THE 2nd Earl Jellicoe, who has died aged 88, was Britain's Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords when his political career was brought to an end in 1973 by the revelation that he had been using the services of prostitutes.
Lord Jellicoe's fall from grace was linked in the public's mind with the simultaneous sex scandal involving fellow minister Antony Lambton. In fact, Jellicoe's resignation from Cabinet at the same time was coincidental.
In April 1973 Lambton, then Air Minister, was photographed smoking cannabis while in bed with two prostitutes; the photographer had bored a hole in a cupboard and put a microphone as the nose of a large teddy bear.
By chance, Scotland Yard was investigating Soho's vice rings and had already found out about Lambton when they became aware of the newspaper's, as yet unpublished, photographs. As the Cabinet was considering these, police found out about Jellicoe.
A report to the-then prime minister, Edward Heath, said: "There is nothing in [Jellicoe's] conduct to suggest that the risk of indiscretions on these occasions was other than negligible." Nevertheless, the Profumo affair was fresh in the political memory, and Jellicoe resigned.
George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe was born on April 4, 1918. His father, the Admiral and 1st Earl, commanded the Grand Fleet at Jutland in 1916.
George's mother was the daughter of Sir Charles Cayzer, founder of the Clan Line shipping firm. The boy was her sixth child, but the only son, and King George V offered to be godfather. George Jellicoe was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, taking a First in History. He had succeeded to the earldom in 1935. After Cambridge he planned to enter the Diplomatic Service, but war broke out and in 1939 he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. He rose to lieutenant-colonel at 26 and won the DSO, MC, Croix de Guerre, Legion d'honneur and Greek War Cross. When his Commando force disbanded, Jellicoe gravitated to the SAS, and then to its water-borne raiding section, the Special Boat Squadron. After the war Jellicoe joined the Foreign Service. He served as First Secretary in Washington and Brussels, and in 1956 went to Iraq as Deputy Secretary-General to the Baghdad Pact. After leaving the Service in 1958 his political rise was rapid. In 1963 he became last First Lord of the Admiralty.
Following Edward Heath's victory in 1970, Jellicoe joined the Cabinet as Lord PrivySeal and Leader of the Lords.After his resignation in 1973 Jellicoe devoted himself largely to business. He became chairman of Tate & Lyle and of Davy Corporation, and a director of Sotheby's. In 1995 he helped found Hakluyt, a secret commercial intelligence company based in Mayfair. For eight years (1982-90) he was chairman of the Medical Research Council.
He was made KBE in 1986 and created a life peer in 1999.
Lord Jellicoe had two sons and two daughters from his first marriage; a son and two daughters from his second; and a son by Sara Harrity.
SOURCE : independent.ie
Post a Comment