not be re-elected. After a four-year absence, however, he managed to return to the House of Commons in the 1959 elections , this time for Bosworth . According to Wyatt, the Labor Party leader at the time, Hugh Gaitskell , had promised to appoint him as Secretary of War if the Labor Party won the election. But the takeover of government only succeeded after Gaitskell's death and Wyatt remained without a post under Prime Minister Harold Wilson .

In his political views, Wyatt increasingly distanced himself from the Labor Party. Together with Desmond Donnelly , he succeeded in delaying the nationalization of the British Steel Corporation initiated by his party by two years, and on other issues he was increasingly critical of his own party. In the 1970 elections he lost his seat in the British House of Commons.

With Margaret Thatcher's appearance on the political scene, Wyatt became one of her most ardent admirers. Outside of politics, the two were also deeply friends. In Thatcher's work towards Wyatt in 1983 became a Knight Bachelor beaten and the 1987 Life Peer appointed. Since then he has officially carried the title of Baron Wyatt of Weeford, of Weeford in the County of Staffordshire and took a seat in the House of Lords .

Although he was very close to the Conservative Party during his later years , he never became a party member.

As a journalist

In the years from 1940 to 1950 Wyatt (partly together with his first wife Susan) published a total of ten volumes of the short story collections English Story… . His first journalistic position began in 1949 with the weekly Reynold's News , in which he wrote a weekly column until 1961.

In 1955 he was interviewed by Edward R. Murrow on a program on the American television station CBS . His convincing demeanor, which he showed, moved the British BBC to hire him as the presenter of the new documentary program Panorama . In the course of his work for Panorama he was able to prove that the communist leadership of the Electrical Trade Union had manipulated the elections. As a result, the communist influence in the British trade unions waned , which Wyatt viewed in retrospect as his greatest historic achievement.

After leaving parliament in 1970, he tried to become a local newspaper mogul. He bought the Branbury Guardian and published various newspapers. He was one of the first British publishers to use color prints . However, due to a lack of advertising income, his newspaper company was not profitable, so he had to give it up again after a short time.

He continued his column in various newspapers. First from 1965 to 1973 with the Daily Mirror , then until 1983 with the Sunday Mirror . Finally, in 1983, he began his highly regarded column, The Voice of Reason, in the News of the World newspaper , edited by his close friend Rupert Murdoch . In this column he praised Thatcher's politics in a populist way, politically he was now on the right-wing spectrum. For example, he opposed the anti- apartheid movement in South Africa and accused Nelson Mandela and his ANC of striving for a “black dictatorship” in a “communist style”.

During his final years, Wyatt's column became less and less important and was moved from the sixth to one of the back pages of the newspaper.

As chairman of The Tote

The then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins made Wyatt head of the state sports betting company The Tote in 1976 . In the first few years he was very active in this position. He successfully fought corruption in his business and made The Tote a profitable state company. In the later years, however, he increasingly concentrated on his representative role, accompanying the Queen Mother to horse races and enjoying dealing with British high society . Despite the increasing criticism of his leadership style, he managed to keep the chairmanship of the organization until his death.

public perception

Wyatt appeared in public as an eccentric, he described himself as a snob . He often wore black silk pajamas during the day while studying at Oxford. Later he always wore a bow tie and was often found smoking a cigar.

He was also known in public for his cocky lifestyle. He had houses in London and Tuscany , drank up to two bottles of wine a day and owned several racehorses. He was one of the Queen Mother's good friends and liked to surround himself with the British nobility and money nobility.

He gives detailed information about his relationships with various members of the British and international upper class in his posthumously published diaries. However, various sides have contradicted the statements made here.

Fonts

• English Story… [Short stories by various authors.] (10 volumes), ed. with Susan Wyatt, Collins, London 1941–1950.
• The Jews at home. illustrated by John Minton , Tribune Publications, London 1951.
• Southwards from China. A survey of South East Asia since 1945. Hodder & Stoughton, London 1952.
• Into the Dangerous World. [Reminiscences and a political commentary] George Weidenfels & Nicolson, London 1952.
• The Peril in our Midst. Phoenix House, London 1956.
• Distinguished for Talent. Some men of influence and enterprise. Hutchinson, London 1958.
• Statistics for the behavioral sciences. with Charles Bridges , DC Heath & Co, Boston 1967.
• Turn again, Westminster. German, London 1973, ISBN 0-233-96470-3 .
• The exploits of Mr Saucy Squirrel. illustrated by Gareth Floyd , Allen and Unwin, London 1976, ISBN 0-04-823133-9 .
• The further exploits of Mr Saucy Squirrel. illustrated by Gareth Floyd, Allen and Unwin, London 1977, ISBN 0-04-823143-6 .
• What's left of the Labor Party? Sidgwick and Jackson, London 1977, ISBN 0-283-98427-9 .
• To the point. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1981, ISBN 0-297-77938-9 .
• Confessions of an optimist. Collins, London 1985, ISBN 0-00-217170-8 .
• High profiles: a comedy. French, London 1992, ISBN 0-573-01785-9 (paperback).
• The journals of Woodrow Wyatt Vol 1. ed. by Sarah Curtis , Macmillan, London 1998, ISBN 0-333-74166-8 .
• The journals of Woodrow Wyatt Vol 2. ed. by Sarah Curtis, Macmillan, London 1999, ISBN 0-333-77405-1 .
• The journals of Woodrow Wyatt Vol 3. ed. by Sarah Curtis, Macmillan, London 2000, ISBN 0-333-77406-X .

literature

• Petronella Wyatt : Father, dear father: Life with Woodrow Wyatt. Hutchinson, London 1999, ISBN 0-09-180139-7 .

Web links

• Woodrow Wyatt at Hansard (English)
• Literature by and about Woodrow Wyatt in the British Library catalog

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Obituary on independent.co.uk, accessed on February 14, 2015
2. ↑ ^{a b} Obituary for news.bbc.co.uk accessed on February 14, 2015
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Obituary on nytimes.com, accessed on February 14, 2015
4. ↑ Article about Rober Wyatt on newstatesman.com (English) accessed on February 14, 2015
5. ↑ Preview of Bob Wyatt's biography in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , accessed February 14, 2015
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Portrait of the Wyatt family on independent.co.uk accessed on February 14, 2015
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Article on independent.co.uk about the aging Wyatt from 1996, accessed on February 14, 2015
8. ↑ Woodrow Lyle Wyatt, Baron Wyatt of Weeford on thepeerage.com , accessed September 18, 2016.
9. ↑ Article on the relationship between the Conservative Party and Mandela on theguardian.com, accessed February 14, 2015