Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross
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The Right Honourable The Lord Shawcross GBE PC QC |
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| President of the Board of Trade | |
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In office 24 April – 26 October 1951 |
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| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Harold Wilson |
| Succeeded by | Peter Thorneycroft |
| Attorney General | |
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In office 4 August 1945 – 24 April 1951 |
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| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Sir David Maxwell Fyfe |
| Succeeded by | Sir Frank Soskice |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 4 February 1902 |
| Died | 10 July 2003 (aged 101) |
| Alma mater |
London School of Economics University of Geneva |
Hartley William Shawcross, Baron Shawcross, GBE, PC, QC (4 February 1902 – 10 July 2003), known from 1945 to 1959 as Sir Hartley Shawcross, was a British barrister and politician and the lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal.
Hartley William Shawcross was born to John and Hilda Shawcross in Germany, whilst his father was teaching English at Giessen University. He attended Dulwich College, the London School of Economics and the University of Geneva and read for the Bar at Gray's Inn, where he won first-class honours.
He joined the Labour Party at a young age and served as Member of Parliament for St Helens, Lancashire from 1945 to 1958, being appointed to be Attorney General in 1945 until 1951. It was in 1946 when debating the repeal of anti-Union laws in the House of Commons that Shawcross allegedly said, "We are the masters now,", a phrase that came to haunt him.
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, known as 'the acid bath murderer'. He was knighted in 1945 upon his appointment as Attorney-General and named Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at Nuremberg.
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