Itinerant beginnings
Shawcross was born in Germany, where his father was a Professor of English literature at Giessen University. Professor Shawcross, a fluent linguist, was a graduate of University College, Oxford and a leading scholar on Goethe and Schiller as well as the editor of Coleridge’s Biographica Literaria. As Bryant has noted the inspiration for Shawcross’ Christian name almost certainly came from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s son, Hartley Coleridge.[2]
Following a move to England, the young Hartley Shawcross was educated at Dulwich College where he also excelled in languages. In later life he became a Governor of the school. Following school, he went on to read French at Geneva University during a gap year. He did not graduate in the traditional sense as a young man but he did however receive nine honorary degrees in later life, perhaps more than making up for his early decision not to go to University as a young man. This still rankled many years later. In later life he observed:
“…I made one of the many mistakes of a misspent youth. I should have gone on to Oxford…I believe I would have benefited greatly from three years at y father’s old college. But I was in a hurry and felt that it was better to commence a directly vocational training than to spend time at Oxford. It was a mistake that I have deeply regretted since, for I now realize how much I have missed in life through not having had the advantage of a university education: residence in a university seems to me now a marvellous introduction to a civilised life.”[3]
Medicine or the Bar presented themselves as the obvious choice for this vocational focus. After initially choosing medicine Shawcross swapped to law following a conversation with Herbert Morrison, Labour politician and sometime Foreign Secretary.[4] Morrison advised that entering the Bar was the best course of action for any fledgling politician wishing to go into Parliament.[5]
Like a number of Liverpool barristers before him he entered the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn in 1924. He passed his Bar finals with top marks in 1925 with the best paper in Criminal Law and the top first with a Certificate of Honour in the Bar Final.[6] The University of Liverpool currently has a very strong connection with Malaysia with some 150 or so Malaysian students reading for their LL.B. degrees here at the University of Liverpool. It is therefore pleasing to note that the young Shawcross supported his early year at the Bar by “coaching Malay princes for the bar examinations, one of whom became the first prime minister of Malaysia [Tunku Abdul Rahman]”[7] May these links with the far East continue for another 92 years! This also perhaps sowed the seeds for his future teaching activity in Liverpool. During this formative period at the Bar Shawcross lived with his first wife, Alberta Rosita Shyvers (see below), and an “enormous St Bernard dog” in a small flat in Elm Gardens, Chelsea. Unfortunately, posterity does not recall the name of the animal.
In addition to excelling in his legal work at Gray’s Inn Shawcross also seems to have excelled in teasing the then David Maxwell Fyfe, a contemporary. Shawcross recounts how on Grand nights he would frequently challenge other members of the Inn but that he focused a great deal on Maxwell Fyfe. Shawcross continues: “He was a man entirely lacking any sense of humour and invariably wore black pin-striped trousers. ‘Mr Senior, sir’ I would stand up and say, ‘I deeply regret to have to draw your attention to a grave breach of the ancient traditions of our House. There is present tonight a Mr Maxwell, also calling himself Mr Fyfe, or Maxwell & Fyfe Ltd, or whatever. The name is of no significance but what will I fear, shock you as it has shocked me is that he has had the temerity, the rashness, nay the effrontery to come here tonight wearing white trousers with a black stripe. I submit that he should be severely fined.”[8] Invariably the charge was proved and Maxwell-Fyfe paid the fine of a bottle of wine.
