Rt. Hon. Ronald Hibbert Cross, P.C M.P was born in 1896 and was an old Etonian. After service in the Great War in the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry and the Royal Flying Corps from 1914 to 1918, he devoted himself to his profession of merchant banker. In 1931, however he was one of the multitude of young Conservatives who were returned to the House of Commons in the "Slump" election of that year. He was returned again for the same seat, Rossendale, in Lancashire, in 1935. After serving as a Government Whip and as Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household, he became in 1938 Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade and in the following year was made Minister of Economic Warfare. In Churchill’s reshuffle he succeeded Mr. R. S Hudson at the Ministry of Shipping.
