HOW I ENTERED PARLIAMENT

Evening Star, Issue 19064, 6 October 1925, Page 9

HOW I ENTERED PARLIAMENT

■ —s■ — 1 LORD BIRKENHEAD ON HIS EARLY CAREER. In tbe current number of ‘Nash’s Magazine ’ the Rt. Hon. Ihe Earl oi Birkenhead contributes another interesting article on his career, dealing this time with how he entered Parliament. In the course of his article he says:—■ “ I myself, whether I proved right or wrong, had irrevocably made up my mind that the moment my position at the Bar justified it, I would try my hand at the parliamentary game. My success at the junior Bar at Liverpool had been very rapid, for when I first joined the northern circuit and took chambers in Liverpool, the juniors with whom I was brought into competition were as formidable, and were to prove as brilliantly successful, as any at that moment to be found among the Bar of London, in the Temple. Mr Leslie Scott, K.C V afterwards Solicitor-Gen-eral, Mr Justice Greer, Mr Justice Riphy Swift, Mr A. G. Steel, K.C., Mr Collingwood Hope, K. 0., Judge Tobin, Judge Thomas, Judge Maxwell, Mr Greaves Lord, K. 0., Air Ross Brown, K.G., and many others who have since reached high professional distinction, were actually practising in Liverpool chambers when I joined the local Bar. Nor was the Bar of Manchester, with which one was constantly brought into competition, very much inferior. MY OPPORTUNITY. “ But the support of many powerful clients, none of whom I had known when I went to Liverpool, afforded me the opportunity of an unusually swift success. Among those I would particularly mention the lato Mr George Harley of the celebrated firm of Simpson and North; Sir Joseph Hood, M.P., now of the British-American Tobacco Company; Mr Pearce, Deputy Town Clerk of Liverppol; and lust, but in some ways most important of nil, my life-long 'supporter and friend Sir Robert Houston, Bart., ALP. _ And I must not omit from this list Lord Wavortroe, who directed to my chambers a constant stream of licensing business at a time when the volume of work in that branch of legal administration was probably greater and more remunerative than it had over boon before or since.

WHAT HE EARNED AS JUNIOR BARRISTER. “If it interests anyone to learn the exact financial results of my first years of practice there is no reason, at my time of life, why the figures should be withheld. In my first year I mads £.120: in the second year, £1,200j in my third year, £.3,100; in my fourth year, £4,200} in my fifth year, £5,150; and in my sixth year just over £6,000. These figures, in pre-war days, and with no real taxation to pay, were very substantial, and I should doubt _ whether within so short a period of time they have been exceeded by anyone who commenced his legal life without the slightest real influence behind him. At any rate, they seemed to justify me in an unusually early attempt, even as a junior, to enter Parliament.” He then describes_ his successful attempt to enter Parliament in 1906 for lie Walton Division of Liverpool.