- Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu
Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd
Baron Montagu of Beaulieu (bornOctober 20 ,1926 ) is a British Conservativepolitician well known in Britain for founding theNational Motor Museum , as well as for a pivotalcause célèbre in British gay history, his 1954 conviction and imprisonment for homosexual sex, a charge he denied.Early life
Montagu was born in
London , and inherited his peerage in 1929 at the age of two, when his fatherJohn Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu was killed in an accident. He attended St. Peter's Court School and Ridley College inCanada ,Eton College andNew College, Oxford . He served in theGrenadier Guards , including service in Palestine before the end of theBritish Mandate .On coming of age, Montagu immediately took his seat in the
House of Lords and swiftly made his maiden speech on the subject ofPalestine .Activities
Montagu's interest in historic cars led him to open the
National Motor Museum on the grounds of his stately home,Palace House ,Beaulieu, Hampshire in 1952.Montagu founded "The Veteran And Vintage Magazine" in 1956 and continued to develop the museum, making a name for himself in tourism. He was chairman of the
Historic Houses Association from 1973 to 1978 and chairman ofEnglish Heritage from 1984 to 1992.In the 1999
reform of the House of Lords , Lord Montagu was one of 92hereditary peers selected to remain inParliament pending further reform of the upper chamber.exuality
Montagu knew from an early stage of life that he was
bisexual , and while attending Oxford was relieved to find others with similar feelings. In a 2000 interview Lord Montagu stated, "My attraction to both sexes neither changed nor diminished at university and it was comforting to find that I was not the only person faced with such a predicament. I agonised less than my contemporaries, for I was reconciled to my bisexuality, but I was still nervous about being exposed." [http://archive.thisishampshire.net/2000/9/30/82932.html Lamb, Rachel (September 30, 2000), "The real Lord Montagu", "thisishampshire.net". Retrieved on August 2, 2007] ]Trial and imprisonment
Despite keeping his homosexual affairs discreet and out of the public eye, in the mid-1950s Montagu became "one of the most notorious public figures of his generation," after his conviction and imprisonment for "conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons," a charge which was also used in the
Oscar Wilde trials in 1895, and remained on the books until 1967, and in a modified form until 2003. [http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23404322-details/Lord+Montagu+on+the+court+case+which+ended+the+legal+persecution+of+homosexuals/article.do "Lord Montagu on the court case which ended the legal persecution of homosexuals," "thisislondon.co.uk", "The Evening Standard") (July 14, 2007). Retrieved on August 2, 2007] ]In the
cold war atmosphere of the 1950s, when witch hunts later called theLavender Scare were ruining the lives of many gay men and lesbian women in the United States, the parallel political atmosphere in Britain wasvirulently anti-homosexual. The then
Home Secretary , SirDavid Maxwell Fyfe , had promised "a new drive against male vice" that would "rid England of this plague." As many as 1,000 men were locked up in Britain's prisons every year amid a widespread police clampdown on homosexual offences. Undercover officers acting as "agents provocateurs" would pose as gay men soliciting in public places. The prevailing mood was one of barely concealed paranoia.On two occasions Montagu was charged and committed for trial at Winchester Assizes, firstly in 1953 for allegedly taking sexual advantage of a 14-year-old Boy Scout at his beach hut on the
Solent , a charge he has always denied. When prosecutors failed to achieve a conviction, in what Montagu has characterized as a "witch hunt" to secure a high-profile conviction, he was arrested again in 1954 and charged with performing "gross offences" with an RAF serviceman during a weekend party at the beach hut, located on Lord Montagu's country estate. Montagu has always maintained he was innocent of this charge as well ("We had some drinks, we danced, we kissed, that's all.") Nevertheless, Montagu was imprisoned for twelve months for "consensual homosexual offences" along withMichael Pitt-Rivers andPeter Wildeblood . [ [http://www.sptimes.com/News/041601/Floridian/His_lordship_s_wheel_.shtml Floridian: His lordship's wheel of fortune ] ]Role in gay history
Unlike the other defendants in the trial, Montagu continued to protest his innocence. The trial caused a backlash of opinion among some politicians and church leaders that led to the setting up of the Wolfenden Committee, which in its 1957 report recommended the decriminalization of homosexual activity in private between two adults. Ten years later, Parliament finally carried out the recommendation, a huge turning point in gay history in Britain, where male homosexuality had been completely outlawed in statute law since 1533.
In a 2007 interview, when asked if he felt that he and his co-defendants had been instrumental in the decriminalization of homosexuality in Britain, Lord Montagu said, "I am slightly proud that the law has been changed to the benefit of so many people. I would like to think that I would get some credit for that. Maybe I'm being very boastful about it but I think because of the way we behaved and conducted our lives afterwards, because we didn't sell our stories, we just returned quietly to our lives, I think that had a big effect on public opinion."
Marriage and children
In 1958, he married Belinda Crossley, by whom he had a son and a daughter, and in 1974 he married his second wife, Fiona, and a son (Jonathan Deane) was born in 1975.
Memoirs
For nearly half a century, Lord Montagu steadfastly refused to speak publicly about the conviction. Montagu focused his energies instead on the
National Motor Museum and other activities. But in 2000, Montagu finally broke his silence with the publication of his memoirs, "Wheels Within Wheels", of which two chapters are devoted to the story of his trial and imprisonment. In interviews, Lord Montagu has stated that by publishing his story, he wanted to "put the record straight" because "I felt it was important to get it accurate."The story of Lord Montagu's trial is told in a 2007
Channel 4 documentary, "A Very British Sex Scandal ."Trivia
Montagu's father (John Walter Edward-Scott-Montagu; after 1905 the second Lord Montagu of Beaulieu) wanted an appropriate mascot for his Rolls. Using Montagu's secretary and mistress
Eleanor Velasco Thornton as a model, the sculptor Charles S. Sykes designed the precursor (called "The Whisper") of the "Spirit of Ectsasy"; the famous winged mascot that has adorned nearly every Rolls Royce car since 1911. On 30 December 1915, the "SS Persia", whilst on her way to India, was torpedoed off Crete by a German submarine. Thornton and Montagu were both aboard when it sank. Montagu survived but Thornton did not.References
*"Antique Cars" by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu (Hampton House, 1974). ISBN 0-905015-07-X
*"Wheels Within Wheels" by Lord Montagu (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001). ISBN 0-297-81739-6
*"The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile" by Nick Georgano - Foreword by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu ISBN 0-11-702319-1
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