Background
Peter Alexander Rupert Carrington was born on 6 June 1919.
Peter Alexander Rupert Carrington was born on 6 June 1919.
He was educated at Eton and Sandhurst.
He decided to pursue a career in the army, and proceeded to distinguish himself in the military service during World War II.
After the war he became a banker and became increasingly active in the House of Lords and in government. He was parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries between 1951 and 1954, in Churchill’s government, and performed the same role for the Ministry of Defence between 1954 and 1956, under both Churchill and Eden. He was then made high commissioner of Australia (1956-1959), returning to Britain to become First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he held from 1959 to 1963. After that, he became leader of the House of Lords in 1963, where he headed the opposition between 1964 and 1970.
Carrington’s political career was on hold while the Labour governments were in office in the mid- and late 1960s; but on the formation of Edward Heaths Conservative government, in 1970, he became the secretary of state for defense, a post he held until 8 January 1974, when he became secretary of state for energy, a post he served in only until March 1974. While holding these important positions in government, he was also chairman of the Conservative Party Organization (1972-1974). Edward Heath persuaded him and other prominent Conservatives that the February 1974 general election could be won on a “who governs Britain” appeal—challenging the electorate to choose between a Conservative government and the coal miners and trade unionists, who were seeking to force the government to abandon wage controls. In the end, the Labour Party, which was the largest party but had no overall majority, formed the government.
Carrington was out of office for five years but still maintained a high profile within the Conservative Party, and when Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election, he became her foreign secretary.
From 1984 to 1989 he served as secretary general of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and subsequently, in 1991 and 1992, he became the main European peace negotiator in dealing with the civil war within the former Yugoslavia. Since then he has been absent from the international political stage.
Being a state secretary was the high point of Carringtons political career, and he gained a formidable reputation in international diplomacy. However, the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands ended this chapter of his career.
The dispute over the Falkland Islands arose as a result of one of the Foreign Office ministers, Nicholas Ridley, having presented to the House of Commons a proposed lease-back arrangement under which sovereignty would pass to Argentina. This suggested that the British government was not interested in retaining the Falkland Islands and a foothold in the South Atlantic. As a result, the Argentinian military junta mounted an invasion of the islands. Lord Carrington accepted responsibility for the debacle and resigned in April 1982.
Despite this setback in his political career, Carringtons formidable knowledge of defense and international diplomacy did not go to waste.
He married Iona McCIean in 1942.
