Oliver Stanley

The Right Honourable Oliver Stanley MC MP
President of the Board of Trade
In office 28 May 1937 – 5 January 1940
Monarch	George VI
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Walter Runciman
Succeeded by	Sir Andrew Duncan
Secretary of State for War
In office 5 January 1940 – 11 May 1940
Monarch	George VI
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Leslie Hore-Belisha
Succeeded by	Anthony Eden
Secretary of State for the Colonies
In office 22 November 1942 – 26 July 1945
Monarch	George VI
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	Viscount Cranborne
Succeeded by	George Hall
Personal details
Born	4 May 1896
Died	10 December 1950 (aged 54)
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Lady Maureen Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1900-1942)

Oliver Frederick George Stanley MC PC MP (4 May 1896 – 10 December 1950) was a prominent British Conservative politician who held many ministerial posts before his relatively early death.

Background and education

Stanley was the second son of Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, by his wife Lady Alice, daughter of William Montagu, 7th Duke of Manchester. Edward Stanley, Lord Stanley was his elder brother. He was educated at Eton.^[1]

Military career

During the First World War, Stanley was commissioned into the Lancashire Hussars, before transferring to the Royal Field Artillery in 1915. He achieved the rank of captain, and won both the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre.^[1]

Political career

Sketch of Stanley commissioned by the Ministry of Information in the World War II period.

After he was demobilized, Stanley was called to the bar by Gray's Inn in 1919.^[1] In the 1924 general election he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Westmorland. From 1945 he sat for Bristol West. He soon came to the attention of the Conservative leaders and held a number of posts in the National Government of the 1930s. As Minister of Transport he was responsible for the introduction of a 30 miles per hour speed limit and driving tests for new drivers. In May 1938 whilst President of the Board of Trade he achieved a rare distinction in British politics when his brother Lord Stanley became Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs - a rare example of two brothers sitting in the same Cabinet, more so as their father, a former Conservative minister, was still alive. However five months later Edward died. (Another example is David Miliband and his brother Ed Miliband who were appointed to the British Cabinet in June 2007.)

In January 1940 Stanley was appointed Secretary of State for War after the previous incumbent, Leslie Hore-Belisha, had been sacked after falling out with the leading officers. Much was expected of Stanley's tenure in this office, as his father had held it during the First World War, but four months later the government fell and Stanley was not initially given a new post in the administration of Winston Churchill, possibly because his father-in-law Lord Londonderry was a prominent Nazi sympathizer. Instead, Churchill made Stanley a personal link with intelligence agencies, notably as founder of the London Controlling Section. Two years later Stanley's political fortunes revived when Churchill appointed him Secretary of State for the Colonies, a post which he held until the end of the war. After the Conservatives' massive defeat in the 1945 general election Stanley was prominent amongst those rebuilding the party and he came to be regarded as one of the most important Conservative MPs. Also during this period he succeeded his father as Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. By this time, however, his health was in decline and he died on 10 December 1950 at his home in Sulhamstead.^[1]

Had Stanley lived longer he might well have been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Conservatives formed a government the following year.^[2] Historian Sir Charles Petrie went further, and insisted in his 1972 memoirs (A Historian Looks At His World) that "the greatest blow the Conservative Party has sustained since the late war was the premature death of Oliver Stanley. He was one of the most gifted men of the century, and would have made a very great Prime Minister. ... He was as brilliant a conversationalist as a public speaker."^[3]

Family

Stanley married Lady Maureen, daughter of Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry and the Hon. Edith Chaplin, in 1920. They had one son and one daughter: (i) Michael Charles Stanley (1921–1990), who married (Aileen) Fortune Constance Hugh Smith and had two sons; and (ii) Kathryn Edith Helen Stanley DCVO (1923–2004), Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth II from 1955 to 2002 and who married Sir John Dugdale KCVO (1923–1994) and had two daughters and two sons.

Lady Maureen died in June 1942, aged 41. Stanley survived her by eight years and died in December 1950, aged 54.

References

1. Whitfield, Andrew. "Stanley, Oliver Frederick George (1896–1950)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36249. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
2. Howard 1987, p. 178-9
3. Petrie, Sir Charles (1972). A Historian Looks at His World. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. p. 193. ISBN 978-0283978500.

Books cited

• Howard, Anthony RAB: The Life of R. A. Butler, Jonathan Cape 1987 ISBN 978-0224018623

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Oliver Stanley