MPs and the Second World War

Ahead of Remembrance Day, and with 2025 marking 80 years since the end of the Second World War, Dr Kathryn Rix, Assistant Editor of our House of Commons, 1832-1945 project, follows up her series on MPs and the First World War by looking at the 23 MPs commemorated in the Commons chamber who died during the Second World War.

On 6 July 1943 the Speaker informed the House of Commons of the deaths of two of its members, Brigadier John Whiteley, MP for Buckingham, and Colonel Victor Alexander Cazalet, MP for Chippenham. They had been killed in a plane crash at Gibraltar alongside the Polish Prime Minister General Sikorski, to whom Cazalet had been acting as Britain’s political liaison officer. They were among the estimated 165 MPs who served with the forces during the Second World War. An initial flurry of enlistment among MPs in 1939 was followed by a further wave after Germany’s invasion of France in 1940.

Commenting on the deaths of Cazalet and Whiteley, Winston Churchill voiced regret that ‘the list of Members who have given their lives in this second struggle against German aggression is lengthening’. He declared that when the Commons chamber – destroyed by German incendiary bombs on the night of 10-11 May 1941 – was rebuilt after the war,

‘we shall take care to inscribe their names and titles on its panels to be an example to future generations’.

Churchill’s proposal was incorporated within the reconstructed House of Commons chamber, opened in October 1950, in the form of 23 heraldic shields commemorating the MPs who died during the Second World War. These featured each MP’s family coat of arms or initials, with their surnames inscribed above. This format emulated the 19 shields installed in 1921 to commemorate the MPs who died during the First World War, which were replicated in the rebuilt chamber.

All those commemorated were sitting MPs at the time of their death, except Roger Keyes, elevated to the Lords in 1943. While most represented English constituencies, they included the MPs for the Welsh seat of Barry and Llandaff and for County Antrim in Northern Ireland, as well as MPs with Scottish connections. Two of the group had first been returned to Westminster at the 1922 election, although the MP with the longest continuous service was Cazalet, who had represented Chippenham since 1924. After his sister Thelma was elected for Islington East in 1931, they had the distinction of being the second-ever pair of brother and sister MPs.

The wartime service of these 23 individuals reflected the wide-ranging nature of Britain’s war effort between 1939 and 1945. Many of the 165 MPs who served undertook home duties, performing valuable organisational roles while remaining engaged in parliamentary and constituency business. Those commemorated in the chamber included James Despencer-Robertson, Military Secretary at Southern Command Headquarters in his Salisbury constituency, where he died suddenly in 1942; Frank Heilgers, who was returning from his Bury St Edmunds constituency to duties as an Assistant Quartermaster General at the War Office when he was killed in the 1944 Ilford train crash; and Anthony Muirhead, who was helping to mobilise an anti-tank regiment in Oxfordshire when he died by suicide in 1939.

Not all the commemorated MPs were on active military service. James Baldwin-Webb was travelling to North America on a fundraising mission for the British Volunteer Ambulance Corps on the SS City of Benares when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat on 17 September 1940. The vessel was also transporting evacuees to Canada and Baldwin-Webb was praised for his bravery in assisting women and children into the lifeboats, while refusing a place himself. John Dermot Campbell – the most recently elected member of this cohort, having been an MP since February 1943 – was part of a delegation of six MPs visiting troops in Italy and Greece in January 1945. He and another MP, Robert Bernays, who had been serving with the Royal Engineers, were killed when the plane transporting them between Rome and Brindisi was lost in bad weather.

Bernays, a former journalist, had been a notable early critic of the Nazi government after visiting Germany in the early 1930s. This was in contrast with the position taken by another commemorated MP, Sir Arnold Wilson, who had attracted controversy because of his perceived pre-war sympathies with fascist regimes. Once the war was underway, however, Wilson trained for the dangerous role of an air gunner in the RAF, despite being in his mid-fifties. He was killed in May 1940 when the Wellington bomber in which he was a crew member crashed near Dunkirk.

Several more MPs also died in air crashes. Rupert Brabner, a flying ace with the Fleet Air Arm, had narrowly escaped the German attack on Crete in 1941 and the sinking of the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle in 1942, but was travelling to Canada to attend a ceremony as Joint Under-Secretary of State for Air when he was killed in a plane crash near the Azores in January 1945. Although he served with the army, Lord Apsley, a keen amateur pilot before the war, had used his flying experience to transport fellow officers while serving in the Middle East with the Arab Legion. He was travelling home on leave for Christmas 1942 when the RAF plane in which he was a passenger crashed in Malta. His widow Violet was elected in his place as MP for Bristol Central.

