Edward Francis Twining, Baron Twining (29 June 1899 – 21 June 1967), known as Sir Edward Twining from 1949 to 1958, was a British diplomat, formerly
Governor of North Borneo
The Governor of North Borneo was the appointed head of the government of North Borneo.
Originally the Governor was appointed by the North Borneo Chartered Company, which was responsible for the administration of the protectorate. Upon North Bor ...
and
Governor of Tanganyika. He was a member of the
Twining tea family. In 1960 he published a book titled ''A History of the Crown Jewels of Europe''; at over 700 pages it is probably the most extensive book on the subject.
Early and personal life
Twining was born in 1899 in
Westminster
Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster.
The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...
to William Henry Greaves Twining, vicar of St Stephen's, Rochester Row, London and his wife, Agatha Georgina, fourth daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Bourne. His brother Stephan Twining became the managing director of the tea merchants,
Twinings
Twinings () is a British marketer of tea and other beverages, including coffee, hot chocolate and malt drinks, based in Andover, Hampshire. The brand is owned by Associated British Foods. It holds the world's oldest continually used company logo ...
. He was a Provost scholar to
Lancing before training at the
Royal Military College, Sandhurst
The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infantry a ...
.
He married Helen Mary, daughter of Arthur Edmund Du Buisson, in 1928 and they had two sons.
Army and wartime service
![The National Archives UK - CO 1069-159-51](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/The_National_Archives_UK_-_CO_1069-159-51.jpg)
He served in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
with the
Worcestershire Regiment
The Worcestershire Regiment was a line infantry regiment in the British Army, formed in 1881 under the Childers Reforms by the amalgamation of the 29th (Worcestershire) Regiment of Foot and the 36th (Herefordshire) Regiment of Foot. The regimen ...
between 1919 and 1922, inadvertently capturing
Éamon de Valera
Éamon de Valera (, ; first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera; 14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was a prominent Irish statesman and political leader. He served several terms as head of governm ...
in 1921. He was appointed
MBE Mbe may refer to:
* Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo
* Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria
* Mbe language, a language of Nigeria
* Mbe' language, language of Cameroon
* ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language
Molal ...
for his services in Ireland. He then entered the colonial administrative service following two tours of Uganda with the 4th
King's African Rifles
The King's African Rifles (KAR) was a multi-battalion British colonial regiment raised from Britain's various possessions in East Africa from 1902 until independence in the 1960s. It performed both military and internal security functions withi ...
, returning there in 1929 as an assistant district commissioner. He moved to
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...
as director of labour in 1939, and on his own initiative launched a secret operation to monitor enemy signals. At first he was working on Vichy French signals from
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
and
Réunion
Réunion (; french: La Réunion, ; previously ''Île Bourbon''; rcf, label= Reunionese Creole, La Rényon) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. It is located approximately east of the island ...
, with the help of a growing number of assistants recruited on Mauritius. Amongst them were his sister-in-law, Evelyn DuBuisson (1895-1983), who arrived in Mauritius in 1939 for a summer holiday and stayed for most of the war, having discovered that she had a talent for codebreaking. At first Twining's operation focused on traffic in European languages, but once Britain had declared war on Japan following the attacks on
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...
and
Malaya in December 1941, he and his team began working on Japanese signals. Owing to Mauritius' position in the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...
and the high altitude of the wireless intercept station on Mauritius, he was able to intercept signals that could not be intercepted elsewhere and he and his team learnt enough Japanese to be able to translate Japanese wireless traffic sent ''en clair''. The value of the intercept station he ran on Mauritius was recognised by the Royal Navy and by
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
, and in order to enhance the capability of Twining's operation three of the graduates of the secret Bedford Japanese School run by Captain
Oswald Tuck
Instructor Captain Oswald Thomas Tuck (1 September 1876 – 26 February 1950) was a naval officer and teacher of Japanese. He served as a naval instructor in navigation and Japanese and later translated a confidential history of the Russo-Japanes ...
