Selwyn Lloyd

His father, John Wesley Lloyd (1865–1954), was a dental surgeon and Methodist lay preacher of Welsh descent; his mother, Mary Rachel Warhurst (1872–1959), was distantly related to Field Marshal Sir John French.

He had three sisters.

Lloyd was educated at the Leas School and as a boy was particularly interested in military history, to which he later attributed his successful military career.

John Selwyn Brooke Selwyn-Lloyd, Baron Selwyn-Lloyd, (28 July 1904 – 18 May 1978) was a British politician.

Lloyd was born on 28 July 1904 at Red Bank in West Kirby, Cheshire.

In 1918, aged thirteen, he won a scholarship to Fettes College.

As a junior boy there, where he was nicknamed "Jezebel", after his initials JSBL, he became embroiled in a homosexual scandal, but was deemed to be the innocent party, escaping punishment, while three older boys were expelled.

Born and raised in Cheshire, he was an active Liberal as a young man in the 1920s.

In the following decade, he practised as a barrister and served on Hoylake Urban District Council, by which time he had become a Conservative Party sympathiser.

During the Second World War he rose to be Deputy Chief of Staff of Second Army, playing an important role in planning sea transport to the Normandy beachhead and reaching the acting rank of brigadier.

In October 1923, he went up, as a scholar, to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where A. C. Benson was Master.

There he was a friend of the future Archbishop Michael Ramsey.

Lloyd acquired the nickname "Peter" at this time.

Lloyd played rugby and was disappointed not to get a Blue.

In October 1924, his sister Eileen sailed to India to marry and work as a doctor.

She died there the following January, aged 25.

Lloyd was an active Liberal as a young man, and in March 1925 he entertained H. H. Asquith at Magdalene after a Liberal Party meeting at the Cambridge Guildhall.

He became President of the Cambridge University Liberal Club.

Lloyd was also an active debater in the Cambridge Union Society, where his sparring-partners included Rab Butler, Patrick Devlin, Hugh Foot, Alan King-Hamilton and Geoffrey Lloyd.

Lloyd lost his scholarship in June 1925, after obtaining a Second in Classics.

He then switched to study History, in which he also obtained a Second.

During the General Strike of May 1926, Lloyd, who earlier that year had begun eating dinners at Gray's Inn with a view to qualifying as a barrister, volunteered as a Special Constable.

Selwyn Lloyd was a frequent speaker for the Liberal Party from 1926 onwards.

In 1926 he toyed, not entirely seriously, with the idea of joining the Labour Party.

In Michaelmas Term 1926, Lloyd and Devlin (then President of the Cambridge Union) persuaded Walter Citrine to join Lloyd in opposing the motion that "The power of trade unions has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished" (an echo of Dunning's famous motion on the power of the Crown in 1780).

They had invited the miners' leader A. J. Cook, to the consternation of the town authorities, but in the event he was unable to attend.

He later became critical of the Conservative Government's clampdown on trade unions, e.g. the Trades Disputes Act of 1927.

The university authorities encouraged students who had worked for the government so close to their exams to extend their studies for an extra year, which meant that Lloyd was able to spend a very rare fifth year as an undergraduate.

Lloyd George had become Liberal leader and was injecting money and ideas into the Liberal Party, and was keen to attract promising young candidates.

Lloyd won the debate by 378 votes to 237 and was elected Secretary for Lent Term 1927, putting him on track to be Vice-President for Easter (summer) Term 1927, then President in Michaelmas 1927.

He took office as President in June 1927.

At his retiring debate in November 1927, Samuel Hoare and Rab Butler (then being selected as Tory candidate for Saffron Walden) spoke.

Lloyd finally graduated with a third-class in Part II of the Law Tripos in June 1928.

Lloyd was a Liberal Parliamentary candidate at Macclesfield in the 1929 general election, coming third.

Elected to Parliament in 1945 as a Conservative, he held ministerial office from 1951, eventually rising to be Foreign Secretary under Prime Minister Anthony Eden from April 1955.

His tenure coincided with the Suez Crisis, for which he at first attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement, before reluctantly assisting with Eden's wish to negotiate collusion with France and Israel as a prelude to military action.

He continued as Foreign Secretary under the premiership of Harold Macmillan until July 1960, when he was moved to the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In this job he set up the NEDC, but became an increasingly unpopular figure because of the contractionary measures which he felt compelled to take, including the "Pay Pause" of July 1961, culminating in the sensational Liberal victory at the Orpington by-election in March 1962.

In July 1962 Macmillan sacked him from the Cabinet, making him the highest-profile casualty in the reshuffle known as the "Night of the Long Knives".

He returned to office under Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home as Leader of the House of Commons (1963–64), and was elected Speaker of the House of Commons from 1971 until his retirement in 1976.