Earl Jellicoe. 4 April 1918 George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe

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George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe, 2nd
Earl Jellicoe. 4 April 1918 −− 22 February 2007
William Waldegrave
Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 2008 54, 169-174, published 12 December 2008
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GEORGE PATRICK JOHN RUSHWORTH JELLICOE,
2ND EARL JELLICOE KBE DSO MC PC
4 April 1918 — 22 February 2007
Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 54, 169–174 (2008)
GEORGE PATRICK JOHN RUSHWORTH JELLICOE,
2ND EARL JELLICOE KBE PC DSO MC
4 April 1918 — 22 February 2007
Elected FRS 1990
BY WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE (LORD WALDEGRAVE OF NORTH HILL, PC)
House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW, UK
George Jellicoe had at least five (and very nearly six) different careers, all of them successful.
Two of them were brought to an end as the result of separate imbroglios involving women,
the contemporary reactions to which now seem antique—particularly the first, involving as it
did Foreign Office disapproval of the break-up of his first marriage, an event that led to his
exceptionally happy second marriage to Philippa Dunne. In all of his careers, however—as
soldier and first commander of the Special Boat Service (SBS); as diplomat; as Minister and
politician; as businessman; and as champion of science, and particularly medical science, in
Whitehall and Westminster—he left unusual stocks of affection and admiration behind him,
whether among the Cretan peasants alongside whom he fought the Germans, or the Fellows
of the Royal Society with whom he fought the Treasury. A sixth career as Olympic sportsman
might have been his if he had chosen: in 1948 he was invited to train with the British Winter
Olympics team, either for the Cresta Run or as a skier.
It was, of course, for the fifth of his careers that the Royal Society honoured him with election under Statute 12 in 1990. He had been Lord Privy Seal, responsible for the Civil Service
Department and also for Science, in Mr Heath’s Government of 1970; and a successful and vigorous chairman of the Medical Research Council (MRC) from 1982 to 1990, during which period
he was a critical component of the successful lobbying team that persuaded the then Government,
controversially, to undertake its early and successful advertising campaign warning of the threat
of AIDS. He then became President of the British Heart Foundation. He was also Chairman of the
Council of King’s College, London (1974–83), Chancellor of Southampton University (1984–95)
and a long-term supporter of the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was President from 1993
to 1997. He was President of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee (1980–83). He used his
position in the House of Lords (of which at his death he was the longest-serving member, and perhaps the longest-serving Parliamentarian in the world) to argue consistently on the side of science,
for example in relation to the regulation of human embryology and fertility research.
doi:10.1098/rsbm.2008.0004
171
This publication is © 2008 The Royal Society
172
Biographical Memoirs
George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe was born on 4 April 1918, the son of one of the
most famous men in the British Empire, Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Jellicoe, whose perhaps over-cautious leadership at Jutland had been excused by Churchill’s reminder that he
was ‘the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon’. One of the
young Jellicoe’s godparents was King George V; another, Cosmo Lang, was subsequently
Archbishop of Canterbury. Jellicoe was never an outsider.
All his life, Jellicoe surrounded himself with a thick cloak of self-deprecation, particularly
about his intellectual abilities. In fact, he was clever: winner of the history prize at Winchester,
and Exhibitioner of Trinity College, Cambridge, he obtained a First in the History Tripos. It
is almost the only aspect of Jellicoe that fits with that of the stereotypical Wykehamist. Many
years later, the late Roy Jenkins told the author of this memoir that when, in 1967–69, he was
negotiating reform of the House of Lords with the Conservative Front Bench, ‘it was clear that
George was the brains of the outfit’.
After Winchester, Jellicoe had spent time in Germany, learnt German (he also spoke
French), seen Jesse Owens win his gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games, danced with
Mussolini’s daughter, and become a fearless winter sportsman. He enjoyed himself; but he
could see that war was almost inevitable.
