William Whitelaw was Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1991.
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31 Facts About William Whitelaw
2.
William Whitelaw served under Heath as Secretary of State for Employment from 1973 to 1974 and as Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1974 to 1975.
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3.
William Whitelaw served Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher throughout her leadership of the Conservative Party as deputy party leader.
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4.
William Whitelaw served as de facto Deputy Prime Minister between 1979 and 1988 and as Home Secretary from 1979 to 1983.
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5.
William Whitelaw stepped down as a Member of Parliament at the 1983 general election, and was appointed as a Member of the House of Lords.
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6.
William Whitelaw served as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 1983 to 1988.
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7.
William Whitelaw was a captain of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
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9.
William Whitelaw never met his father, William Alexander Whitelaw, born 1892, a member of a Scottish family of the landed gentry, who died in 1919 after service in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the First World War, when his son was still a baby.
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10.
William Whitelaw was educated first at Wixenford School, Wokingham, before passing the entrance exam to Winchester College.
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12.
William Whitelaw's was the first Allied unit to encounter German Jagdpanther tank destroyers, being attacked by three out of the twelve Jagdpanthers which were in Normandy.
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13.
William Whitelaw was awarded the Military Cross for his actions at Caumont; a photograph of Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery pinning the medal to his chest appears in his memoirs.
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14.
William Whitelaw held his first government posts under Harold Macmillan as a Lord of the Treasury between 1961 and 1962 and then under Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour between 1962 and 1964.
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15.
William Whitelaw attempted to negotiate with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, meeting its Chief of Staff Sean Mac Stiofain in July 1972.
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16.
Mac Stiofain in his memoir complimented William Whitelaw, saying he was the only Englishman ever to pronounce his name in Irish correctly.
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17.
In 1973, William Whitelaw left Northern Ireland—shortly before the Sunningdale Agreement was reached—to become Secretary of State for Employment, and confronted the National Union of Mineworkers over its pay demands.
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18.
William Whitelaw loyally refused to run against Heath; however, and to widespread surprise, Margaret Thatcher narrowly defeated Heath in the first round.
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19.
William Whitelaw stood in his place and lost convincingly against Thatcher in the second round.
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20.
William Whitelaw managed to maintain his position as deputy leader until the 1979 general election, when he was appointed Home Secretary.
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21.
William Whitelaw wanted the success of the Government which from the first he accepted would be guided by my general philosophy.
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22.
Thatcher was rumoured to have said that "every Prime Minister needs a Willie" and William Whitelaw was seen as Thatcher's de facto Deputy Prime Minister between 1979 and 1988, to the extent that the then Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, said that had Thatcher been killed in the Brighton hotel bombing, he thought he would have advised Queen Elizabeth II to send for William Whitelaw.
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23.
William Whitelaw improved police pay and embarked upon a programme of extensive prison building.
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24.
William Whitelaw was home secretary during the six-day Iranian Embassy siege in April–May 1980.
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25.
William Whitelaw contemplated resigning after an intruder broke into the Queen's bedroom in 1982 but was dissuaded from doing so.
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26.
Two days following the 1983 general election, William Whitelaw received a hereditary peerage as Viscount William Whitelaw, of Penrith in the County of Cumbria.
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27.
Lord William Whitelaw faced many challenges in attempting to manage the House of Lords, facing a major defeat over abolition of the Greater London Council within a year of taking over.
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28.
William Whitelaw chaired the "star chamber" committee that settled the annual disputes between the limited resources made available by Treasury and the spending demands of other government departments.
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29.
Nicholas Ridley argued that William Whitelaw's retirement marked the beginning of the end of the Thatcher premiership, as he was no longer around as often to give sensible advice and to moderate her stance on issues, or to maintain a consensus of support in her own Cabinet and parliamentary party.
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30.
William Whitelaw formally resigned as Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party in 1991; a farewell dinner was held in his honour on 7 August 1991.
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31.
William Whitelaw was buried at St Andrew's Parish Church, Dacre, Cumbria.
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