Political Career
Ashley, who held the rank of Colonel in the British Army, was well known as an activist in various pressure groups before commencing his party political career. He was a leading figure in the Navy League and also set up the anti-state intervention No More Waste Committee during the First World War. He was subsequently involved in the foundation of the Comrades of the Great War in 1917 and as President of the group helped to ensure that the ex-servicemen's movement was closely linked to the Conservative Party at its foundation.
Ashley was elected to parliament in 1906 to represent Blackpool, holding the seat until 1918 before subsequently sitting as member for Fylde until 1922 and New Forest from 1922 to 1932. He served under Andrew Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Parliamentary Secretary to the Office of Works from October 1922 until October 1923, when he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for War, which he remained until January 1924. Ashley was sworn of the Privy Council in February 1924 and when the Conservatives returned to power under Baldwin in November of that year he was made Minister for Transport, an office he retained until the fall of the Baldwin administration in 1929. He left the House of Commons in 1932 and was raised to the peerage as Baron Mount Temple, of Lee in the County of Southampton, a revival of the title held by his great-uncle.
Lord Mount Temple remained active within the House of Lords and was a vocal supporter of the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. He admired Adolf Hitler for his anti-communism, although much of his conviction rested on the belief that the Treaty of Versailles had been unjust to begin with and that it should be revised regardless of who was in government in Germany. In order to underline his support for the Germans Ashley was instrumental in establishing the Anglo-German Fellowship in 1935. He served as chairman of both this group and Anti-Socialist Union simultaneously in the later 1930s.
As AGF chairman Ashley visited Germany in mid 1937 and held a meeting with Hitler. However unlike some of his contemporaries in the Fellowship the laissez-faire capitalist Ashley did not support ideological Nazism (perhaps due in part to the fact that his wife was Jewish) and he resigned in protest from the chairmanship in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, although his membership of the group continued.
Read more about this topic: Wilfrid Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple
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