Hartley Shawcross

Early life

Hartley William Shawcross was born to John and Hilda Shawcross in Germany, whilst his father was teaching English at Giessen University. He attended Dulwich College, the London School of Economics and the University of Geneva and read for the Bar at Gray's Inn, where he won first-class honours.

Career

He joined the Labour Party at a young age and served as Member of Parliament for St Helens, Lancashire from 1945 to 1958, being appointed to be Attorney General in 1945 until 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,", a phrase that came to haunt him.

As Attorney-General, he prosecuted William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") and John Amery for treason, 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 upon his appointment as Attorney-General and named Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at Nuremberg.

From 1945-49, 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, of Friston in the County of Sussex, and sat in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher.

During the committal hearing for the suspected serial killer doctor John Bodkin Adams in January 1957, he was seen dining with the defendant's suspected lover, Sir Roland Gwynne (Mayor of Eastbourne from 1929–31), and the Lord Chief Justice, Rayner Goddard, at a hotel in Lewes. The meeting added to concerns that the Adams trial was the subject of concerted judicial and political interference.

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 instrumental in the foundation of the University of Sussex and served as chancellor of the university from 1965-85.

He was the President of the charity Attend (then National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends) from 1962–72. In the 1974 New Year Honours Lord Shawcross was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE).

From 1947 to 1960 he was the owner of "Vanity V", a 12-metre class racing yacht designed by William Fife to the Third International Rule, built in 1936.[1]

Defending press freedom

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". 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."

Shawcross and the Nuremberg Trials

Shawcross's advocacy before the Nuremberg Trial was passionate. His most famous line was:

He avoided the crusading ^{[citation needed]} 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.

Family

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. He had two sons, the author and historian William Shawcross and Hume Shawcross, and a daughter, Dr Joanna Shawcross, by his second wife.

At the age of 95 he married Mrs. Susanne Monique Huiskamp on 18 April 1997 in Gibraltar.

He died at home at Cowbeech, East Sussex at the age of 101. Lady Shawcross died on 2 March 2013.

Styles of address