David Rees-Williams, 1st Baron Ogmore

Rees-Williams was born in Bridgend, Wales, the son of Jennet (née David) and David Rees-Williams. He qualified as a solicitor in 1929. Commissioned into the 6th (Territorial Army) Battalion, Welch Regiment, he was promoted Captain in 1936 and Major in 1938, by which time his battalion had become a searchlight unit. He transferred to the Royal Artillery in 1940, when all searchlight units did so, and ended the Second World War as a Lieutenant-Colonel.

Rees-Williams was elected Labour Member of Parliament for Croydon South in 1945, defeating the incumbent MP, Sir Herbert Williams. In the government he was a minister in the Colonial Office, travelling to East Asia to consider the movements towards independence. His seat was redistributed at the end of the Parliament and he narrowly lost the successor seat at the 1950 general election and was raised to the peerage as Baron Ogmore, of Bridgend in the County of Glamorgan, on 10 July 1950.[1] He served as Minister of Civil Aviation in 1951 and was made a Privy Councillor the same year. Lord Ogmore was President of the London Welsh Trust, which ran the London Welsh Centre, Gray's Inn Road, from 1955 until 1959.[2]

Lord Ogmore joined the Liberal Party in 1959 and served as Liberal Party President, 1963–1964.

Lord Ogmore was married to Alice Alexandra Constance Wills.[3][4] He had three children. His daughter, Elizabeth Rees-Williams, married the actors Richard Harris and Sir Rex Harrison, the businessman Peter Aitken, and more recently Jonathan Aitken, the former Conservative MP. His grandsons are actors Jared Harris and Jamie Harris and director Damian Harris.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by David Rees-Williams
• Portraits of David Rees-Williams, 1st Baron Ogmore at the National Portrait Gallery, London