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Sir Arthur Douglas Dodds-Parker (5 July 1909 – 13 September 2006) was, successively, an imperial administrator, a wartime soldier involved in irregular warfare, and British Conservative Party politician. Between the wars, he served in the Sudan, in the prestigious Sudan Political Service. Once the war broke out, he joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), but was returned to the Sudan to serve in the famous Gideon Force during the liberation of Ethiopia. After the East African Campaign, he served on SOE's planning staff in London, before taking command roles in the Mediterranean Theatre. In political life, he served twice as a Member of Parliament (MP). He was MP for Banbury from 1945 to 1959, holding three junior ministerial positions from 1953 to 1957. In particular, he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs through the Suez Crisis in 1956. Unlike Sir Anthony Nutting, who resigned as Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Dodds-Parker considered it his duty to remain in office even though he did not support the plan for Britain and France to invade Egypt under the pretext of separating the Egyptians from a prearranged invasion by Israel; he was, however, sacked from government in the following year. He stood down from his seat in the House of Commons in 1959, but returned to Parliament as MP for Cheltenham from 1964 to 1974. ==Early life== Dodds-Parker was born in Oxford, the eldest son of a surgeon. His maternal uncle, Fredric Wise, was MP for Ilford; another relation, John Parker, was Joint Secretary to the Treasury from 1846 to 1849; and the Parkers had been iron founders since the 15th century. He was educated at Winchester College and then read modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford. He joined the elite Sudan Political Service (SPS) in 1930. The size of territory allotted to each young graduate, just starting their career, was immense and the SPS needed to, and was able to, choose only the pick of each year's crop. He spent three years in Kordofan, the two years in the Secretariat in Khartoum, as private secretary to the Governor-General, Sir Stewart Symes. In 1935, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia prompted some soul-searching about the defence of the British territories in the vicinity. The Sudan was the missing 'bridge' between Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, so the issue was taken very seriously in Khartoum. Accordingly, some young SPS were allowed join the reserve of the Sudan Defence Force (SDF). This was to prove useful when the war did break out later, as most administrators had to remain in post for some time, until older men could be recalled to replace them. The Sudan was not a British colony, as it was officially a condominium with the formal title was the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Though Egyptian control was rather nominal it did mean the territory fell to the Foreign Office, not the Colonial Office, and, by definition, the Colonial Administrative Service could not operate there either. The result was the SPS, which stood at the top of the imperial tree alongside the Indian Political Service. The SPS was therefore very selective, recruiting from 'Oxbridge' almost exclusively, leading to the popular adage of the time, in the language redolent of the colonial era, was that Sudan was a country of 'blacks ruled by Blues'. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Douglas Dodds-Parker」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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