Ronald Cartland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Major Ronald Cartland MP
Member of the 1935 Parliament for King's Norton
Preceded by	Lionel Beaumont Thomas
Succeeded by	Basil Arthur John Peto
Born	3 January 1907 Birmingham, England
Died	30 May 1940 Nr Cassel, France
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Relations	Barbara Cartland, romance novelist (sister)
Alma mater	Charterhouse School, London
Occupation	Conservative MP, King's Norton, Birmingham
Religion	Anglo-Catholic

John Ronald Hamilton Cartland (3 January 1907 — 30 May 1940)^[1] was the British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for King's Norton, Birmingham, from 1935 until he was killled in action in 1940.

Contents 1 Background 2 Parliamentary career 3 Military career 4 References

[edit] Background

He was the brother of novelist Barbara Cartland and the son of Major Bertram Cartland and Mary Hamilton Scobell. His paternal grandfather was a wealthy Birmingham financier, who committed suicide four years before Ronald's birth. With no inheritance to finance the family's affluent country lifestyle, Ronald and his family moved to a rented farmhouse near the town of Pershore, in Worcestershire. In 1910, Bertram Cartland then went to work for the local Conservative Party office, where he managed the election of the Tory MP candidate. When the candidate won the election, he offered Bertram the post of private secretary. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Bertram volunteered for military duty, and was sent to France. He was killed near Berry-au-Bac, France, in 1918; just five months before the Armistice.^[2]

In 1919, Mary Cartland--along with Ronald, her 18-year-old daughter Barbara and 8-year-old son Anthony--moved to London, where Ronald gained a scholarship to the historic Charterhouse School. While there, he expressed his desire to become a Conservative MP--but at the same time, he held progressive views that were at odds with the Tory party, and the prevailing social norm at Charterhouse. As a child, Mary Cartland would take Ronald with her to visit some of the more poverty-stricken residents of Pershore, giving him a first-hand look at their extreme economic straits. After leaving Charterhouse, Mary Cartland could not afford to send her son to either Oxford or Cambridge Universities, so Ronald went to work at the Conservative Party Central Office in London. He stood for Parliament for the constiuency of Kings Norton, Birmingham, in 1935, and won; becoming one of the youngest MPs in the House of Commons.

[edit] Parliamentary career

Cartland's maiden speech to the Commons, in May 1936, attacked the Government of then-Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, for its less-than-enthusiastic attitude in aiding 'distressed areas'--those parts of the UK that were suffering from extreme economic difficulties, with unemployment rates as high as 40%. In 1936, he first came to the attention of Neville Chamberlain--then serving as Baldwin's Chancellor of the Exchequer--by delivering a stinging rebuke to the Treasury for balancing the budget on the backs of Britain's poor. After Chamberlain succeeded Baldwin as Prime Minister, Cartland earned the wrath of the Conservative Party's hierarchy by taking a stand against the British Government's policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy--which brought him to the attention of other Tory dissident backbenchers, as well as Winston Churchill. Before Cartland's election in 1935, he and his sister Barbara visited Germany, where Ronald was appalled at the Nazis' persecution of the Jews. On his return, he warned his fellow MPs of Hitler's expansionist plans for Austria and other Central European countries--and that, sooner or later, Britain would be at war with Germany. His comments only earned him disbelief and ridicule, and charges that he was a warmonger and an alarmist.

Ronald Cartland served as a back-bench MP in Neville Chamberlain's government. He is most famous for a speech that he gave to the house in August 1939, in which he accused the Prime Minister of having "ideas of dictatorship". Chamberlain had decided to adjourn the house until 3 October, and instructed the Conservative MPs that a majority vote in favour of adjournment would be seen as a vote of confidence. This caused outrage in the house, and it was this that prompted the young MP to stand up and make his famous speech, which also included what turned out to be prophetic words for himself: We are in a situation that within a month we may be going to fight--and we may be going to die".^[3]

[edit] Military career

Ronald Cartland achieved the rank of Major in the British Army. In 1937, he joined the Territorial Army. By August 1939, he was a lieutenant in the Worcestershire and Oxfordshire Yeomanry. When the Nazis invaded Holland, Belgium and France in May 1940, now-Major Cartland was serving in the 53rd Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery. The unit was assigned to defend the town of Cassel, a hilltop site near one of the main roads leading to the Channel port of Dunkirk, France. Cartland and his men held off the Germans for nearly four days, from May 27 to May 29.

On the evening of May 29, Cartland and his unit split up, and joined the retreating British Expeditionary Force heading towards Dunkirk. On 30 May 1940, while reconnoitering his position from a ditch, he was shot and killed during the retreat to Dunkirk.^[3]. He was initially listed as Missing In Action, but his family in England did not learn of his true fate until January 1941. His mother received a letter from one of Cartland's men, now in a German POW camp where the soldier described Cartland's death in detail. His brother James A.H. died the previous day and is buried at Zuidschote.^[4] A memorial service was held for Ronald Cartland on 18 February 1941, at London's St-Martin-in-the-Fields Church. He is buried at Hotton War Cemetery, near Liege, Belgium.

[edit] References

• Olson, Lynne: "Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England", Farrar, Strous, Giroux, 2007