Geoffrey Hutchinson, Baron Ilford
British politician (1893-1974)

Geoffrey Clegg Hutchinson, Baron Ilford QC, MC, TD (14 October 1893 – 21 August 1974) was a British soldier, a barrister and Conservative Party politician.
Background and military career
Born in Prestwich, he was the youngest son of the cotton manufacturer Henry Omerod Hutchinson and his wife Elizabeth Clegg. He was educated at Cheltenham College and went then to Clare College, Cambridge, graduating with a Master of Arts in 1919. In 1920 Hutchinson was called to the bar by the Inner Temple and went to the Northern Circuit. He was nominated a Queen's Counsel in 1939 and was selected a bencher in 1946.
With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hutchinson joined the Lancashire Fusiliers. He was attached to the British Expeditionary Force until the end of the war and during this time was wounded. In 1916 he was decorated with the Military Cross and in 1933 obtained a captaincy. He was promoted to major in 1937 and was awarded the Territorial Decoration in the next year.
After the begin of the Second World War he was reactivated in 1940 and sent with the then Expeditionary Force to the Franco-Belgian border.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Geoffrey Hutchinson, Baron Ilford” is british politician (1893-1974). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Geoffrey, Hutchinson and Baron, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “british politician (1893-1974)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5534691. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1974, 1919 and 1920.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Geoffrey Hutchinson, Baron Ilford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.