Everything about Maurice Hankey 1st Baron Hankey totally explained
Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey,
GCB,
GCMG,
GCVO,
PC (
1 April 1877–
26 January 1963) was a British
civil servant who gained prominence as the first
Cabinet Secretary and who later made the rare transition from the civil service to ministerial office.
The third son of R. A. Hankey, Maurice Hankey was born at
Biarritz in
1877 and educated at
Rugby School. He joined the
Royal Marines, made Captain and served in successive roles including coastal defence analyst in the War Division of the Naval Intelligence Department (1902-1906). In
1908 he was appointed Naval Assistant Secretary to the
Committee of Imperial Defence and became Secretary to the Committee in
1912, a position he'd hold for the next twenty-six years. In November
1914 he took on the additional duty of Secretary of the War Council. In this function he took notice of the ideas of Major
Ernest Swinton to build a tracked armoured vehicle and brought them to the attention of
Winston Churchill on 25 December 1914, leading to the eventual creation of the
Landship Committee.
In December
1916 David Lloyd George became
Prime Minister and shook up the way the government was run. A small
War Cabinet was instigated and Hankey was appointed as its Secretary. He also served as Secretary of the
Imperial War Cabinet (which also incorporated representatives of the Colonies and Dominion governments) and gained a reputation for strong competency, so much so that when the full Cabinet was restored in
1919, the secretariat was retained and Hankey served as Secretary to the Cabinet for the next nineteen years. In
1923 he acquired the further position of Clerk of the
Privy Council. During his long tenure he'd also often serve as British Secretary to many international conferences and Secretary-General of many Imperial Conferences.
In August
1938 Hankey retired from government and became a British Government Director of the Suez Canal Company, a post he'd hold for only one year. In the
New Year's Honours List of
1939 he was ennobled as
Baron Hankey, of The Chart in the County of Surrey. Lord Hankey remained a respected figure and was often consulted by ministers and civil servants for advice. In August
1939 he advised
Neville Chamberlain about the formation of a new
War Cabinet and the following month become another of Chamberlain's many non-party political appointments when he was made
Minister without Portfolio and a member of the
War Cabinet. Hankey was personally reluctant to take on this task but agreed to do so. He became
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster when Chamberlain was succeeded by
Winston Churchill in May
1940, but was left out of Churchill's War Cabinet. In July
1941 Lord Hankey was moved to the position of
Paymaster-General, but the following year he was dropped from the Government altogether. He continued to hold other positions in both the public and private sector until his death.
Hankey kept a series of at times startlingly detailed
handwritten diaries
throughout most of his years in government, including during his time as Secretary to the War Council and Imperial War Cabinet of the
First World War. These diaries are currently held at the
Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge UK, and can be read by the public.
Offices held
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