Julian Amery

Harold Julian Amery, Baron Amery of Lustleigh, PC (27 March 1919 – 3 September 1996), was an English 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.

The Right Honourable The Lord Amery of Lustleigh PC
Julian Amery, 1965
Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
In office 5 November 1972 – 4 March 1974
Prime Minister	Edward Heath
Sec. of State	Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Preceded by	Joseph Godber
Succeeded by	David Ennals Roy Hattersley
Minister for Housing and Construction
In office 15 October 1970 – 5 November 1972
Prime Minister	Edward Heath
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Paul Channon
Minister of Public Buildings and Works
In office 23 June 1970 – 14 October 1970
Preceded by	John Silkin
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Member of Parliament for Preston North
In office 23 February 1950 – 31 March 1966
Preceded by	Constituency created
Succeeded by	Ronald Atkins
Member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion
In office 27 March 1969 – 9 April 1992
Preceded by	Sir William Teeling
Succeeded by	Derek Spencer
Personal details
Born	(1919-03-27)27 March 1919
Died	3 September 1996(1996-09-03) (aged 77)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Military service
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Branch/service	British Army
Rank	Captain
Battles/wars	Second World War

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 and 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 novelist Barbara Pym, who was six years his senior.[3]

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".[4]

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, Amery played a major role in developing the supersonic passenger service known as Concorde.

Amery lost his seat in 1966, but was elected again in 1969 for 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.[5]

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, Julian 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.

Julian 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 "God and Empire" Conservative.[6] 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."[7]

In 1963, Amery took charge of Quintin Hogg's campaign for leadership of the Conservative Party.[8]

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."

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."

Although he was Harold Macmillan's son-in-law, he failed to 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".[9]

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.[10]

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.[11]

Notes

Citations

1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 5 February 2012. Retrieved 7 February 2019.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
2. Supermac: the life of Harold Macmillan. London, UK: Pimlico. 2011. p. 21. ISBN 9781844135417. OCLC 751719981.
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. Amery, Julian, Approach March: a Venture in Autobiography. Hutchinson, 1973
5. "No. 52988". The London Gazette. 13 July 1992. p. 11759.
6. "Julian Amery dies". The Independent. 4 September 1996.
7. Adam Curtis (1999). "The Mayfair Set". Broadcast on BBC2. 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 diner 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 Archived 1 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine
8. cf.Heffer, 189; 324
9. "Lady Caroline Faber: Daughter of Harold Macmillan who disliked politics but campaigned for her relatives". The Times. 19 September 2016.
10. "Lord Amery of Lustleigh: Obituary". The Independent. 5 September 1996.
11. "Harold Julian Amery". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2 August 2020.

Bibliography

• Copping, Robert, The Story of The Monday Club – The First Decade, April 1972 (P/B); and The Monday Club – Crisis and After (Foreword by John Biggs-Davison, M.P.), May 1975, (P/B), pps:12 & 24, published by the Current Affairs Information Service.
• Amery, Julian, M.P., et al., Rhodesia and the Threat to the West Monday Club, London, 1976 (P/B).
• Gash, Norman, with Donald Southgate, David Dilks, and John Ramsden; introduction by Lord Butler, K.G.,P.C., The Conservatives – A History of their Origins to 1965 London, 1977, pps:268-9. ISBN 0-04-942157-3
• Amery, Julian, PC, MP, The Next Four Years, in the Primrose League Gazette, vol.87, no.4, October 1983, London.
• Amery, Julian, MP, The Rt. Hon., Facing up to Soviet Imperialism, in the Monday Club's October 1985 Conservative Party Conference issue of their newspaper, Right Ahead.
• Horne, Alistair, Macmillan, 1894–1956, (volume 1 of the official biography), London, 1988/9, ISBN 0-333-27691-4, pps: 81, 253, 275, 326, 388, 441.
• Messina, Anthony M, Race and Party Competition in Britain, Oxford, 1989, p. 138, ISBN 0-19-827534-X
• Dod's Parliamentary Companion 1991, 172 edition, East Sussex, p. 394, ISBN 0-905702-17-4
• Clark, Alan, The Tories – Conservatives and The Nation State, London, 1998, pps: 324–5, ISBN 0-297-81849-X
• Heffer, Simon, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell, London, 1998, ISBN 0-297-84286-2
• Weale, Adrian, Patriot Traitors – Roger Casement & John Amery, London, 2001, ISBN 0-670-88498-7
• Faber, David, Speaking for England, London, 2005, ISBN 0-7432-5688-3
• Stephen Dorril MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service – The Free Press – New York – 2000 (ISBN 0-7432-0379-8).
• Colonel David Smiley Albanian Assignment Chatto & Windus, London, 1984. Foreword by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor. SOE in Albania (1943–44).
• Colonel David Smiley Arabian Assignment Cooper, London, 1975. MI6 – Oman and Yemen.
• Colonel David Smiley Irregular regular Michael Russell, Norwich, 1994 (ISBN 0 85955 202 0). Translated in French, Au coeur de l'action clandestine. Des Commandos au MI6, L'Esprit du Livre Editions, 2008. The Memoirs of a SOE officer (Albania, Asia) and MI6 agent (Poland, Malta, Oman, Yémen), brother in arms of Julian Amery.
• ALBANIA IN WW II by Julian Amery, from Oxford Companion to the Second World War (1995), pp. 24–26
• The London Gazette

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Julian Amery
• Index entry at JANUS

Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Preston North 1950 – 1966	Succeeded by Ronald Atkins
Preceded by Sir William Teeling	Member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion 1969 – 1992	Succeeded by Sir Derek Spencer
Political offices
Preceded by John Profumo	Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies 1958–1960	Succeeded by Hugh Fraser
Preceded by George Ward	Secretary of State for Air 1960–1962	Succeeded by Hugh Fraser
Preceded by Peter Thorneycroft	Minister of Aviation 1962–1964	Succeeded by Roy Jenkins