Julian_Amery,_Baron_Amery_of_Lustleigh

Julian Amery

Julian Amery

British politician (1919–1996)

Harold Julian Amery, Baron Amery of Lustleigh, PC (27 March 1919 – 3 September 1996) was a British Conservative Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for 39 of the 42 years between 1950 and 1992. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1960.

Quick Facts The Right HonourableThe Lord Amery of LustleighPC, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs ...

Amery was created a life peer upon his retirement from the House of Commons in 1992. For three decades, he was a leading figure in the Conservative Monday Club. He was the son-in-law of Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan. His brother, John, was hanged for high treason for supporting Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the Second World War.[1]

Early and family life

Amery was born in Chelsea, London. His father was Leo Amery, a British statesman and Conservative politician. He was educated at Eaton House,[2] Summer Fields School, Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. While an undergraduate, he had a brief romance with the future novelist Barbara Pym, who was six years his senior.[3][4]

Military service

Before the Second World War started, Amery was a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War and later an attaché for the British Foreign Office in Belgrade. After the war began he joined the RAF as a sergeant in 1940, then was commissioned and transferred to the British Army on the General List in 1941, reaching the rank of Captain.

He spent 1941–42 in the eastern Mediterranean (the Middle East, Malta, Yugoslavia) and served as Liaison Officer to the Albanian Resistance Movement in 1943–44 ("The Musketeers": Captain Julian Amery, Major David Smiley and Lieutenant-Colonel Neil McLean). The following year, Amery went to China to work with General Carton de Wiart, then Prime Minister's Personal Representative to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Amery became a close friend of King Zog of Albania and described him as "the cleverest man I have ever met".[5]

Political career

Amery won a Parliamentary seat in the first general election held after he returned to civilian life, in 1950. He was elected as Conservative MP for Preston North, going on to hold a number of government offices, all in governments led by his father-in-law, now the Prime Minister. He began with two Under-Secretaryships of State: for War (1957–58) and for the Colonies (1958–60). He was promoted to Secretary of State for Air (1960–62), followed by a promotion to the post of Minister of Aviation (1962–64). In this role and during this two-year period, Amery was involved in the planning stages of what would become the supersonic passenger service known as Concorde.

Amery lost his Preston North seat in 1966, but was re-elected to the Commons in 1969 representing Brighton Pavilion, a seat he would hold until 1992 when he retired. On 8 July 1992, he was created a life peer as Baron Amery of Lustleigh, of Preston in the County of Lancashire and of Brighton in the County of East Sussex.[6]

Under the Heath administration, Amery held three ministerial posts: Minister for Public Works (1970), Minister for Housing and Construction (1970–72) and Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1972–74).

Monday Club

For 30 years, Amery was an active member and later a Patron of the Conservative Monday Club, where he became friendly with General Sir Walter Walker, subsequently writing the foreword for Walker's anti-Soviet book, The Next Domino.

He was Guest of Honour at the club's Annual Dinner at the Cutlers' Hall in 1963. In 1965, he wrote the foreword for Club activist Geoffrey Stewart-Smith's book, No Vision Here. On May Day 1970, he was one of the club's principal speakers at their 'Law and Liberty' rally in Trafalgar Square, held in answer to the 'Stop the Seventy Tour' campaign, designed to stop the South African cricket tour.

Amery was the Monday Club's Guest-of-Honour at their Annual Dinner held at the Savoy Hotel, London, in January 1974 and again at the dinner at the end of the club's two-day Conference in Birmingham in March 1975.