And so it was. Sandhurst followed Trinity, and Jellicoe was commissioned into the
Coldstream Guards. This is not the place to recount at any length his quite extraordinarily gallant war service, first with Colonel Bob Laycock’s Layforce, and then with David Stirling and
others in the early Special Air Service (SAS) and SBS, of which he was Commander, Middle
East, as a lieutenant-colonel aged 25 years. Suffice it to say that he was three times mentioned
in despatches, wounded, awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for an astonishing
raid on Haraklion airfield in Crete. Captured in the Dodecanese, he escaped, and was awarded
a Military Cross (MC) for one of many actions along the Albanian and Yugoslavian coast, as
well as the Légion d’Honneur, the Croix de Guerre and the Greek War Cross.
Leading a tiny British contingent, he liberated Athens at a time when Communist ELAS
(Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos) partisans had already stopped fighting Germans
to turn their guns on non-Communist colleagues in preparation for an attempt to establish
a Soviet-controlled regime. Without the 26-year-old Jellicoe and his few dozen colleagues
(among them Anders Lassen VC, the heroic Danish SAS man) it is not entirely impossible that
ELAS might have replaced the Germans in Athens, with incalculable potential consequences
for the history of postwar Greece.
Jellicoe remained all his life devoted to Greece and to Greek democracy, a feeling that was
warmly reciprocated except by the Communists. Driving with him in 1987 from Athens to the
Mani to stay with his close friend Patrick Leigh Fermor, I witnessed how intensely the New
Democracy politicians consulted him, and was privileged to hear from him at first hand the story
of that last campaign in Greece, as we drove in reverse direction through the landscape where
it had all happened. This was unusual: like most genuine heroes, he was reluctant to talk about
himself—and when he did, he wrapped everything in a fog of extreme self-deprecation.
Some who had such responsibility and such adventures so young never found a role in the
postwar world. Not so Jellicoe. As soon as serious fighting was over, he resigned from the army
to work with refugees in Austria for the UN’s Relief and Rehabilitation Agency. A Foreign
Service career followed, in Washington, Brussels and the Middle East, that might well have led
right to the top; but in those days a marriage break-up effectively meant resignation. The latter
part of his career, as a Parliamentarian, thus began, not wholly voluntarily, in 1958.
George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe
173
Jellicoe was no ideologue. He sat initially on the cross benches, but this was the period of
‘Butskellism’, when the divisions between the parties were as indistinct as in the days of Blair
and Cameron. Indeed, in the Lords at that time and subsequently it was often said that it was
difficult to tell which of the close friends Lords Shackleton and Jellicoe was the Conservative
and which Labour. Against such a background his obvious intelligence and his military and
diplomatic records led to rapid promotion: a Whip in 1961, Parliamentary Under-Secretary
for Housing and Local Government in the same year, then in 1962 Minister of State in the
Home Office. Finally, in the post-Profumo reshuffle of 1963, the Jellicoe name returned to the
Admiralty when John Jellicoe’s son became First Lord, the last occupant of that post.
In Opposition he joined the Shadow Cabinet; shadow became reality when the Conservatives
were returned under Mr Heath in 1970. Jellicoe, a Cabinet Member as Lord Privy Seal, was
responsible for the modernization of the Civil Service and for Science Policy (he chaired the
Cabinet Committee on Science and Technology). He was also Leader of the Lords—no sinecure at a time when, for example, he had responsibility for piloting through the House the Bill
securing British entry to the then European Economic Community (EEC) without allowing a
single amendment. Like many politicians who had seen war at first hand in Europe, he was
a strong supporter of EEC membership, and spoke perhaps more eloquently on this subject
than any other.
The main focus of debate in science policy at the time surrounded Lord Rothschild’s report
on the Government funding of research and development, which proposed a ‘customer–
contractor’ structure between Departments and Research Councils in relation to applied
science; all Jellicoe’s diplomatic skills were required to restore civility between the different
factions that this proposal threw up, and perhaps particularly between Lords Rothschild and
Zuckerman, friends of Jellicoe’s both (and both Fellows of the Royal Society).