RN were sent out to Mauritius: they were trained not only in Japanese but also in codebreaking. Twining's operation was extraordinarily successful but it remained secret until long after the end of the war and he omitted any mention of it from his draft autobiography.
In 1943 he became administrator in St Lucia; he was appointed Companion of the
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is a British order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George IV, George IV, Prince of Wales, while he was acting as prince regent for his father, George III, King George III.
...
in the same year.
Colonial service: Imperial governor
Twining served as
Governor of North Borneo
The Governor of North Borneo was the appointed head of the government of North Borneo.
Originally the Governor was appointed by the North Borneo Chartered Company, which was responsible for the administration of the protectorate. Upon North Bor ...
from 2 December 1946. In 1949 he was promoted to KCMG and became Governor of
Tanganyika
Tanganyika may refer to:
Places
* Tanganyika Territory (1916–1961), a former British territory which preceded the sovereign state
* Tanganyika (1961–1964), a sovereign state, comprising the mainland part of present-day Tanzania
* Tanzania Main ...
on 16 May, serving there until 1958. He was promoted to GCMG in 1953. This was prompted largely because, as a governor of a colony under the auspices of United Nations supervision, he was more than happy to receive Inspectors to the east African country on biennial missions. In 1952 he had already paved the way for independence in 1961 by trialling an all-communities constitutional arrangement that guaranteed democratic representation for minority populations in the state that would become
Tanzania
Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...
.
House of Lords
Following his retirement, he became a
life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...
as Baron Twining, of
Tanganyika
Tanganyika may refer to:
Places
* Tanganyika Territory (1916–1961), a former British territory which preceded the sovereign state
* Tanganyika (1961–1964), a sovereign state, comprising the mainland part of present-day Tanzania
* Tanzania Main ...
and of
Godalming
Godalming is a market town and civil parish in southwest Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, at the confluence of the Rivers Wey and Ock. The civil parish covers and includes the settleme ...
in the
County of Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...
, on 22 August 1958. Lord Twining made his maiden speech on 27 July 1959 during the debate on the
Colonial Development Corporation. Colonial governors had always had difficulty developing East African countries, given the huge distances between scattered populations, and the tendency of African politics to fragment into tribal loyalties. However, back in London he encouraged development corporations to work closely with governments and business to secure more investment in African territories. Describing himself as a "paternal governor", he called for better organized schemes because they were "rather haphazard". He warned that the Westminster model should not be imposed upon Africa, rather that the local leaders should be allowed to draft their own party political arrangements to articulate independence movements. Like most Liberal-leaning politicians, he was sympathetic to self-determination, largely because it stimulated progress or debate on the progress of institutional development towards the principles of freedom. After independence, the African states suffered large-scale migration; hundreds of thousands of displaced persons became stateless. Twining was among those peers who asked the Commonwealth Office to donate more money to alleviate the world refugee crisis.
Twining was among those peers who opposed the second reading of the Misrepresentation Bill, a flagship piece of fraud legislation for the Wilson Government.
Other achievements
He was appointed a Knight of the
Venerable Order of Saint John
The Order of St John, short for Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (french: l'ordre très vénérable de l'Hôpital de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem) and also known as St John International, is a British royal order of ...
in 1950. He also served as Honorary
Colonel
Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations.
In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge of ...
to 6th Battalion King's African Rifles from 1955 to 1958.
Edward Twining also worked to expand the operations of factories in Tanzania, including the cotton gin at Murutunguru on Ukerewe Island, Tanzania. The cornerstone exists there to this day.
Publications
* ''A History of the Crown Jewels of Europe''. London: B. T. Batsford, 1960.
* ''European Regalia''. London: B. T. Batsford, 1967.
References
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Twining, Edward
1899 births
1967 deaths
Military personnel from London
Members of the Order of the British Empire
Worcestershire Regiment officers
King's African Rifles officers
British military personnel of the Irish War of Independence
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Knights of Grace of the Order of St John
People educated at Lancing College
Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst
Governors of North Borneo
Governors of Tanganyika (territory)
Diplomatic peers
Life peers
Governors of British Saint Lucia
British Mauritius people
Life peers created by Elizabeth II