Name Richard 1st | Nationality British | |
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Full Name Richard Kidston Law Born February 27, 1901 ( 1901-02-27 ) Died November 15, 1980(1980-11-15) (aged 79) Parents Bonar Law and Annie Law | ||
Richard Kidston Law, 1st Baron Coleraine, (27 February 1901 – 15 November 1980) was a British Conservative politician.
Contents
- Background and early life
- Political career
- Family
- Styles of address
- Return from Utopia
- For Conservatives Only
- References
Background and early life
He was the youngest son of the former Conservative Prime Minister Bonar Law and his wife Annie. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Oxford.
Political career
Law was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hull South West in the general election of 1931 and held the seat until 1945. In 1940 he was appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office. He was then transferred to the post of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs until 1943. While in the latter post he took part in the Bermuda Conference on the fate of European Jewry and was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1943 New Year Honours.
He was then Minister of State, also at the Foreign Office, until 1945, when he served briefly as Minister of Education in Churchill's caretaker government. In a by-election in November 1945 he became MP for Kensington South, which he held until February 1950.
Law was again elected as an MP in the election of 1951, this time for Haltemprice, but he resigned this seat in February 1954 and was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Coleraine of Haltemprice in the East Riding of the County of York.
Family
Lord Coleraine (when still Richard Law) had married Mary Virginia, daughter of Abraham Fox Nellis, of Rochester, New York, in 1929. He died on 15 November 1980, age 79, and was succeeded in the barony by his son James Martin Bonar Law.
Styles of address
Return from Utopia
In 1950 Law published Return from Utopia, a book in which he stated his belief that trying to use the power of the state to create any sort of Utopia is not just unattainable but positively evil, because one of the first principles to be sacrificed is the principle of freedom and individual choice. Law argued:
To turn our backs on Utopia, to see it for the sham and the delusion that it is, is the beginning of hope. It is to hold out once again the prospect of a society in which man is free to be good because he is free to choose. Freedom is the first condition of human virtue and Utopia is incompatible with freedom. Come back from Utopia and hope is born again.
For Conservatives Only
In 1970 Lord Coleraine published another book, For Conservatives Only, in which he criticised the Conservative leadership of the time for, in his view, sacrificing Tory principles for electoral expediency and the pursuit of the "middle ground". At this time he was Patron of the Selsdon Group of Conservative MPs.