Christopher Birdwood Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson, (13 April 1875 – 5 October 1930) was a

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

officer who went on to serve as a

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

minister and peer. He served as

Secretary of State for Air The Secretary of State for Air was a Secretary of State (United Kingdom), secretary of state position in the British government, which existed from 1919 to 1964. The person holding this position was in charge of the Air Ministry. The Secretar ...

under

Ramsay MacDonald James Ramsay MacDonald (; 12 October 18669 November 1937) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 ...

in 1924 and between 1929 and 1930, when he was killed in the

R101 R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Mi ...

disaster.

Early life

Born in Nasik (now

Nashik Nashik (, Marathi: aːʃik, also called as Nasik ) is a city in the northern region of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Situated on the banks of river Godavari, Nashik is the third largest city in Maharashtra, after Mumbai and Pune. Nashik ...

) in the Bombay Presidency of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

to a military family, Thomson attended

Cheltenham College ("Work Conquers All") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent School Day and Boarding School , religion = Church of England , president = , head_label = Head , head = Nicola Huggett ...

. His father was Major-General David Thompson,

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

, and his mother was the daughter of Major-General Christopher Birdwood;

William Birdwood, 1st Baron Birdwood Field Marshal William Riddell Birdwood, 1st Baron Birdwood, (13 September 1865 – 17 May 1951) was a British Army officer. He saw active service in the Second Boer War on the staff of Lord Kitchener. He saw action again in the First World War ...

was another grandson of Major-General Birdwood.

Career

Military

After graduating from the

Royal Military Academy, Woolwich The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Sig ...

, in 1894, Thomson was commissioned into the

. He served first in

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 ...

and then saw action during the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...

(1899–1902) during which he was in command of a field company section and was mentioned in dispatches. He also had his first encounter with aviation when he was detailed to help with the RE Balloon Section outside Kimberley. After the war he became an instructor at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham and then at Sierra Leone. He was promoted to captain and brevet major in 1904 and in 1909 joined the Army Staff College in Camberley. In 1911 he went to the War Office, and in 1912 Thomson was appointed military attaché with the Serbian army during the

first First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

and

Second Balkan War The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 ( O.S.) / 29 (N.S.) June 1913. Serbian and Greek armies r ...

s, after which he returned to the War Office in 1913.Onslow, rev. Robin Higham "Thomson, Christopher Birdwood, Baron Thomson (1875–1930)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 201
accessed 2 June 2014
/ref> During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Thomson first served at the British Expeditionary Force Headquarters and was Chief Military Interpreter between

Sir John French Field Marshal John Denton Pinkstone French, 1st Earl of Ypres, (28 September 1852 – 22 May 1925), known as Sir John French from 1901 to 1916, and as The Viscount French between 1916 and 1922, was a senior British Army officer. Born in Kent t ...

and

General Joffre Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre (12 January 1852 – 3 January 1931) was a French general who served as Commander-in-Chief of French forces on the Western Front from the start of World War I until the end of 1916. He is best known for regroup ...

. In 1915 he was sent to

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

military attaché A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission, often an embassy. This type of attaché post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer, who retains a commission while serving with an embassy. Opport ...

on Kitchener initiative to bring

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

into the war. But when there he quickly formed the view that an unprepared and ill-armed Romania facing a war on three fronts against

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

and

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...

would be a liability rather than an asset to the allies. This view was brushed aside by Whitehall, and he signed a Military Convention with Romania on 13 August 1916. By the end of 1916 he had to alleviate the consequences of Romania's capitulation, and he supervised the destruction of the Romanian oil wells to deny them to Germany. From 27 August 1917 to 27 May 1918 Thomson served as Commander Royal Engineers (CRE) of

60th (2/2nd London) Division The 60th (2/2nd London) Division was an infantry division of the British Army raised during the First World War. It was the second line-formation of the 47th (1/2nd London) Division, and was the second of two such Territorial Force divisions for ...

