The Viscount Dilhorne | |
|---|---|
 Manningham-Buller in 1961. | |
| Lord Chancellor | |
| In office 13 July 1962 – 16 October 1964 | |
| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| Prime Minister | |
| Preceded by | The Viscount Kilmuir |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Gardiner |
| Attorney-General for England | |
| In office 18 October 1954 – 16 July 1962 | |
| Prime Minister | Sir Winston Churchill Sir Anthony Eden Harold Macmillan |
| Preceded by | Sir Lionel Heald |
| Succeeded by | Sir John Hobson |
| Solicitor-General for England | |
| In office 3 November 1951 – 18 October 1954 | |
| Prime Minister | Winston Churchill |
| Preceded by | Lynn Ungoed-Thomas |
| Succeeded by | Sir Harry Hylton-Foster |
| Member of theHouse of Lords | |
Lord Temporal | |
| In office 17 July 1962 – 7 September 1980 | |
| Preceded by | Peerage created |
| Succeeded by | The 2nd Viscount Dilhorne |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller (1905-08-01)1 August 1905 Amersham, England |
| Died | 7 September 1980(1980-09-07) (aged 75) Knoydart, Scotland |
| Resting place | Deene, England |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4, includingJohn andEliza |
| Parent | |
| Relatives | Emma Nicholson, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (niece) |
| Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford |
Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne (1 August 1905 – 7 September 1980), known asSir Reginald Manningham-Buller, Bt, from 1956 to 1962 and asThe Lord Dilhorne from 1962 to 1964, was an English lawyer andConservative politician. He served asLord Chancellor from 1962 to 1964.
Born inAmersham, Buckinghamshire, Manningham-Buller was the only son ofSir Mervyn Manningham-Buller, 3rd Baronet, grandson ofSir Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Baronet, ofDilhorne Hall, Staffordshire, a junior member of the Yarde-Buller family headed byBaron Churston.[1] His mother was the Hon. Lilah Constance, Lady Manningham-BullerOBE,[2] daughter ofCharles Cavendish, 3rd Baron Chesham and granddaughter ofHugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster.[3]
His uncle's seat ofDilhorne Hall having passed to an heiress ineligible for the baronetcy, Manningham-Buller grew up inNorthamptonshire. (Although pronounced "Dill-horn" by locals in later years, he preferred the older pronunciation of "Dill-urn".)[4] He was educated atEton College, where he caused a fellow pupil to be expelled for making advances to another boy.[5] He then attendedMagdalen College, Oxford, where he took a Third in Law, before being called to the Bar by theInner Temple in 1927.[1]
Manningham-Buller was elected to theHouse of Commons in a 1943 by-election as member of parliament (MP) forDaventry.[1] He was briefly Parliamentary Secretary to theMinistry of Works in the caretaker government ofWinston Churchill before it lost power in the general election of 1945, and became aKing's Counsel in 1947. In 1950, his seat becameNorthamptonshire South.[1]
When Churchill regained power in 1951, Manningham-Buller became theSolicitor General for England and Wales[6] and wasknighted;[7] in 1954 he was sworn into thePrivy Council and became theAttorney-General for England and Wales. In 1956 he succeeded his father in hisbaronetcy.[1]
In 1957, Manningham-Buller prosecuted suspectedserial killer DrJohn Bodkin Adams for the murder of two elderly widows inEastbourne,Edith Alice Morrell andGertrude Hullett.[1] The jury acquitted Adams on the Morrell charge after deliberating for less than an hour.[1] Manningham-Buller controversially entered anolle prosequi regarding Hullett. Not only was there seemingly little reason to enter it (Adams was not suffering from ill health), but the Hullett charge was deemed by many to be the stronger of the two cases. Mr JusticePatrick Devlin, the presiding judge, in his post-trial book termed Manningham-Buller's act "an abuse of process".[8] Devlin also criticised Manningham-Buller for his uncharacteristic weakness at a crucial moment in the Morrell case: evidence (some nurses' notebooks) that had gone missing from theDirector of Public Prosecutions's files, turned up in the hands of the defence on the second day of the trial. Manningham-Buller claimed he had not seen them before but failed to halt their admission as evidence, or ask for time to acquaint himself with their contents. They were subsequently used by the defence to throw doubt on the accuracy of the testimony of various nurses who had worked with Adams and who had questioned his methods and intentions. This damaged the prosecution tremendously, fatally scuppering the case. Manningham-Buller's handling of the case later provoked questions in theHouse of Commons.[1]
Detective SuperintendentHerbert Hannam ofScotland Yard, the chief investigator, suspected political interference due to Manningham-Buller's membership of a government, which had no interest in seeing a doctor hang.[9] Indeed, on 8 November 1956, Manningham-Buller himself had handed a copy of Hannam's 187-page report to the President of theBritish Medical Association (BMA), effectively the doctors' trade union in Britain. This document – the prosecution's most valuable document – was in the hands of the defence, a situation that led theHome Secretary,Gwilym Lloyd-George, to reprimand Manningham-Buller, stating that such documents should not even be shown to "Parliament or to individual Members". "I can only hope that no harm will result" since "the disclosure of this document is likely to cause me considerable embarrassment".[9] Subsequently, on 28 November 1956,Labour MPsStephen Swingler andHugh Delargy gave notice of two questions to be answered in the House of Commons on 3 December regarding Manningham-Buller's contacts with theGeneral Medical Council (GMC) and BMA regarding the Adams case in the previous six months. Manningham-Buller was absent on the day in question but gave a written reply stating he had "had no communications with the General Medical Council within the last six months." He avoided referring to the BMA directly (despite it being named in the questions) and therefore avoided lying, though it could be argued, still deliberately misled the House.[9] Manningham-Buller then proceeded to launch an investigation into how his contact with the BMA had come to be known by the MPs. A leak from Scotland Yard was suspected and Hannam was reprimanded.
