Page 131 - They Also Served

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Arthur Hope 1914.
The son of Conservative peer, 1st Baron Rankeillour, Arthur Oswald James Hope was born in London on 7th May 1897. Educated at the Oratory School, he entered Sandhurst before the start of the Great War and was commissioned on 11th November into the Coldstream Guards. Serving on the Western Front, he was wounded, MiD, and awarded the MC, ending the war as a captain.
After the war, he joined the Conservative Party and, at the 1924 general election, became MP for Nuneaton. Viewed as a rising star in the party, his war record counted for much, as did the fact that he was a talented cricketer who had played one match for the Army against Cambridge University. However, he lost his seat to Labour at the 1929 election but was back in parliament in 1931, following the collapse of the Labour government, this time as MP for Birmingham Aston. In his second stint in the House of Commons, he was a government whip and a junior treasury minister before, in 1939, being selected to become the governor of Madras. The resulting by-election saw fellow Sandhurst alumnus Major Edward ‘Flash’ Kellett elected in his place.
Hope was governor throughout the war, countering the threat of Japanese attack from the sea by moving key installations and personnel inland. In 1942, he responded to the rise of Indian nationalism and the Quit India Movement by imposing censorship
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