Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Hereditary Peerage
Preceded byThe 6th Marquess of Londonderry
Succeeded byThe 8th Marquess of Londonderry
Member of Parliament
for Maidstone
In office
8 February 1906 – 8 February 1915
Preceded bySir Francis Evans
Succeeded byCarlyon Bellairs
Personal details
Born
Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart

(1878-05-13)13 May 1878
Died10 February 1949(1949-02-10) (aged 70)
Mount Stewart, County Down
NationalityBritish
Political partyConservative
Ulster Unionist
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1899)​
ChildrenLady Maureen Vane-Tempest-Stewart
Lady Theresa Chetwynd-Talbot
Alma materRoyal Military College, Sandhurst

Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry,

PC, PC (Ire) (13 May 1878 – 10 February 1949), styled Lord Stewart until 1884 and Viscount Castlereagh between 1884 and 1915, was a British peer and politician. He is best remembered for his tenure as Secretary of State for Air in the 1930s and for his attempts to reach an understanding with Nazi Germany. In 1935 he was removed from the Air Ministry but retained in the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords
.

His main record at the Air Ministry included:

He preserved the core of the RAF at a time when even this was under threat from the Treasury. He encouraged the planning of vital new fighter aircraft such as the Hurricane and Spitfire. It was under his tutelage that radar was developed for use by the RAF. The Staff College at Cranwell was opened in the last months of his time as air minister....[But in underestimating the Luftwaffe he was] badly astray over the issue of German air strength in 1934–5.[1]

Background and education

His mother, Theresa ('Nellie'), Marchioness of Londonderry, John Singer Sargent, 1912

The eldest son of

Ulster-Scots
descent.

Early career

On 22 May 1895, Lord Castlereagh was appointed a second lieutenant in the

Volunteer Force attached to the Royal Garrison Artillery (Western Division) and at the time commanded by his father who owned Seaham Colliery from which many of the part-time gunners were recruited.[2][3] After passing out from Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards as a second lieutenant on 8 September 1897.[4][5] He was promoted lieutenant on 30 August 1899,[6] and appointed adjutant on 9 May 1900.[7]

In early 1901 he was appointed by King Edward VII to take part in a special diplomatic mission to announce the King's accession to the governments of Austria-Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey.[8] In August 1903, following the King's visit to Ireland, he was appointed a Member Fourth Class (present-day Lieutenant) of the Royal Victorian Order, his father being honoured with the Knight Grand Cross of the Order at the same time.[9] He resigned his position of adjutant in the Royal Horse Guards on 24 March 1904, and was promoted to captain on 6 April.[10][11]

Castlereagh was subsequently pressed by his parents to stand for election to the

First World War
.

First World War

As Captain Castlereagh MP he travelled to northern France in the first weeks of the war and reached Paris on 29 August 1914, having been gazetted

incomplete short citation] In the following months of 1914, Castlereagh extensively witnessed the destruction of war and the terrible suffering of the British wounded. He was promoted to the temporary rank of major in his old regiment on 1 November, and to the substantive rank on the 7th.[14][15]

Hitherto reluctant to involve himself, like his father, in

incomplete short citation
]

In 1916 Londonderry was appointed second-in-command of The Blues, part of the

Harold Brassey, best man at his wedding in 1899, was killed. He was an acting lieutenant colonel from 15 December 1916 to 20 January 1917.[17][18]

Londonderry with his cousin Winston Churchill in 1920, as Under-Secretary of State for Air

In 1917, Londonderry took command of a composite battalion drawn from the 8th Cavalry Brigade with the brevet rank of Lt-Colonel, and the

Charles Bulkeley-Johnson, was shot in the face; he fell with a piercing shriek, the thirtieth British General to be killed in action or to die of wounds on the Western Front.[19][page needed] This put Brevet Lt-Colonel Londonderry temporarily in command of the 8th Cavalry Brigade during their charge in the Battle of Arras. At Monchy 600 cavalrymen were casualties and many more horses died. The animals were tethered in the open, as their riders took cover; attempts to take them to the rear during a "box barrage" only increased the casualties.[20] For Londonderry, the experiences of war and the carnage of his brother officers and the family and school friends he grew up with would, as Ian Kershaw commented, "leave an indelible mark on him".[21]

After serving in the Irish Convention of 1917–18, Lord Londonderry served on the short-lived Viceroy's Advisory Council, meeting at Dublin Castle in the autumn of 1918. Promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel on 7 November 1918,[22] he retired from the army on 10 September 1919 as a major and brevet lieutenant-colonel.[23]