Charles Hewett, Hannam's assistant in the investigation, has described how both officers were astounded at Manningham-Buller's decision to chargeJohn Bodkin Adams with the murder of Mrs. Morrell, whose body had been cremated. He believed that there were other cases against the doctor, where traces of drugs had been found in exhumed remains, which were more capable of proof. He also considered that a charge of manslaughter would have been more appropriate in the circumstances. He questioned the decision not to proceed further after Adams' acquittal and he believed that a calculating killer escaped justice as a result.Home Office pathologistFrancis Camps suspected Adams of killing 163 patients.[9]
Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in 1928 but republished in 1960 byPenguin Books. The decision was taken to prosecute Penguin under the newObscene Publications Act. Bernard Levin criticised the decision thus: "It is surely going to be difficult for the prosecution to find anybody taken seriously by the literary or academic worlds to swear that publication ofLady Chatterley's Lover is not in the public interest as a literary event and that its tendency would be to deprave and corrupt those who might read it." When Manningham-Buller saw this inThe Spectator, he cabled SirJocelyn Simon,Solicitor-General, saying: "suggest seriously consider spectator 19th Reggie". He then sent a letter stating: "It seems to me a clearcontempt of court and the only question is should we start proceedings? My feelings is that we should." Manningham-Buller suggested prosecuting "the proprietors ofThe Spectator, the editor and Mr Bernard Levin" once the Chatterley trial itself was over. Sir Jocelyn convinced him to reconsider.[10]
He continued as Attorney-General underSir Anthony Eden andHarold Macmillan until July 1962, when he was rather abruptly madeLord Chancellor and sent to theHouse of Lords to replaceLord Kilmuir. On his appointment, he was elevated to the peerage asBaron Dilhorne,ofTowcester in theCounty of Northampton on 17 July 1962.[11] Retained, after Macmillan's retirement, in the cabinet ofAlec Douglas-Home, when the Conservatives lost the election of 1964 he was createdViscount Dilhorne,ofGreens Norton in theCounty of Northampton on 7 December,[12] becoming the Deputy Leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords. In 1969 he was named aLord of Appeal in Ordinary and continued in this capacity until retiring when he turned 75, in August 1980.[1]
Manningham-Buller wrote the first report on theProfumo affair – an internal report for the Macmillan government (confirmed by his daughter,The Baroness Manningham-Buller, when she appeared on theDesert Island Discs radio programme).[1] Then whenLord Denning was appointed to investigate and report on the affair, Dilhorne passed his report over to Denning.Chapman Pincher in his bookInside Story published in 1978 quotes Manningham-Buller as jokingly saying he could have sued Tom Denning for breach of copyright because significant portions of Manningham-Buller's report appeared in Denning's report virtually unchanged. Denning did include much in his report that was not in Manningham-Buller's report.
Lord Dilhorne held inNewbury District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment; Newbury District Council v International Synthetic Rubber Co. Ltd. [1981] AC 578:"The conditions imposed must be for a planning purpose and not for any ulterior one... and they must fairly and reasonably relate to the development permitted. Also they must not be so unreasonable that no reasonable planning authority could have imposed them.In that case he also introduced the concept of the 'planning unit' which extinguishes previous permitted uses on land that has in practice become a new planning unit. This has stood up the test of recent jurisprudence and aDCLG (then DoE) circular is largely based on its principles.[13]
In the late 1960s, Dilhorne was the chief opponent in the House of Lords of legislation tolegalise homosexual acts between consenting men.[14]
In the late 1950s,Bernard Levin gave Manningham-Buller the nickname "Bullying-Manner" in his Parliamentary sketch. When Manningham-Buller was elevated to the peerage as Lord Dilhorne, Levin renamed him Lord Stillborn.[15] Lord Devlin, judge in the Adams case, described Buller's technique thus:
"He could be downright rude but he did not shout or bluster. Yet his disagreeableness was so pervasive, his persistence so interminable, the obstructions he manned so far flung, his objectives apparently so insignificant, that sooner or later you would be tempted to ask yourself whether the game was worth the candle: if you asked yourself that, you were finished."[9]
Manningham-Buller was one of the inspirations for the character ofKenneth Widmerpool inAnthony Powell'sA Dance to the Music of Time.[9]
Manningham-Buller married Lady Mary Lilian Lindsay (1910–2004), daughter ofDavid Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford, in 1930. They had a son and three daughters:[16]
Manningham-Buller died inKnoydart, in theScottish Highlands, on 7 September 1980, aged 75, and was interred inDeene, Northamptonshire.[1] He was succeeded in the viscountcy by his only son, John. His second daughter was theDirector-General of MI5 from 2002 to 2007 and in 2008 was awarded alife peerage, becoming theThe Right Honourable The Baroness Manningham-Buller,DCB. His granddaughter is model and media personalityLilah Parsons.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forDaventry 1943–1950 | Constituency abolished |
| New constituency | Member of Parliament forNorthamptonshire South 1950–1962 | Succeeded by |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by | Solicitor-General for England 1951–1954 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Attorney-General for England 1954–1962 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain 1962–1964 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New creation | Viscount Dilhorne 1964–1980 | Succeeded by |
| Baron Dilhorne 1962–1980 Member of theHouse of Lords (1962–1980) | ||
| Baronetage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by | Baronet of Dilhorne 1956–1980 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
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