Gerald Gardiner, Baron Gardiner
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Gerald Austin Gardiner, Baron Gardiner, CH KC PC (30 May 1900-7 January 1990) was Lord Chancellor from 1964 to 1970 and during that time he introduced into British law as many reforms as any Lord Chancellor had done before or since. In that position he embarked on a great program of reform, most importantly setting up the Law Commission.
His father was Sir Robert Septimus Gardiner and his mother was Alice von Ziegesar, daughter of Count von Ziegesar. Gerald Gardiner attended Harrow School. When his father visited him at Harrow he noticed a copy of the Nation, later incorporated into the New Statesman, lying around and yelled that no other son of his would attend a school where such publications were openly displayed. He was as good as his word, and Gerald's brothers were sent to Eton.
When Gerald was at Magdalen College, Oxford in the 1920s, he published a pamphlet on pink paper which resulted in his being sent down. A woman undergraduate had suffered the same fate a few days previously for climbing into a men's college after a dance. Gardiner, characteristically, rushed to her defence and the Vice-Chancellor, Farnell, notoriously out of touch with the post-war generation, asked Gardiner to leave at the intolerable hour of six in the morning; any later hour, Farnell knew, would have meant a sympathetic funeral procession several hundred strong. The girl to whose defence Gardiner had so gallantly flown was later a film critic, Dilys Powell.
As a lawyer, he fought for the abolition of capital punishment. He was the Counsel for the Defence in the trial for obscenity of the publishers of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960.
During World War II, Gardiner, a pacifist, volunteered to join the Friends' Ambulance Unit, as an alternative to military service, although he was over conscription age.
Gerald Gardiner stood for election as the Labour Party's candidate in the 1951 General Election in Croydon West. He lost to the Conservative, Richard Thompson. Gardiner was made a life peer as Baron Gardiner, of Kittisford in the County of Somerset and a Privy Counsellor in 1964 and immediately became Lord Chancellor. In that role, he was responsible for the creation of the Ombudsman. He also did much to advance women's rights.
Afterwards, he became Chancellor of the Open University. While occupying this post he also took a degree in the Social Sciences. Later biographers assessed him as a man of immense humanity, generosity and humility, also having been motivated above all by hatred of injustice and by those who devoted their lives and gifts to better the lot of mankind.
In 1970, Gardiner married Muriel Box, writer, producer and director who had won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Seventh Veil.
Lord Gardiner published the Minority Report in March 1972 as part of the Parker Report (Report of the Committee of Privy Counsellors appointed to consider authorised procedures for the interrogation of persons suspected of terrorism)[1] which considered the interrogation procedures used against suspects of terrorism in Northern Ireland, with particular reference to allegations of torture[2][3][4] during internment in 1971.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, taking into account his progressive views and determination that human and civil rights should be respected and advanced, Lord Gardiner was subjected to surveillance by British security. During debates on the British Telecommunications Bill in the English House of Lords in 1979, various members raised concerns about telephone tapping, a matter of disquiet in the community and amongst these members. In his contribution, Lord Gardiner told of the difficulties he experienced as Lord Chancellor (1964-1970) in being able to conduct strictly private discussions with the then Attorney-General. Lord Gardiner said he believed his telephone calls were intercepted by a British intelligence organisation. He also alluded to a need to take a ride around the park in his chauffeur-driven car with the Attorney-General in order to ensure security of their conversations - rather than having 'security' listen in: English House of Lords, Parliamentary Debates, 19 May 1981, p. 858; see also reference in Justice Lionel Murphy, Church of Scientology v. Woodward (1982) 154 CLR 25, http://www.worldlii.org/au/cases/cth/high_ct/154clr25.html, p. 28
| Preceded by The Lord Dilhorne |
Lord Chancellor 1964–1970 |
Succeeded by The Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone |
