Michael Havers, Baron Havers facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
The Lord Havers
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| Lord Chancellor | |
| In office 13 June 1987 – 26 October 1987 |
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| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | The Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Mackay of Clashfern |
| Attorney General for England and Wales Attorney General for Northern Ireland |
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| In office 6 May 1979 – 13 June 1987 |
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| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | Samuel Silkin |
| Succeeded by | Patrick Mayhew |
| Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales | |
| In office 18 February 1975 – 4 May 1979 |
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| Leader | Margaret Thatcher |
| Succeeded by | Samuel Silkin |
| Solicitor General for England and Wales | |
| In office 5 November 1972 – 4 March 1974 |
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| Prime Minister | Edward Heath |
| Preceded by | Geoffrey Howe |
| Succeeded by | Peter Archer |
| Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal |
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| In office 22 June 1987 – 1 April 1992 Life Peerage |
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| Member of Parliament for Wimbledon |
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| In office 18 June 1970 – 18 May 1987 |
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| Preceded by | Cyril Black |
| Succeeded by | Charles Goodson-Wickes |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Robert Michael Oldfield Havers
10 March 1923 |
| Died | 1 April 1992 (aged 69) London, England |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse |
Carol Elizabeth Lay
(m. 1949) |
| Children | Philip Havers Nigel Havers |
| Alma mater | Corpus Christi College, Cambridge |
Robert Michael Oldfield Havers, Baron Havers, PC (10 March 1923 – 1 April 1992), was a British barrister and Conservative politician. He was knighted in 1972 and appointed a life peer in 1987.
Early life and military service
Havers was the second son of High Court judge Sir Cecil Havers and Enid Flo Havers, née Snelling. He was the brother of Baroness Butler-Sloss (born 1933) who in 1988 became the first woman named to the Court of Appeal and later President of the Family Division.
He was educated at Westminster School, before joining the Royal Navy in 1941 during the Second World War. He served as a 19-year-old midshipman on HMS Sirius attached to Force Q in the Mediterranean. On 10 September 1943, he was promoted from temporary acting sub-lieutenant to temporary sub-lieutenant. Following the end of the war, he transferred to the permanent Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during April 1947 in the rank of lieutenant seniority from 1 August 1945.
After demobilization, he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1946, where he read law.
Legal career
Havers was called to the bar in 1948 and undertook his pupillage in the chambers of Fred Lawton, as the pupil of Gerald Howard. Havers was made a Queen's Counsel in 1964. He was the Recorder of Dover from 1962 to 1968 and Recorder of Norwich from 1968 to 1971. He was elected a bencher of the Inner Temple in 1971.
Political career
Havers was elected to the House of Commons representing Wimbledon in 1970, a seat he held until 1987. He served as Solicitor General under Edward Heath from 1972 to 1974. He became a member of the Privy Council in 1977. He served as Attorney-General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland from 1979 to 1987 under Margaret Thatcher; his was the longest unbroken tenure of the office since the eighteenth century. During the Falklands War, Havers was included in Thatcher's War Cabinet, to which he provided advice on international law and rules of engagement.
In June 1987 he was appointed Lord Chancellor and consequently became a life peer as Baron Havers, of St Edmundsbury in the County of Suffolk, the last to be ennobled upon appointment. However, he was forced to resign that October, due to ill health.
Personal life
Havers married Carol Elizabeth Lay in 1949, with whom he had two sons: Philip Havers, who became a Queen's Counsel like his father, and the actor Nigel Havers. Havers was a member of the Garrick Club.
The house at Gothic Lodge, Woodhayes Road, Wimbledon, where Sir Michael and Lady Havers had an apartment, was bombed by the Provisional IRA on 13 November 1981; Havers and his family were in Spain at the time of the attack. A police constable standing guard outside the house was taken to hospital suffering from shock. A master at King's College School, Frank Miles, was in bed in his apartment in the same house, and was unhurt because he had left his sitting room. When discovered, Miles was described as ‘like Lear in the storm scene’; he took a bottle of champagne into school the next day, to celebrate his deliverance with his pupils.
Havers had two heart bypass operations in the 1980s. On 1 April 1992, he died at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London at the age of 69, after falling ill while working in his office.
