Everything about Edward Douglas-scott-montagu 3rd Baron Montagu Of Beaulieu totally explained
Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu (born
October 20,
1926) is a
British Conservative politician well known in Britain for founding the
National Motor Museum, as well as for a pivotal
cause 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 father
John 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 in
Canada,
Eton College and
New College, Oxford. He served in the
Grenadier Guards, including service in
Palestine before the end of the
British Mandate.
On coming of age, Montagu immediately took his seat in the
House of Lords and swiftly made his maiden speech on the subject of
Palestine.
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 of
English Heritage from
1984 to
1992.
In the 1999
reform of the House of Lords, Lord Montagu was one of 92
hereditary peers selected to remain in
Parliament pending further reform of the upper chamber.
Sexuality
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 wasn't 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."
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.
In the
cold war atmosphere of the 1950s, when witch hunts later called the
Lavender Scare were ruining the lives of many gay men and lesbian women in the United States, the parallel political atmosphere in Britain was
virulently anti-homosexual. The then Home Secretary, Sir David 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.
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'd like to think that I'd 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'd 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.
]Further Information
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