Percy Clive

Percy Archer Clive, DL (13 March 1873 – 5 April 1918 ) was a British army officer and Liberal Unionist Party politician.

Biography

He was elected to the Commons as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Ross division of Herefordshire in the "khaki election" of 1900, while fighting in the Second Boer War. He did not return to England to take his seat until February 1902, and in June that year was Private Secretary for Parliamentary purposes to Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India. In December 1903 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to E G Pretyman, Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty.

He was unseated at the 1906 general election, Clive was awarded the Legion of Honour, and the Croix de Guerre, and was twice Mentioned in Despatches. As a lieutenant-colonel of the Grenadier Guards he was killed in action when attached to the 1/5th Lancashire Fusiliers, 5 April 1918 at Bucquoy. Memorial services were held on 17 April at St Margaret's, Westminster and Hereford Cathedral. Clive is commemorated on Panel 8 of the Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall, one of 22 MPs that died during World War I to be named on that memorial. Clive is one of 19 MPs who fell in the war who are commemorated by heraldic shields in the Commons Chamber. A further act of commemoration came with the unveiling in 1932 of a manuscript-style illuminated book of remembrance for the House of Commons, which includes a short biographical account of the life and death of Clive.

His elder son Major Meysey George Dallas Clive (1907–1943) was killed with the Grenadier Guards in World War II in North Africa on 1 May 1943. His younger son Lewis Clive (1910–1938) won a gold medal for rowing at the 1932 Olympics and was a member of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, killed in action in August 1938.

Some of his military papers were deposited in the King's College London archives in 1997 but his family retain others.