Oliver Locker-Lampson

Lieutenant Commander Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson, CMG, DSO (25 September 1880 – 8 October 1954) was a British politician and naval reserve officer.

Locker-Lampson was educated at Cheam School, Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge where he gained an Honours Tripos Degree in History and Modern Languages.

He was also involved in a secret plan by Arthur Steel-Maitland and Conservative Central Office to gain control of the Daily Express, but was outmanoeuvred by the future Lord Beaverbrook.

He also opposed Irish Home Rule, and raised funds for Edward Carson's Pro-Unionist Ulster Volunteer Force.

After training at Whale Island, Hampshire and in north Norfolk near his family home, Newhaven Court, Cromer, Locker-Lampson's No.

Sea ice prevented the Division from reaching Archangel and men and armoured cars were landed at the small town of Alexandrovsk.

He said later that he had been asked to participate in the 1916 assassination of Rasputin,[7] and that he had a secret plan to get Tsar Nicholas II out of Russia after his abdication in March 1917.

In 1918 selected personnel and armoured cars transferred to the Machine Gun Corps and served as 'Duncars' within Dunsterforce in Persia and Turkey, though without Commander Locker-Lampson, who in 1918 became the Ministry of Information's Russian Representative.

Partly because of his experiences in Russia, Locker-Lampson became fiercely anti-Communist and suspicious of covert Bolshevik influence in Britain's economy, society and politics.

[10] He also expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler in the Daily Mirror, touting the future leader of Nazi Germany as "a legendary hero" and "the most masterly expounder and contriver in the length and breadth of the Reich".

In July 1933 he introduced a Private member's bill to extend British citizenship to Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution, though it failed to become law.

A TV drama-documentary released worldwide by Netflix on 17 February 2024 included scenes recreating the Roughton Camp with actor Andrew Havill in the role of Oliver Locker-Lampson.

[15] He later worked to help other high-profile victims of fascism, including Haile Selassie and Sigmund Freud,[16] as well as numerous ordinary Jewish people, whom he personally sponsored in order they might escape Nazi persecution in Germany and Austria.

"[18] In 1934 he introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill to ban the wearing of political uniforms - aimed at Oswald Mosley's Black Shirts (British Union of Fascists).

Age and ill-health prevented him from taking a very active part in the Second World War, though he joined the Home Guard and continued to support Winston Churchill vociferously from the backbenches.