Earl of Dirwisham
John Philip Bartett, the seventh Earl of Dirwisham (dehr-WISH-em), is most famous for his role as the Chancellor of the Exchequer during Edward Tarriff’s second premiership (February 1945 - August 1952).
John Philip was born in July 1902 to Vincent Alexander Bartett, the sixth Earl of Dirwisham in rural northern Shadoran, Iansisle. At the age of eleven, he was betrothed to newborn Mary Clayburgh, daughter of Gaston Hardville Clayburgh, the eighth Marquess of Westergate. Like the Clayburghs, the Bartetts had been a traditionally seafaring family, and the alliance was seen as a solid one. However, John Philip defied the wishes of his father and stepfather and ran for the Imperial Parliament. Gaston Hardville died in 1928 a broken man. A year later, his son won a seat on the Combined Parliament as a member of the Conservative Coalition.
From there Dirwisham never looked back. He very quickly mastered the ins and outs of Jameston Place and started to rise within the Imperialist Party. However, the 1930 general elections saw a decisive defeat for the Conservatives and the start of twelve years of Centrist rule under Edward Tarriff.
When a disagreement arose between Sir Humphrey Applegate and Dirwisham about how best to run the Imperialists’ campaign before the 1935 general elections, Dirwisham left the party. He used family money to start the Conservation Party, a group dedicated towards saving the traditional agricultural way of life in northern Shadoran. However, Conservation’s mandate slowly grew until it became a mainstream conservative party and was accepted into the Coalition in 1941.
With Dirwisham as coalition whip and Conservation party leader, the Conservatives finally pulled their act together and made huge inroads in the general elections of 1942-3. Those same elections saw the Centrists abandon Tarriff and choose Hiresh Dhawan as their new leader. Dirwisham saw his chance, but wisely sat upon it. The elections of 1944 saw Tarriff pull his support from the Centrists and Dhawan’s government collapse. Antonio de Carlonia of the Liberal Coalition, which had done surprisingly well thanks to the efforts of the Iansislean Democratic-Socialist Party, came to power.
A year later, Dirwisham persuaded Tarriff and his Free Trade Party to join the Conservative Coalition after the start of the Battle of Nusheld caused many of de Carlonia’s ministers to resign in protest of the government’s war policy. With Free Trade’s extra votes, the Conservatives were able to form a government and sweep the Liberals out of power. Tarriff, at Dirwisham’s suggestion, was elected Prime Minister, replacing the old, senile Applegate. Tarriff rewarded Dirwisham with the second highest position in his government.
Quickly, however, it became clear that the aging Tarriff was just a puppet for Dirwisham. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was quite often able to make suggestions on policy to the Prime Minister, who was too dull-witted to realize he was being used. More and more, problems were brought to Dirwisham, who solved them and passed them on to Tarriff for a signature.
Dirwisham’s fall came suddenly and swiftly. In late 1951, he advocated The Grand Empire of the Shield's entry into the Knootian International Stabilisation Treaty. However, this irritated liberals and corporations both: Royal Mining and Manufacturing was afraid of losing its steel monopoly if higher quality modern alloys were dumped on the Iansislean market, and the left decried it as a tool of neo-liberal domination over Iansisle’s blossoming labor movement. Unions mobilized for protest strikes, which further irritated the corporations. On 21 December 1951, a large and unexpected “opium convoy” of the East Gallaga Company arrived in Ianapalis and discharged 3,000 Company troops, who joined up with RM&M forces in the city. A quick and largely bloodless coup - the start of the Corporate Yoke - was executed in which the corporates used, at gunpoint, Dirwisham and the other leaders to put down the strikes violently.
When the corporates withdrew from the city on 3 August 1952, Dirwisham was taken with them to Thortraia. He was later recovered when elements of the Charles Bradsworth’s Army of the Daldon took that city in late 1952 and retired in seclusion to his manor house in northern Shadoran. The earl has three children, one male and two females, by his wife Mary.