This was not the only example among these 23 MPs of a widow taking her husband’s seat. John Rathbone had a family tradition of parliamentary service, including his great-aunt Eleanor. He was serving with the RAF when he was reporting missing while piloting his crew’s first operational flight, a bombing raid on the German-occupied port of Antwerp in December 1940. After Rathbone’s death was confirmed, his widow Beatrice was elected unopposed for his Bodmin seat.

Also killed while piloting a plane was Peter Eckersley, who was training with the Fleet Air Arm in Hampshire when his aircraft crashed in August 1940. An experienced amateur pilot, before he entered the Commons Eckersley had captained the Lancashire county cricket team, 1929-35, earning nicknames such as ‘the flying cricketer’ because he often flew himself to matches.

Eckersley was not the only notable sportsperson in this group. Cazalet had been four times British amateur squash champion and competed in tennis at Wimbledon, while Patrick Munro had been an international rugby player and twice captained Scotland. Aged 58, Munro was the oldest MP to die on war service, as a member of the Home Guard. He was taking part in a major military exercise at the Palace of Westminster in May 1942 when he collapsed and died. A year earlier he had been the last MP to speak in the Commons chamber before it was destroyed by bombing.

Munro was not, however, the oldest person among the 23 commemorated. That was the 73 year old retired Admiral of the Fleet Roger Keyes, a peer at the time of his death. He had spent over half a century in the navy, serving across the globe before retiring shortly after his election as MP for Portsmouth North in 1934. In 1940-1 he served as Director of Combined Operations, organising and training the Commandos. Tragically his son Geoffrey died during a commando raid in North Africa in November 1941, posthumously receiving the Victoria Cross. Keyes was an unofficial observer with the U.S. fleet at a battle in the Philippines in October 1944 when he suffered smoke inhalation, which contributed to his death in December 1945. In contrast with the high-ranking Keyes, Dudley Joel was a lieutenant in the navy when he was among 63 crew members killed in the bombing of HMS Registan off Cape Cornwall in May 1941.

Almost half of the MPs commemorated for their Second World War service had also served during the First World War. Others had since gained military experience as members of the Territorial Army. In contrast, the youngest MP of this group, George Charles Grey, was born just after the 1914-18 conflict ended. He interrupted his university studies to serve with the Grenadier Guards after war broke out in 1939 and took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk. The ‘Baby of the House’ (and the youngest MP of the twentieth century), he was just 22 when he was elected unopposed for Berwick-on-Tweed in August 1941. He was killed by a sniper in July 1944 as his tank was advancing through Lutain Wood, Normandy.

While Grey had survived the 1940 retreat through France, two other MPs were less fortunate. The first MP killed in action during the Second World War, Richard Porritt, a captain with the Lancashire Fusiliers, died on 26 May 1940 during a German bombing raid near Seclin, France, where the British army was trying to establish a defensive line behind which troops could retreat to Dunkirk. Ronald Cartland, a major with the Worcestershire Yeomanry, was listed as missing in action during the retreat to Dunkirk, with initial reports suggesting he may have been taken prisoner. However, a few months later his family received confirmation that he had been killed by German fire near Watou, Belgium on 30 May 1940. His sister, the novelist Barbara Cartland, paid tribute to him with a memoir published in 1942.

These 23 MPs served in many different theatres of war. Somerset Maxwell initially served with the Royal Corps of Signals in France, before his duties took him to Palestine, Crete, Libya, Iraq and Syria. He became a welfare officer for forces across the Middle East in May 1942, but requested a return to combatant duties, and was placed in command of signals with an armoured division. Wounded in both knees when Allied troops were machine-gunned from the air during fighting in Libya, he died of septicaemia in a Cairo hospital in December 1942. Another casualty of the North Africa campaign was Edward Kellett, second in command of the 8th Armoured Brigade in Tunisia. He was killed during preparations for attacking the Mareth Line in March 1943, when a shell exploded beside his tank while he was standing up shaving.

Stuart Russell was serving in Sicily with the Coldstream Guards when he contracted a fever, and died in hospital in Egypt in October 1943. After spending time on home defence duties, John Macnamara, who had experience in both the regular and the territorial army, was keen for more active service. He was stationed in the Middle East before being appointed as Chief of Staff with the Land Forces Adriatic. Having been involved in operations in Crete and Yugoslavia, he was killed by a German mortar bombardment in Italy while visiting his former regiment, the London Irish Rifles, shortly before Christmas 1944. He was the last sitting MP to die as a result of enemy action.

KR

Short biographies of these 23 MPs written by the History of Parliament can be found on the UK Parliament website.