Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton

Edward Arthur Alexander Shackleton, Baron Shackleton, KG OBE PC (July 15, 1911 – September 22, 1994), was a British geographer and Labour Party politician.

He was the younger son of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. In 1938, he married Betty Homan, and they had two children: the Hon. Charles Edward Ernest Shackleton and the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton.

In 1934 Shackleton organised the "Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition" and choose Gordon Noel Humphreys to lead it. Shackleton accompanied the party as the assistant surveyor to Humphreys. The expedition was eventually responsible for naming Mount Oxford (after the University of Oxford) and the British Empire Range.

In 1946, Shackleton was elected as Labour Member of Parliament for Preston in a by-election. In 1950, he was elected MP for Preston South, re-elected in 1951. In 1955, he stood down and was made a life peer as Baron Shackleton, of Burley in the County of Hampshire in 1958. In Harold Wilson's government, he served as Minister of Defence for the RAF 1964-1967, Minister without Portfolio 1967-1968 and Paymaster General 1968. He was Leader of the House of Lords from 1968 to 1970, and subsequently Opposition Leader of the House of Lords.

From 1971, he was President of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1994 he became the Life President of the newly founded James Caird Society, named after the boat in which his explorer father and crew escaped Antarctica (itself, in turn, named for James Key Caird (1837-1916), jute baron and philanthropist). He acted also as patron of the British Schools Exploring Society (B.S.E.S.) from 1962 until his death.

Lord Shackleton was Pro-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, in which role he was deeply interested in the development of geography at Southampton. A portrait photograph of Lord Shackleton was unveiled by his daughter the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton in December 1997 in the university's Shackleton Building, which houses the Departments of Geography and Psychology.

External links

*http://www.soton.ac.uk/~newrep/vol15/no8people.html ("Shackleton portrait unveiled in Geography Department")
*http://www.bses.org.uk
*http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/cgi-bin/deadsearch.cgi?serverid=VSPOKES-ead-scottpolar&bool=AND&numreq=1&fieldcont1=744&format=full&fieldidx1=docid&scanposition=middle&firstrec=1 (Edward Shackleton collection, Biographical History)

References

*"Geographical Names of the Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve and Vicinity" by Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith (1998) ISBN 0-919034-96-9
*"Lord Shackleton", by Lord Jelicoe, in "Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society", number 45, 1999, printed by the Cambridge University Press for the Royal Society.