In 1927 Shawcross moved to Liverpool. In addition to his practice at the Bar, he was also appointed as a part-time “Lecturer in Jurisprudence and other subjects”[9] at the University of Liverpool. This was not his first brush with the possibility of an academic career. Shawcross struggled in the first three years of his practice in London. Upon making the Benchers of Gray’s Inn aware that he might have to reluctantly switch to an academic career, Lord Birkenhead was himself responsible for recommending Shawcross for an appointment to teach law at Christ Church, Oxford.[10] Their paths had first crossed when Shawcross spoke for the students at a dinner to celebrate Birkenhead’s Earldom. Shawcross did not take up the appointment as it was full-time.[11]
In achieving the University of Liverpool post Shawcross beat off some stiff competition, including a future President of the International Court of Justice in the Hague. That another Gray’s Inn Bencher was chairman of the selection committee, in addition to being the Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster, has been remarked upon by Shawcross himself.[12] At the same time that Hartley Shawcross was appointed to the Law School at the University of Liverpool, his father was appointed to a lectureship in English literature in the University of Liverpool. This proved to be convenient for living arrangement purposes, particularly for the latter, who had recently become a widower. Despite voting against his appointment the then Dean of the Law School, Professor Raleigh Batt, became lifelong friends with Shawcross junior.[13]
On his University of Liverpool appointment one commentator has opined, “It was odd that he should obtain this post considering that he had no university degree himself.”[14] This may have reflected in one precursor to the modern student evaluation process. Bryant goes on, “I hope he will not mind me saying so but we found him to be the dullest of lecturers or perhaps it was the subjects that were dull [Roman Law and Private International Law] I am afraid that very little attention was paid…[students] used to idle their time playing above-halfpenny on the desk which brought forth testy comments from Mr Shawcross”[15] Not such lack of concentration or indiscipline would be tolerated in the modern University! Shawcross’ association with the University would continue until at least 1942, when he was embroiled in a number of heated exchanges regarding the development of the law curriculum. In response to a committee paper advocating a wider and more liberal approach to law teaching within the University Shawcross responded that this proposal would, “diminish the utility of the Law School to the profession and through the profession to the community.”[16] Ultimately the University’s Senate and Council were victorious and the curriculum was widened in line with the original proposals.
Shawcross joined Maxwell Fyfe’s chambers in Harrington Street in late 1927. Shawcross joined the Northern circuit in the same year. This was, “a formidable step, for the Northern Circuit was then – as indeed it always has been – very strong.”[17] His first case was at the Liverpool Court of Passage involving a parrot that was previously owned by Shawcross’ Chinese client. Judgment was given for his client. Bryce has provided a vivid depiction of Shawcross in these early Liverpool years:
“Three years [Maxwell Fyfe’s] junior but very much his contemporary at the Liverpool bar was Hartley Shawcross, as unlikely a socialist barrister as one could imagine, handsome, elegant, well dressed and with a voice to match. Shawcross vied with Fyfe for the more lucrative Liverpool briefs. Each was successful and together they dominated the Liverpool bar.”[18]
1933 was a noteworthy year for Shawcross as he became head of Chambers at 43 Castle Street. Amongst the other tenants was Rose Heilbron, a Liverpool graduate and one of the first women to be appointed to the High Court bench. 1939 saw Shawcross become a King’s Counsel and become a Master of the Bench of the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn.
Of his character and life style one biographer has noted that:
“His lifestyle was that of a champagne socialist. He enjoyed the benefits of an apartment in London, a country house (Friston Place, a grade one listed building in Sussex), a yacht (his hobby was sailing), two cars, horses, nannies, and staff, and described his existence with a degree of meiosis as 'not living in a particularly modest way'”[19]
Shawcross married three times. Unfortunately, all three relationships were touched by difficulty. His first wife, Alberta Rosita Shyvers, was a chronic invalid who died of a self-inflicted sleeping pill overdose in 1943 whilst a resident at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. She had been living their whilst her husband was Regional Commissioner for the North West. No.5 Region during the Second World War and based in Manchester. As Shawcross was later to observe, “She sacrificed her own life for my future…part of me died with her.”[20]
His second wife, Joan Winfield Mather, who he had married in 1944 and who was the dedicatee of his 1995 memoir, tragically died in a riding accident in 1974. This is not unlike the experience of the Earl of Hailsham. Mary, his wife of 34 years and mother of their five children, died in a riding accident in Australia whilst they were on a speaking tour.[21] The Earl of Kilmuir was also touched by great tragedy. His third daughter died following a cycling accident.[22] Happiness did however come in the shape of three children from Shawcross’ second marriage. His third marriage, which his family opposed, came in April 1997 and took place in Gibraltar, when he married Susanne Monique Huiskamp. Leisure hours would find Shawcross pottering around in a sailboat or out riding.