The ‘scandal’ that led to his resignation in 1973 was triggered by the genuinely scandalous
behaviour of the junior Defence Minister, Lord Lambton; it was Jellicoe’s misfortune that one
of Lord Lambton’s prostitutes introduced the name ‘Jellicoe’ into one of her notebooks and
hence into police and other gossip. This in fact referred to a building in north London named
after a distant cousin, the Reverend Basil Jellicoe. But Jellicoe had (discreetly) used call girls
occasionally, which fact he volunteered to the Prime Minister; Mr Heath sadly, and perhaps
unnecessarily, accepted his resignation. His resignation was greeted with tributes from across
the political spectrum. Richard Crossman said that he was ‘among the bravest, ablest, most
decent members of the Heath Government’, and a good many thought Jellicoe need not have
resigned.
Out of office he became a successful non-executive director of a number of companies, and
chairman of two, Tate & Lyle and Davy Corporation.
It was perhaps even more important to Jellicoe that he was soon welcomed back to important and sensitive official posts. In 1983 he became Chairman of the British Overseas Trade
Board. In 1986 he was asked to review the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He warned perspicaciously that there was an increasing threat to Britain from international terrorism. In that year
also he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
In 1982, to his great satisfaction, he had become chairman of the MRC, first with Sir
James Gowans FRS as secretary, and then with Sir Dai Rees FRS. This was a period of tight
funding constraints; to have a friend at the Whitehall and Westminster courts as influential as
Jellicoe undoubtedly helped the MRC. In terms of policy, Jellicoe was stalwart in defence of
reasonably regulated scientific research in the controversial area of human embryo research,
174
Biographical Memoirs
intervening to considerable effect in all the relevant Lords debates. Perhaps most importantly,
Jellicoe took Gowans to see the Prime Minister in 1983 to emphasize the acute underfunding
of the MRC as the AIDS crisis began to unfold. He was intimately involved in successfully
lobbying Government to take action on AIDS over the next year, making use of his close
friendship with Willie Whitelaw, who had been put in charge of a special Cabinet Committee
on the matter. Along with others, in particular Sir Donald Acheson, the Chief Medical Officer,
he was part of the team that persuaded the Government to introduce, relatively early in comparison with other European countries, a serious and successful campaign of explicit public
health warnings on AIDS, and to provide at least some money for research.
Jellicoe deserved his Statute 12 Fellowship, of which he was very proud, although as with
all his achievements he was self-deprecating about it. (In his farewell to the MRC he wrote,
‘A short time ago I was elected, much to my astonishment (and to the astonishment, I suspect,
of many others!) to the fellowship of the Royal Society, a great personal honour.’). But it was
a good election. Over a very long period he was part of that band of Parliamentarians, sadly
never very large, who take seriously the relationship between science and public policy. For
this he deserved well both of Parliament and the scientific community.
George Jellicoe was a man of immense charm, wit and bonhomie, and of a courage almost
unbelievable to those of us lucky enough to live in quieter times. Seldom without a whisky and
soda, he was nonetheless an extraordinarily hard-working Minister. He loved women—but
no more than they loved him. He was much more widely read than he pretended, in German
and French as well as English; a connoisseur of pictures, music and the fine arts; an admirer
of science and of scientists. There was something pre-modern about the range and robustness of his tastes and culture. He would have enjoyed the company of Sir Joseph Banks no
less than he did that of more recent Presidents; and the enjoyment would, I think, have been
reciprocated.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The frontispiece photograph is reproduced by courtesy of Lady Jellicoe.
SOURCES
Henderson, M. 1988 Xenia: a memoir—Greece 1919–49. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
MRC News, no. 48, September 1990.
The Daily Telegraph, 26 February 2007.
The Financial Times, 27 February 2007.
The Guardian, 26 February 2007.
The Independent, 16 March 2007.
The Times, 26 February 2007.
Windmill, L. A. 2005 A British Achilles: the story of George, 2nd Earl Jellicoe. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military.

Earl Jellicoe. 4 April 1918 George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe

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