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

, commanding the divisional engineers in the Battle of Beersheba, the attack on the Sheria position, and the Capture of Jerusalem. He distinguished himself at the

Capture of Jericho The Capture of Jericho occurred between 19 and 21 February 1918 to the east of Jerusalem beginning the Occupation of the Jordan Valley during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War. Fighting took place in an area bordered by the ...

. After a distinguished wartime career both behind the lines and at the front, Thomson formed part of the British delegation at the

Versailles conference The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

, but condemned the Versailles terms as "containing the seeds of another war." As in Romania where he followed a policy (of making Romania an ally) with which he did not agree, he found the experience to be profoundly negative.

Politics

After Versailles Thomson made the decision to enter politics, and joined the Labour Party and

Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fa ...

. He stood as Labour candidate in two Tory strongholds, Bristol Central in 1922 and

St Albans St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major ...

in 1923, but failed to win either seat. In 1924, however, newly elected Labour Prime Minister

elevated him to the peerage as Baron Thomson, of Cardington in the County of Bedford. He was sworn of the

Privy Council A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a state, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the mon ...

at the same time. He served as

in MacDonald's first short lived Labour administration of 1924 – interrupting briefly Sir Samuel Hoare's seven-year grip on the post. The fall of the government meant that it was not until 1929 that he regained the position, once again serving under MacDonald. In the interim he had maintained his air interests acting as chairman of the

Royal Aeronautical Society The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a British multi-disciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community. Founded in 1866, it is the oldest aeronautical society in the world. Members, Fellows ...

and the

Royal Aero Club The Royal Aero Club (RAeC) is the national co-ordinating body for air sport in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1901 as the Aero Club of Great Britain, being granted the title of the "Royal Aero Club" in 1910. History The Aero Club was foun ...

, and patron of the

Air League The Air League is an aviation and aerospace non-profit organisation based in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's largest provider of aviation and aerospace scholarships and bursaries. The Air League aims to inspire, enable, and support the next ...

Private life

Thomson was known as Kit to his family and C. B. to his friends. In March 1915 while British military attache in Bucharest, he met the (married) French-Romanian author Princess Marthe Bibesco, and remained devoted to her for the rest of his life. They corresponded regularly. She dedicated four books to "C.B.T." and visited the site of the

accident with their mutual friend the Abbé Mugnier in December 1930.Masefield 1982, pp. 18–20, 36, 415

Death

His second term in office was cut short by tragedy as Thomson died in the crash of the

airship, a government-designed dirigible, on its

maiden flight The maiden flight, also known as first flight, of an aircraft is the first occasion on which it leaves the ground under its own power. The same term is also used for the first launch of rockets. The maiden flight of a new aircraft type is alwa ...

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former cap ...

in October 1930. The accident, caused partly by pressure put on by Lord Thomson to make the maiden flight before safety checks were complete and adequate flight testing, claimed the lives of 48 people and led to the cancellation of the British airship programme by Thomson's successor as air minister, Lord Amulree.

Selected works

Works in the National Archives
* ''Smaranda. A Compilation in Three Parts'', Lord Thomson of Cardington (Christopher Birdwood Thomson), Jonathan Cape, 1926. * ''Lord Thomson of Cardington: A memoir and some letters'', Martha Bibescu, Jonathan Cape, 1932.

References

Bibliography

*
Obituary
* Col P.H. Dalbiac, ''History of the 60th Division (2/2nd London Division)'', London: George Allen & Unwin, 1927/Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2003, . * Maj D.K. Edwards, ''A History of the 1st Middlesex Volunteer Engineers (101 (London) Engineer Regiment, TA) 1860–1967'', London, 1967.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thomson, Christopher Birdwood Thomson, 1st Baron 1875 births 1930 deaths Royal Engineers officers British Army personnel of the Second Boer War British Army personnel of World War I Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst Labour Party (UK) hereditary peers Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in France Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1930 Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom People from Nashik People from Cardington, Bedfordshire Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Companions of the Distinguished Service Order Military personnel of British India Barons created by George V