Edward Shackleton

Who was Edward Shackleton?

Edward Arthur Alexander Shackleton, Baron Shackleton, KG AC OBE PC FRS FRGS FRCGS, was a British geographer and Labour Party politician.

Born in Wandsworth, London, he was the younger son of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. In 1938, he married Betty Homan, and they had two children: the Hon. Charles Edward Ernest Shackleton and the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton.

Shackleton was a member of the 1932 University of Oxford Exploration Club expedition to Sarawak in Borneo organised by Tom Harrisson. During this trip he was the first to attain the peak of Mount Mulu.

In 1934 Shackleton organised the Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition and chose Gordon Noel Humphreys to lead it. Shackleton accompanied the party as the assistant surveyor to Humphreys. The expedition was eventually responsible for naming Mount Oxford and the British Empire Range.

In 1946, Shackleton was elected as Labour Member of Parliament for Preston in a by-election. In 1950, he was elected MP for Preston South, re-elected in 1951. In 1955, he stood down and was made a life peer as Baron Shackleton, of Burley in the County of Hampshire in 1958. In Harold Wilson's government, he served as Minister of Defence for the RAF 1964-1967, Minister without Portfolio 1967-1968 and Paymaster General 1968. He was Leader of the House of Lords from 1968 to 1970, and subsequently Opposition Leader of the House of Lords.