'' (1954) During his initial career as a barrister, Shawcross was part of the legal team hired by the colliery owners at the inquiry into the
Gresford Colliery disaster in 1934,
Stafford Cripps in counterpart representing the miners' union. He joined the
Labour Party and was
Member of Parliament for
St Helens,
Lancashire, from 1945 to
1958, being appointed to be
Attorney General in 1945 until 1951. In 1946, when debating the repeal of laws against
trade unions in the
House of Commons, Shawcross allegedly said "We are the masters now", a phrase that came to haunt him. He was
knighted in 1945 upon his appointment as Attorney-General and named Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at the
Nuremberg trials.
Nuremberg Trials Shawcross's advocacy before the Nuremberg Trial was passionate. His most famous line was: "There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience". He avoided the crusading style of
American,
Soviet, and French prosecutors. Shawcross's opening speech, which lasted two days, 26 and 27 July 1946, sought to undermine any belief that the Nuremberg Trials were "victor's justice" in the sense of being revenge exacted against defeated foes. He focused on the
rule of law and demonstrated that the laws that the defendants had broken, expressed in international treaties and agreements, were those to which prewar Germany had been a party. In his closing speech, he ridiculed any notion that any of the defendants could have remained ignorant of
Aktion T4, extermination of thousands of Germans because they were old or mentally ill. He used the same argument in respect of millions of other people "annihilated in the
gas chambers or by shooting" and maintained that each of the 22 defendants was a party to "common murder in its most ruthless forms".
Attorney-General and UN Factotum As
Attorney-General, he prosecuted
William Joyce ("
Lord Haw-Haw") and
John Amery for
treason,
Klaus Fuchs and
Alan Nunn May for giving atomic secrets to the
Soviet Union, and
John George Haigh, 'the acid bath murderer'. From 1945 to 1949, he was Britain's principal delegate to the
United Nations and was involved in the official adoption of the
Flag of the United Nations in 1946, but he was recalled in 1948 to lead for the government's interest at the
Lynskey tribunal. In 1951, he briefly served as
President of the Board of Trade until the Labour government's defeat in the election of that year. In 1951, he replaced
Harold Wilson as President of the Board of Trade after Wilson and the
Bevanite members of the Cabinet resigned in protest of the introduction of
prescription charges for the
National Health Service by Chancellor of the Exchequer
Hugh Gaitskell.
Return to opposition Shawcross ended his law career in 1951, the same year as the defeat of the second
Attlee ministry. He was expected to become a
Conservative, earning him the nickname "Sir Shortly Floorcross", but instead he remained true to his Labour roots. The meeting added to concerns that the Adams trial was the subject of concerted judicial and political interference. Shawcross resigned from
Parliament in 1958, saying he was tired of party politics.
Elevation Shawcross was made one of Britain's first
life peers on 14 February 1959 as
Baron Shawcross, of
Friston in the
County of Sussex, and sat in the
House of Lords as a
crossbencher.
Defending press freedom In 1961, he was appointed the chairman of the second
Royal Commission on the Press. In 1967 he became one of the directors of
The Times responsible for ensuring its editorial independence. He resigned on being appointed chairman of the
Press Council in 1974. From 1974 to 1978, he was chairman of the
Press Council and is described as "forthright in his condemnation both of journalists who committed excesses and of proprietors who profited from them" and as a "doughty defender of press freedom". In October 1974, he poured scorn on a Labour Party pamphlet that recommended the application of "internal democracy" to editorial policy, saying "This means that... there would be some sort of committee consisting at the best of a mixture of van drivers, press operators, electricians and the rest, with no doubt a few journalists, but more probably composed of trade union officials, to deal with editorial policy." In 1983, Shawcross chaired a Tribunal of Enquiry to handle a protest over the outcome of the
1983 British Saloon Car Championship.
Chancellor of the University of Sussex From 1965 to 1985 Shawcross was Chancellor of the
University of Sussex. ==Later years==