On 13 August 1920, he was appointed Honorary Colonel of the

Territorial Army, the successor unit to his father's 2nd (Seaham) Durham Artillery Volunteers. He continued in that role until World War II, after it had been converted into the 63rd (Northumbrian) Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery in Anti-Aircraft Command.[24]

In the Northern Ireland cabinet

The Marquess, c.1921

He was appointed to the new

Government of Northern Ireland in June 1921, as Leader of the Senate and Minister for Education. Londonderry was particularly interested in education and favoured a secularised interest, not the least as a way to end Catholic education.[25]: 169  Londonderry appointed the Lynn Commission, headed by Robert Lynn, for advice about education. Lynn stated during the commission's hearings his belief that it would be a waste of public funds to teach Gaelic in the schools, a proposal that was widely seen as promoting Unionism, and led to a Catholic boycott of the commission.[25]
: 172 

In 1923 his Education Act sought to advance the prospect of mixed Protestant-Catholic education by permitting religious instruction only after school hours and with parental consent. Both

Catholic educational interests objected and the measure was amended in 1925 to the point that its purpose, to secularise schooling in Northern Ireland, was lost.[26]

In 1926, Londonderry resigned from the

Government of Northern Ireland and, in 1929, he left the Parliament of Northern Ireland
entirely.

In the British Cabinet

Londonderry was to involve himself in the

National Government under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and Lord President Baldwin in 1931. That was the cause of some scandal as MacDonald's many critics accused the erstwhile Labour leader of being too friendly with Edith, Lady Londonderry
.

When the National Government won the

League of Nations Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In September 1931, Japan seized the Manchuria region of China, setting up the sham state of Manchukuo while making claims to the effect that the rest of China was in the exclusive Japanese sphere of influence, an interpretation that the Chinese government vehemently objected to. In January 1932, the First Battle of Shanghai began which saw the Japanese bomb much of Shanghai into rubble.[27]: 70  The scenes of Shanghai in flames together with the increasingly assertive Japanese claims about China and the Far East in general as within its sphere of influence convinced Londonderry that Britain needed a strong Royal Air Force as the best way to deter Japan from attacking the British empire and to ensure that Britain was prepared for war should Anglo-Japanese relations take a turn for the worse.[27]
: 70 

Londonderry toed the British government's equivocal line on disarmament but opposed in Cabinet any moves that would risk the deterrent value of the Royal Air Force. He was thus attacked by Clement Attlee and the Labour Party and became a liability to the National Government. In the spring of 1935, he was removed from the Air Ministry but retained in the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. Combined with his role as a leading member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, he attracted the popular nickname of "Londonderry Herr".[28]

Contacts with Nazi Germany

The sense of hurt Lord Londonderry felt at that and accusations that he had misled Baldwin about the strength of Nazi Germany's

Richard Griffiths made a distinction between appeasers, a term that he reserved for government officials who believed in appeasement of the Axis states for a variety of reasons, many quite pragmatic, and the enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, which he described a group of individuals who acting on their own as private citizens sought better relations with the Third Reich, usually for ideological reasons.[29]
: 1  Griffiths defined Londonderry as an enthusiast for Nazi Germany, instead of an appeaser, by noting that after June 1935, Londonderry was speaking mostly for himself when he sought out the company of Nazi leaders.[29]: 140  Londonderry joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, a society that sought to bring together elites from Britain and Germany with the aim of forging an Anglo-German alliance.[29]: 185 

William Shirer, an American reporter assigned to Berlin in the years leading to the Second World War, referred to Londonderry simply as "an all-out pro-Nazi."[30]

Between January 1936 and September 1938, Londonderry made six visits to Nazi Germany, the first lasting for three weeks, but a seventh invitation that had been accepted for March 1939 was abruptly declined by Londonderry after the Nazi occupation of

Court of St. James's, later the German foreign minister, to his ancestral home in Northern Ireland, Mount Stewart. Ribbentrop is reported to have landed in Newtownards with a "noisy gang of SS men" and the four-day visit became a national newspaper story.[31]
Londonderry entertained Ribbentrop for a further four days at his family home in
Wynyard Hall
on 13–17 November and accompanied him to briefings with government officials in London.

During the first two visits, prior to the abdication of

incomplete short citation
]

Although Londonderry immediately passed that information regarding Hitler's indicated future direction of German policy on to a member of the British government by a letter to

Lord Halifax on 24 December 1936,[33]
rearmament was not notably accelerated in Britain. In the end, Londonderry's high-profile promotion of Anglo-German friendship marked him with a far greater slur than what had led him to engage in appeasement in the first place.

