Maurice Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey

Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey GCB, GCMG, GCVO, PC, FRS (1 April 1877 – 26 January 1963) was a British civil servant who gained prominence as the first Cabinet Secretary and who later made the rare transition from the civil service to ministerial office. He is best known as the highly efficient top aide to Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the War Cabinet that directed Britain in the First World War. As Naylor evaluates his career, he held to the "certainties of a late Victorian imperialist, whose policies sought to maintain British domination abroad and to avoid as far as possible British entanglement within Europe. His patriotism stands inviolable, but his sensitivity to processes of historical change proved limited." Naylor finds that "Hankey did not altogether grasp the virulence of fascism...except as a military threat to Britain; nor did he ever quite comprehend the changing face of domestic politics which Labour's emergence as a party of government entailed... In these shortcomings Hankey was typical of his generation and background; that his responsibility was greater lay in the fact that he was better informed than nearly any of his contemporaries."

Hankey

Hankey is a small town on the confluence of the Klein and Gamtoos rivers in South Africa. It is part of the Kouga Local Municipality of the Cacadu District in the Eastern Cape.

History

Hankey was established in 1826 and is the Gamtoos Valley's oldest town. It was named after the Rev. William Alers Hankey, (1771-1859) an ex-banker and the secretary of the London Missionary Society (LMS). He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, (though the Missionary Society's successor body's obituary gives the place of his birth as London), the natural son of the London banker, merchant, Jamaica planter and treasurer of the Foundling Hospital, Thomas Hankey of Fetcham Park, and educated, according to his father's 1793 will, at Edinburgh University. Sir Maurice Hankey, later Lord Hankey, the creator of the modern UK Cabinet Office, was William Alers Hankey's descendant.

The purpose of the establishment of the village was to grow mielies and corn for the LMS main station at Bethelsdorp and also to carry out evangelistic work. The first property was "Wagondrift" owned by the Damant Bros. And although the town was planned for 250 families it started with 25 families. The first inhabitants consisted of a large number of Khoi, a few Mfengos, a few farmers and mixed "Gamtouer" (1700) descendants.