John Whiteley

Who was John Whiteley?

Brigadier John Percival Whiteley OBE was a British Army officer and a Conservative Party politician.

Whiteley was commissioned into the Royal Artillery during the First World War, ending the war as a Lieutenant. In 1926 he transferred to the Life Guards, retiring in 1928 and joining the 99th Field Brigade, Royal Artillery as a Captain. He was promoted Major in 1932.

He stood unsuccessfully at the 1929 general election in Birmingham Aston, and entered the House of Commons 8 years later when he was elected as Member of Parliament for Buckingham at a by-election in 1937, after the sitting MP George Bowyer was elevated to the peerage as Baron Denham.

When World War II broke out, Whiteley resumed military service. He was active at Dunkirk, and died in 1943, aged 45, when he was killed in a plane crash in Gibraltar, along with the Conservative MP Victor Cazalet and General Władysław Sikorski, the leader of the Polish government-in-exile.