| Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross | |
|---|---|
| President of the Board of Trade | |
| In office 24 April – 26 October 1951 |
|
| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Harold Wilson |
| Succeeded by | Peter Thorneycroft |
| Attorney General | |
| In office 4 August 1945 – 24 April 1951 |
|
| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Sir David Maxwell Fyfe |
| Succeeded by | Sir Frank Soskice |
Hartley William Shawcross, Baron Shawcross, GBE, PC, KC (4 February 1902 – 10 July 2003) was a British barrister and politician and the lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal.
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Hartley William Shawcross was born to John and Hilda Shawcross in Germany, whilst his father was teaching English at Giessen University. He was educated at Dulwich College, the London School of Economics and the University of Geneva[1] and sat for the Bar at Gray's Inn, where he won first-class honours.
He joined the Labour Party at a young age, and served as Member of Parliament for St Helens, Lancashire from 1945 to 1958, holding the position of Attorney-General from 1945 to 1951. It was in 1946 when debating the repeal of anti-Union laws in the House of Commons that Shawcross allegedly said "We are the masters now,",[2] a phrase that came to haunt him.
As Attorney-General, he prosecuted William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") and John Amery for treason and also prosecuted Klaus Fuchs and Alan Nunn May, for giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and John George Haigh, known as 'the acid bath murderer'. He was knighted in 1945 and named Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at Nuremberg. From 1945 to 1949, he was Britain's principal United Nations delegate, though he was recalled in 1948 to lead for the government's interest at the Lynskey tribunal. In 1951, he briefly served as President of the Board of Trade until the Labour government's defeat in the election of that year. He ended his law career the same year, and was expected to become a Tory earning him the nickname "Sir Shortly Floorcross". Instead, he resigned from Parliament in 1958, saying he was tired of party politics. He was made one of Britain's first life peers on 14 February 1959 as Baron Shawcross,[3] of Friston in the County of Sussex, and sat in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher. Because of this change of loyalties away from Labour, his many business interests and, much later, his support for the Social Democratic Party (UK), the 'Floorcross' nickname in the end rang true.
In 1957, he was among a group of eminent British lawyers who founded JUSTICE, the human rights and law reform organisation and he became its first chairman - a position he held until 1972.
He was also instrumental in the foundation of the University of Sussex and served as chancellor of the university from 1965 to 1985.
In 1961 he was appointed the chairman of the second Royal Commission on the Press. In 1967 he became one of the directors of The Times responsible for ensuring its editorial independence. He resigned on being appointed chairman of the Press Council in 1974.
From 1974 to 1978 he was chairman of the Press Council and is described as "forthright in his condemnation both of journalists who committed excesses and of proprietors who profited from them" and as a "doughty defender of press freedom".[4]
In October 1974 he poured scorn on a Labour Party pamphlet that recommended the application of "internal democracy" to editorial policy, saying "This means that... there would be some sort of committee consisting at the best of a mixture of van drivers, press operators, electricians and the rest, with no doubt a few journalists, but more probably composed of trade union officials, to deal with editorial policy."[4]
Lord Shawcross was married three times. His first wife Alberta Rosita Shyvers (m. 24 May 1924) suffered from multiple sclerosis and committed suicide on 30 December 1943. His second wife Joan Winifred Mather (m. 21 September 1944) died in a riding accident on the Sussex Downs on 26 January 1974. At the age of 95 he married Mrs. Susanne Monique Huiskamp on 18 April 1997 in Gibraltar.
He had two sons, the author and historian William Shawcross, Hume Shawcross and a daughter, Dr Joanna Shawcross, by his second wife. He died at home at Cowbeech, East Sussex at the age of 101.
Shawcross's advocacy before the Nuremberg Trial was passionate. His most famous line was:
He avoided the crusading style of American, Soviet and French prosecutors. Shawcross's opening speech, which lasted two days, sought to undermine any belief that the Nuremberg Trials were victor's justice (an exacted vengeance against defeated foes). Instead, he focused on the rule of law and he demonstrated that the laws that the defendants had broken, expressed in international treaties and agreements, were those to which pre-war Germany had been a party. In his closing speech, he ridiculed any notion that any of the defendants could have remained ignorant of the thousands of Germans exterminated because they were old or mentally ill. He used the same argument for the millions of other people "annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting" and he maintained that each of the 22 defendants was a party to "common murder in its most ruthless forms".
Thus Shawcross's advocacy was instrumental in obtaining convictions against the remaining Nazi leadership, on grounds which were perceived as fair and lawful.
During the committal hearing for the suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams in February 1957, Shawcross was seen dining with the defendant's lover, Roland Gwynne, at the White Hart Hotel in Lewes.[5] They were accompanied by Lord Chief Justice Goddard, who had already selected Patrick Devlin as judge for Adams' trial and then later phoned Devlin while the jury was considering its verdict, to recommend that Adams be given bail before a second trial for another count of murder. While driving home afterwards, Gwynne crashed his car. He hadn't been drinking. Adams was acquitted but was suspected by police of killing 163 of his patients.
Later, on 10 May 1957, Goddard heard a contempt of court case against Newsweek and W. H. Smith. On 1 April during Adams' trial, they had respectively published and distributed an issue of the magazine containing two paragraphs of material "highly prejudicial to the accused", saying that Adams' victim count could be "as high as 400". Each company was fined £50. Goddard made no mention of his conflict of interest.[5]
During a rent tribunal case he referred to certain workers as "six black niggers".[6]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by William Albert Robinson |
Member of Parliament for St Helens 1945–1958 |
Succeeded by Leslie Spriggs |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by David Maxwell Fyfe |
Attorney General for England and Wales 1945–1951 |
Succeeded by Sir Frank Soskice |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Harold Wilson |
President of the Board of Trade 1951 |
Succeeded by Peter Thorneycroft |
| Media offices | ||
| Preceded by Edward Pearce |
Chairman of the Press Council 1974–1978 |
Succeeded by Patrick Neill |