Judicial activity and relations between Shawcross and the Earl of Kilmuir
If the Earl of Birkenhead and the Earl of Kilmuir’s judicial contributions to the development of English and Welsh law can be characterised as scant then the contributions of Shawcross can be said to be very minimal. He did sit in a judicial capacity, albeit more in the honorific sense. In 1941 he was appointed as an assistant chairman of east Sussex quarter sessions. That same year he became Recorder of Salford. A post he held until 1945. Finally, 1946 saw Shawcross become Recorder of Kingston upon Thames. This was not unacceptable pluralism (as Lord Birkenhead’s publication activity potentially was) but an accepted practice during the period. He held the Recordership post until 1951. There is a long held convention that this Recordership is held by Attorney-General of the day and indeed Shawcross had been appointed Attorney-General on the 4th August 1945 following his successful candidacy for the St Helen’s constituency in the General Election of July 1945.[23] Prior to this Shawcross had been approached by both Conservative (Wirral constituencies) and Labour (West Birkenhead) party members regarding potential candidature for those seats.
Work as Attorney-General and stunted progression?
The Earl of Kilmuir (then Sir David Maxwell Fyfe KC) conducted the lion’s share of the British prosecution team’s work at the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals, together with Elwyn Jones, a future Lord Chancellor. Shawcross, as Attorney-General, did however give the opening and closing speeches, portions of which can be viewed to this day on popular media sites such as YouTube.[24]
It has been said of Shawcross that he was “widely recognised as the finest advocate of his generation.”[25] If that was the case why was such important prosecution work (Nuremberg) left to supposedly less talented advocates? Those talents, we are told, were instead allowed to shine in the domestic context. The short answer is that Shawcross was pre-occupied with his Parliamentary work and could not afford the time commitment that was dictated by the Nuremberg prosecutions. As Attorney-General Shawcross brought treason prosecutions against William Joyce and John Amery. He was also involved in the espionage prosecutions of Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs and with the prosecution of John George Haigh, the “Acid bath murderer.”
Beloff has noted that Shawcross, “declined the chance to become Lord Chief Justice in 1946, and Master of the Rolls in 1949.”[26] Despite being a favourite of the incumbent Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard. The Woolsack was also potentially within his reach, at least in his own view. One contemporary commentator noted: “I had the impression that the only person Hartley thought would have been suitable as Lord Chancellor in this lifetime was himself.”[27] Historically career progression from Solicitor-General to Attorney-General to Lord Chancellor has long held multiple precedent with, inter alia, Egerton, Bacon, Littleton, Finch, Birkenhead, and Kilmuir moving along this path. As Holdsworth has noted the Attorney-Generalship starts, “the highroad of preferment to the Woolsack.”[28] Burke referred to the Law Officer positions as providing successful lawyers with somewhere to rest “a short space in the Commons’ on their way to judicial preferment.”[29]
Shawcross was chairman of the Bar Council from 1954 to 1957. He became Treasurer of Gray's Inn in 1954. He was elevated to the peerage with a barony, “the lowest form of peerage life” on 14th February 1959. His family had been armigerous since the fourteenth century.[30]
The commercial years
Retired legal luminaries do go on, with varying degrees of success, to forge “retirement” careers in business. Lord Shawcross was no exception. After giving up the Bar and politics in 1958 aged 55 Lord Shawcross took appointments as the chairman of Thames Television Ltd (1969-1974) and directorships at Hawker Siddley, Ford, Shell Petroleum and Rank Hovis McDougall.
At first blush one may have assumed that this switch in career had monetary motivations at its core. However, one biographer seems to suggest that the growing complexity of the law away from the general principles of the 1920s and 1930s towards increased complication sits behind Shawcross’ decision to give up the Bar. Reflecting on advocates’ ability to present effectively and stay the course through these changes, Bryson reflects that, “Lord Shawcross is one [advocate] who didn’t.”[31]
Conclusion
Investigating the life of Lord Shawcross QC gives one the feeling of investigating a life that by co-incidence, pressure of work, or other distractions, never quite reached the peak which his contemporaries seemed to achieve or which his own early promise suggested was in the offing. Topping out as a baron silk is no mean achievement of course, but the path trod by his contemporaries as Attorney-General usually ended with high judicial office by convention. Shawcross did not follow that route. Indeed, when his chance to shine in that office came, he largely delegated the task to others (Nuremberg). We are told that the other great legal offices, Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice, were offered to him. These he also declined. As Beloff has noted Shawcross had, “a career of both brilliant achievement and unfulfilled promise...he could fairly be described as the ‘nearly man’ of British law…”[32] Leaving aside the question of what “British Law” is (surely “English and Welsh” law?) Beloff seems to have hit the nail on the head with this description.