Fall from grace

Under attack from anti-Nazis inside and outside Westminster, Lord Londonderry attempted to explain his position by publishing Ourselves and Germany in March 1938. Then, after the

Munich agreement, in October 1938, Londonderry wrote in a letter that he was aware that Hitler was "gradually getting back to the theories which he evolved in prison", when working on Mein Kampf. Londonderry's work was openly antisemitic, declaring: "I have no great affection for the Jews ... it is possible to trace their participation in most of the international disturbances which have created so much havoc in different countries."[34]

Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall, Chief of the Air Staff
, inspects an aircraft in France.

After playing a marginal role in the resignation of Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister in 1940, he failed to win any favour from the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill (his second cousin), who thought little of his talents. With talk of his possible internment, Londonderry retreated to Mount Stewart,[35] where he produced Wings of Destiny (1943), a relatively short memoir that was considerably censured by some of his former colleagues, and where he died in 1949.[citation needed]

On the mantlepiece of his smoking room at Mount Stewart, Londonderry retained a memento of his diplomatic démarche: an Allach porcelain figurine of an SS Fahnenträger (SS flag bearer).[36] The gift from Reichmarshall Hermann Göring was neither destroyed nor removed at the outbreak of war.[37]

Lord Londonderry served as

Imperial Privy Council in 1925[38] and appointed a Knight Companion of the Garter in 1919.[39]

Family

On 28 November 1899, Lord Londonderry married the Hon. Edith Helen Chaplin, eldest daughter of Henry Chaplin, 1st Viscount Chaplin, and Lady Florence Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (herself a daughter of the 3rd Duke of Sutherland) at St Peter's Church, Eaton Square and had issue:

Lord Londonderry had an illegitimate daughter with actress Fannie Ward, named Dorothé Mabel Lewis (b. 1900).[citation needed][42] She first married, in 1918, a nephew of mining magnate Barney Barnato, Capt. Jack Barnato, who died of pneumonia shortly after their wedding. Her second husband, whom she married in 1922, was Terence Plunket, 6th Baron Plunket, and with him, she had three sons: Patrick Plunket, 7th Baron Plunket, Robin Plunket, 8th Baron Plunket, and the Hon Shaun Plunket. Lord and Lady Plunket were killed in an aircraft crash in California in 1938.[citation needed]

Having suffered a stroke after a gliding accident a few years after the end of the war, Lord Londonderry died on 10 February 1949 at Mount Stewart, County Down, aged 70.[43]

