Oliver Frederick George Stanley (4 May 1896 – 10 December 1950) was a prominent British Conservative politician who held many ministerial posts before his early death.

Background and education

Stanley was the second son of Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, by his wife Lady Alice, daughter of William Montagu, 7th Duke of Manchester. Edward Stanley, Lord Stanley, was his elder brother. He was educated at Eton, but did not proceed to the University of Oxford due to the outbreak of the First World War.

Military career

During the First World War, Stanley was commissioned into the Lancashire Hussars, before transferring to the Royal Field Artillery in 1915. He achieved the rank of captain, and won both the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre.]]

After the Conservatives' massive defeat in the 1945 general election Stanley was prominent amongst those rebuilding the party, and he came to be regarded as one of the most important Conservative MPs. He was a governor of The Peckham Experiment in 1949. Along with Churchill and Anthony Eden, Stanley was seen as one of the Conservative Party's leaders in 1950. He succeeded his father as Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. By this time, however, his health was in decline; and he died on 10 December 1950 at his home in Sulhamstead. Butler later wrote in his 1971 memoirs that Oliver Stanley was "the acutest brain on the Conservative front bench, the keenest lance I have ever known in politics, and a flowing pen which could [write] several pages of immaculate foolscap in the same time that lesser men would take to wrote a decent paragraph". However, Butler’s view was that he probably would not have been a great Prime Minister or even Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he was too indecisive, but that he was great in opposition.

Historian Sir Charles Petrie went further, and argued in his 1972 memoirs (A Historian Looks At His World) that "the greatest blow the Conservative Party has sustained since the late war was the premature death of Oliver Stanley. He was one of the most gifted men of the century, and would have made a very great Prime Minister. ... He was as brilliant a conversationalist as a public speaker."

thumb|[[Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport|Stanley Field Airport, Belize 10 Cents British Honduras Queen Elizabeth stamps. ]]

Its believed Stanley Field Airport, Belize was named in honour of Stanley as Secretary of State for the Colonies and is commemorated of British Honduras Queen Elizabeth II stamps.

Family

Stanley married Lady Maureen Vane-Tempest-Stewart, daughter of Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, and the Hon. Edith Chaplin, in 1920. They had one son and one daughter:

  • Michael Charles Stanley (1921–1990), who married (Aileen) Fortune Constance Hugh Smith and had two sons; and
  • Kathryn Edith Helen Stanley (1923–2004), Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth II from 1955 to 2002, and who married Sir John Dugdale (1923–1994) and had two daughters and two sons.