As with Birkenhead and Kilmuir artistic memorials abound commemorating the life and work of Shawcross. The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) holds a number of photographs of Shawcross as well as a double portrait with his wife. There are also pencil and chalk drawings, a lithograph and a bromide print of Shawcross in the NPG collection. The University of Sussex have an oil painting of Shawcross that was executed by Organ in 1986. This commemorates the role Shawcross played as Chancellor of the University between 1965 and 1985.
Investigations to date have not revealed any artistic work in Shawcross’ memory in Liverpool. His long legal links to the City, his law lecturing at the University, and his tenure as a Member of Parliament for a Liverpool constituency, as well as the office of Attorney-General, all point towards the notion that this lacuna should be plugged.
Written by Dr John Tribe.
References
[1] On Lord Shawcross QC see: Shawcross, H. Life Sentence. Constable, London, 1995. Hereafter Shawcross Sentence. See also: Beloff, M. Shawcross, Hartley William, Baron Shawcross (1902–2003), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2007; online edn, Sept 2015 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.liverpool.idm.oclc.org/view/article/92268]. Hereafter Beloff Shawcross. See also: Bryson, G. Hartley Shawcross, Lord Shawcross, in: Fagan, N & Bryson, G & Elston, C (Eds). A Century of Liverpool Lawyers. Liverpool Law Society, Liverpool. 2002, pp.131-136. Hereafter Bryson Shawcross.
[2] Bryson Shawcross, p.132. For an interesting discussion of Coleridge, Wordsworth and their enduring friendship with a bankruptcy barrister see: Tribe, J. Bankruptcy in Crisis - a Regency Saga: Part 4 - Basil Montagu (1770-1851) (2009) Insolvency Intelligence, 22(9), 132-140.
[3] Shawcross Sentence, p.16.
[4] On the life of Morrison see further: Howell, D. Morrison, Herbert Stanley, Baron Morrison of Lambeth (1888–1965) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011.
[5] Shawcross Sentence, p.17.
[6] Beloff Shawcross.
[7] Beloff Shawcross.
[8] Shawcross Sentence, p.19.
[9] See: Kelly, T. For Advancement of Learning – The University of Liverpool – 1881-1981. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 1981, p.234. (Hereafter Kelly Advancement). We are not told what the “other subjects” were.
[10] Shawcross Sentence, p.23.
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid.
[13] Shawcross Sentence, p.24.
[14] Bryant Shawcross, p.133.
[15] Bryant Shawcross, p.133.
[16] Kelly Advancement, p.373.
[17] Shawcross Sentence, p.24.
[18] Bryson, G. David Maxwell Fyfe, Viscount Kilmuir, in: Fagan, N & Bryson, G & Elston, C (Eds). A Century of Liverpool Lawyers. Liverpool Law Society, Liverpool. 2002, p139. (Bryson Kilmuir).
[19] Beloff Shawcross.
[20] Shawcross Senence, p.51.
[21] See the very moving: Hogg, Q. A Sparrow’s Flight: The Memoirs of Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone. Collins, London, 1990, Chapter Forty-Five: “Third Bereavement, pp.397-404.
[22] Tribe, J. “Dr. Tribe’s Vignettes of Liverpool Legal History” (4) David Maxwell Fyfe: The Earl of Kilmuir – the Second Liverpool Lord Chancellor. Liverpool Law – Liverpool Law Society, Liverpool, October 2017, p.12-14.
[23] See: Sainty, J. A List of English Law Officers, King’s Counsel and Holders of Patents of Precedence – Shawcross, Hartley William. Selden Society, London, 1987, p.55
[24] See: “Sir Hartley Shawcross delivers speech at court in the Nuremberg trials, Germany.” https://youtu.be/PtCuO27FQHM
[25] Beloff Shawcross.
[26] Beloff Shawcross.
[27] Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, 1.379, cited in Beloff Shawcross.
[28] Professor William Holdsworth, cited in: Sachse, WL. Lord Somers: A political portrait. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1975, p.61.
[29] Lord Kilmuir, Political Adventure: The Memoirs of the Earl of Kilmuir. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964, p.68. Hereafter Kilmuir Adventure.
[30] Shawcross Sentence, p.11.
[31] Bryson Shawcross, p.131.
[32] Beloff Shawcross.
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