References

  1. ^ Alvin Jackson, ‘Stewart, Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-, seventh marquess of Londonderry (1878–1949)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 6 Jan 2016
  2. ^ "No. 26626". The London Gazette. 21 May 1895. p. 2946.
  3. ISBN 0 85936 271 X
    , p. 62.
  4. ^ "Magnificent jewels and noble jewels". Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2013.
  5. ^ "No. 26889". The London Gazette. 7 September 1897. p. 4997.
  6. ^ "No. 27116". The London Gazette. 12 September 1899. p. 5637.
  7. ^ "No. 27266". The London Gazette. 15 January 1901. p. 311.
  8. ^ "The King – the special Embassies". The Times. No. 36410. London. 23 March 1901. p. 12.
  9. ^ "No. 27586". The London Gazette. 11 August 1903. p. 5058.
  10. ^ "No. 27667". The London Gazette. 15 April 1904. p. 2378.
  11. ^ "No. 27668". The London Gazette. 19 April 1904. p. 2479.
  12. ^ "No. 28378". The London Gazette. 27 May 1910. p. 3709.
  13. ^ Montgomery Hyde, p 116
  14. ^ "No. 29084". The London Gazette. 26 February 1915. p. 1980.
  15. ^ "No. 29003". The London Gazette. 11 December 1914. p. 10584.
  16. ^ Montgomery Hyde, p. 122
  17. ^ "No. 29957". The London Gazette (Supplement). 20 February 1917. p. 1860.
  18. ^ "No. 29984". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 March 1917. p. 2606.
  19. ^ Davies & Maddocks, "Bloody Red Tabs: General Officer Casualties of the Great War, 1914–18"
  20. ^ "April 1917 – The Real War Horse" Commonwealth War Graves Commission Newsletter, April 2012; "War Horse at Monchy-le-Preux – 11 April 1917" article by Stephen Barker
  21. ^ Hoffmann, Stanley (28 January 2009). "Making Friends With Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis, and the Road to War". Foreign Affairs. No. March/April 2005. Retrieved 11 May 2017 – via www.foreignaffairs.com.
  22. ^ "No. 31450". The London Gazette (Supplement). 11 July 1919. p. 8929.
  23. ^ "No. 31618". The London Gazette (Supplement). 24 October 1919. p. 13112.
  24. ^ Army List, various dates.
  25. ^ a b Moore, Cormac Birth of the Border: The Impact of Partition in Ireland Newbridge: Merrion Press, 2019
  26. ^ Fleming, Neil (2001). "Lord Londonderry and Education Reform in 1920s Northern Ireland". 20th Century Social Perspectives, Features. 9 (1). Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 30 June 2021 – via History Ireland.
  27. ^ a b Kershaw, Ian Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis, and the Road to War, London: Penguin, 2004
  28. Martin Pugh
    , "Hurrah For the Blackshirts!" Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the War, Pimlico, 2006, p. 270
  29. ^ a b c d e Griffiths, Richard T., Fellow Travellers of the Right: British enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9, Constable, 1980, p. 1
  30. ^ William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, ©1941, reprinted 2011 by RosettaBooks, entry for February 25, 1936
  31. ^ Little, Ivan (20 July 2015). "Ulster aristocrat who welcomed Hitler's Nazi henchman to Co Down". belfast telegraph.
    ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  32. ^ Fleming, p.189
  33. ^ later reproduced in "Ourselves and Germany"- see below – as letter "to a friend", p. 130–4.
  34. ^ Privilege, John. “The Northern Ireland Government, the New Industries Act, and Refugees from the Third Reich, 1934−1940” Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 31.1 (2017): 89
  35. ^ Aldous, Richard (13 November 2004). "A swastika over Ulster". The Irish Times. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  36. ^ Trust, National. "SS Fahnenträger 1220314". www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  37. ^ "Art Unlocked: National Trust at Mount Stewart | Art UK". artuk.org. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  38. ^ "No. 33018". The London Gazette. 6 February 1925. p. 843.
  39. ^ "No. 31678". The London Gazette. 9 December 1919. p. 15189.
  40. ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 106th edition, vol. 1, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1999, p. 49
  41. ^ "Food Exporter George F. Lauritzen". Chicago Tribune. 5 June 1992.
  42. ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 3, p. 3152 gives her father as Ward's husband, Joseph Lewis, who had made his fortune in diamond mining in South Africa; Gyles Brandreth's "Philip: The Final Portrait" (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) states: "Dorothé's mother was Fannie Ward, actress and protégée of Cecil B. de Mille. Officially, her father was Joseph 'Diamond Joe' Lewis (who had made a fortune in South Africa in the diamond rush of the 1870s), but, biologically, it seems she was fathered by Lord Londonderry."
  43. ^ "The Marquess of Londonderry". 20 June 2012. Retrieved 11 May 2017.

Further reading

  • Fleming, Neil C. "Aristocratic appeasement: Lord Londonderry, Nazi Germany, and the promotion of Anglo-German misunderstanding." Cardiff Historical Papers (2007). online
  • Fleming, Neil C. "Lord Londonderry and education reform in 1920s Northern Ireland", History Ireland (spring 2001)
  • Fleming, Neil C. The Marquess of Londonderry: Aristocracy, Power and Politics in Britain and Ireland. (London, 2005)
  • Griffiths, Richard. Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (Constable, 1980)
  • Hyde, H. Montgomery. British air policy between the wars, 1918–1939 (1976) ·
  • Hyde, H. Montgomery
    The Londonderrys: A Family Portrait. (London, 1979)
  • Jackson, Alvin. "Stewart, Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-, seventh marquess of Londonderry (1878–1949)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 6 Jan 2016
  • Kershaw, Ian. Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and the British Road to War. (London, 2004)
  • Strobl, Gerwin. The Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Primary sources

  • Edith, Lady Londonderry, Retrospect. (London, 1938)
  • Lord Londonderry, Ourselves and Germany. (London, 1938)
  • Lord Londonderry, Wings of Destiny. (London, 1943)

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Maidstone
1906–1915 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Under-Secretary of State for Air
1920–1921 		Succeeded by
New office Minister of Education (Northern Ireland)
1921–1926 		Succeeded by
Leader of the Senate of Northern Ireland
1921–1926
Preceded by First Commissioner of Works
1928–1929 		Succeeded by
Preceded by First Commissioner of Works
1931 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary of State for Air
1931–1935 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Leader of the House of Lords
1935 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Lord Privy Seal
1935
Party political offices
Preceded by Leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords
1935 		Succeeded by
Honorary titles
Preceded by Lord Lieutenant of Down
1915–1949 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Lord Lieutenant of Durham
1928–1949 		Succeeded by
Academic offices
Preceded by Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast
1923–1949 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
The Duke of Northumberland
 Chancellor of the University of Durham
1931–1949 		Succeeded by
George Macaulay Trevelyan
Peerage of Ireland
Preceded by Marquess of Londonderry
1915–1949 		Succeeded by
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