Political views

Amery was in favour of entry to the European Common Market and also of the nuclear deterrent. Both caused some discord between himself and his old friend Enoch Powell but for many, he was seen as an archetypal Conservative from the "God and Empire" school.[7] In 1948, Amery opposed GATT, arguing that it limited imperial preference.[8]

In late 1962 Amery made these comments after Egypt sent troops to Yemen to prevent an insurrection:

"The prosperity of our people rests really on the oil in the Persian Gulf, the rubber and tin of Malaya, and the gold, copper and precious metals of South- and Central Africa. As long as we have access to these; as long as we can realize the investments we have there; as long as we trade with this part of the world, we shall be prosperous. If the communists [or anyone else] were to take them over, we would lose the lot. Governments like Colonel Nasser's in Egypt are just as dangerous."[9]

In 1963, Amery took charge of Quintin Hogg's campaign for leadership of the Conservative Party.[10]

In early 1975, he took part in a House of Commons debate on the Trades Unions Congress's invitation to Alexander Shelepin, the former Soviet KGB Chief, to visit Britain. He stated that "more and more people are beginning to look upon the TUC as a Communist-penetrated show and this invitation must strengthen that view."[citation needed]

According to Margaret Thatcher's 1995 memoir, The Path to Power, when Harold Wilson's Labour government proposed devolution for Scotland in 1976, "Julian Amery and Maurice Macmillan proved effective leaders of the anti-devolution Tory camp."[citation needed]

Although he was Harold Macmillan's son-in-law, he did not defend him when Count Nikolai Tolstoy published The Minister and the Massacres in 1986, focusing the ultimate burden of blame sharply on Macmillan for the 1945 Bleiburg repatriations and the Cossack repatriations. Amery stated that the repatriations were "one of the few blots on Harold that I can think of".[11]

Personal life

On 26 January 1950, he married Catherine Macmillan (19 November 1926 – 27 May 1991), daughter of Harold Macmillan. The couple had one son and three daughters.[12]

Death

Amery died on 3 September 1996 in Westminster, London. He is buried with his wife (who predeceased him) at the Church of St John the Baptist in Lustleigh, Devon, along with his father Leo Amery.[13]

Notes

Citations
  1. [1]
    "Amery sentenced to death". The Times. London. 29 November 1945. Archived from the original on 4 March 2012. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
  2. [2]
    Thorpe, D. R. (2011). Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan. London: Pimlico. p. 21. ISBN 9781844135417. OCLC 751719981.
  3. [3]
    Faber, David (2005). Speaking for England: Leo, Julian and John Amery, the Tragedy of a Political Family. Free Press. pp. 73–74. ISBN 9780743256889.
  4. [4]
    Byrne, Paula (2021). The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym. London: William Collins. ISBN 9780008322243. The index contains a combined total of over 70 page numbers and page ranges either directly about, or mentioning, Amery.
  5. [5]
    Amery, Julian, Approach March: a Venture in Autobiography. Hutchinson, 1973
  6. [6]
    "No. 52988". The London Gazette. 13 July 1992. p. 11759.
  7. [7]
    "Julian Amery dies". The Independent. London. 4 September 1996. Archived from the original on 25 April 2019. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  8. [8]
    Kahler, Miles (1984). Decolonization in Britain and France: The Domestic Consequences of International Relations. Princeton University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-1-4008-5558-2.
  9. [9]
    Curtis, Adam (1999). "The Mayfair Set". Broadcast on BBC2. Archived from the original on 1 February 2008. Retrieved 13 February 2008. Excerpt: David Stirling was a close friend of Julian Amery's and together they were determined to find a way to stop Nasser... Stirling and Amery had dinner with the foreign secretary, Alec Douglas Hume, at the White's Club in St. James's. They proposed a plan: a group of SAS men would mount an operation to fight the Egyptians, but they would do it privately
  10. [10]
    cf. Heffer, 189; 324
  11. [11]
    "Lady Caroline Faber: Daughter of Harold Macmillan who disliked politics but campaigned for her relatives". The Times. London. 19 September 2016.
  12. [12]
    "Lord Amery of Lustleigh: Obituary". The Independent. 5 September 1996. Archived from the original on 2 July 2020. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  13. [13]
    "Harold Julian Amery". www.findagrave.com. Archived from the original on 31 October 2021. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
Bibliography

Primary sources

Further reading

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