Paul Channon, Baron Kelvedon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Right Honourable
 Paul Channon 
Baron Kelvedon of Ongar, PC
In office
13 June 1987 – 24 July 1989
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by John Moore
Succeeded by Cecil Parkinson
In office
24 January 1986 – 13 June 1987
Preceded by Leon Brittan
Succeeded by David Young
In office
14 September 1981 – 11 June 1983
Preceded by Norman St John-Stevas
Succeeded by Grey Ruthven
Born 9 October 1935
London, UK
Died 27 January 2007 (aged 71)
Brentwood, Essex, UK
Political party Conservative

Henry Paul Guinness Channon, Baron Kelvedon, PC (9 October 1935 – 27 January 2007) was Conservative MP for Southend West for 38 years, from 1959 until 1997. He served in various ministerial offices, and was a Cabinet minister for 3½ years, as President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from January 1986 to June 1987, and then as Secretary of State for Transport to July 1989.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Channon was the only child of Sir Henry "Chips" Channon, the politician and diarist, and Lady Honor Channon, eldest daughter of Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh. It is not unreasonable to suppose that he was named after Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, his father's dearest friend. His family were well connected: he received a toy panda from King Edward VIII in the run up to the abdication, and was friends with Duke of Kent, who was born on the same day, from childhood.[1] He was evacuated to live with the Astor family during the Second World War.[1]

He was educated at Lockers Park School in Hemel Hempstead and Eton. The playwright Terence Rattigan dedicated his play The Winslow Boy (1946) to him.

Channon did National Service in the Royal Horse Guards (the Blues) from 1955 to 1956, serving in Cyprus during the 1956 Cyprus emergency.[1] In London, he was a member of the set around Princess Margaret.[1] He then attended Christ Church, Oxford from 1956.[2] He was president of Oxford University Conservative Association.[3]

While a second year undergraduate at Oxford University, Channon was elected at the by-election for Southend West in January 1959 at the age of 23. The seat had connections with his family since 1912, when his grandfather, Rupert Guinness, became MP for South East Essex. Guinness became MP for the new seat of Southend in 1918. When Guinness succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Iveagh in 1927, the seat was won by his wife, Gwendolen Guinness, Countess of Iveagh, who remained MP for Southend until she retired in 1935. She, in turn, was replaced by her son-in-law, Henry "Chips" Channon, who kept the seat until it was divided in 1950, and who then represented one of the seats that replaced it, Southend West, until his death in October 1958.[1][2]

Channon won the nomination to his father's seat ahead of 129 other applicants and in spite of a campaign in Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express against the apparent nepotism.[1][3] His grandmother, Lady Iveagh, the former MP, congratulated the voters of Southend for "backing a colt when you know the stable he was trained in".[1][2][3]

[edit] Member of Parliament

He left university to sit in Parliament, and remained the youngest MP until Teddy Taylor was elected in 1964 (Taylor was later MP for the neighbouring constituency of Southend East).

[edit] In government

Channon was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Richard Wood, (later Lord Holderness), the Minister of Power, from 1959 to 1960,[4] and then to R. A. Butler from 1961 to 1964 (while Butler was Home Secretary, First Secretary of State and then Foreign Secretary).[2] Channon's father had once held the same position.[1][2] Channon was elected to the executive of the 1922 Committee in 1965.[2] He was one of few Conservative MPs to support the 1965 bill that ended capital punishment, and also opposed the unilateral declaration of independence by Ian Smith's Rhodesia.[3]

In opposition, Conservative leader Edward Heath appointed Channon as a spokesman on public building and works in 1965, and then on arts in 1967.[1] He served as a junior minister in the government led by Heath from 1970 to 1974, as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in 1970, then as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the new Department of the Environment from 1970 to 1972, briefly as Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office for six months in 1972, and then Minister of Housing and Construction from 1972 to 1974.[4] Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw met IRA leader Sean MacStiofain and other Republicans at Channon's house in Chelsea on 7 July 1972.[2] The talks ended in failure, and the IRA bombed Belfast repeatedly on Bloody Friday just 2 weeks later. After the February 1974 UK general election, Channon joined Heath's shadow cabinet as environment spokesman. His services were dispensed with by Margaret Thatcher when she became leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975.[2]

Channon joined the Conservative delegation to the Council of Europe and Western European Union in 1976, and considered standing in the first UK elections to the European Parliament in 1979, but failed to win the nomination for the North-East Essex seat.[1]

He became Minister of State at the Civil Service Department when the Conservatives returned to power in 1979, and joined the Privy Council in 1980. After the department was abolished in 1981, he became Minister of the Arts. The call from 10 Downing Street came while he was swimming in the sea near his villa on the island of Mustique.[2] He became Minister of State for Trade at the Department for Trade and Industry following the 1983 UK general election. He took charge of the department for two short periods, after Cecil Parkinson resigned following the Sara Keays affair in 1983, and while his successor, Norman Tebbit, recovered from his injuries sustained in the Brighton bombing in 1984. Channon became President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on 24 January 1986, after Leon Brittan resigned following the Westland affair.

Channon's time as Trade and Industry Secretary was marred in several ways. A major issue of the day was a takeover by the Guinness group using an inflated stock value via third parties - the Guinness share-trading fraud during its takeover of Distillers. As a member of the Guinness family, Channon had to stand aside from any investigation into the affair as he would have been accused of a conflict of interest.[2] In addition, proposed sales of troubled nationalised carmarkers British Leyland to General Motors and of Austin Rover to Ford also fell through.[2] Leyland Trucks was later sold to DAF.[1] He blocked a proposed merger of Tate and Lyle with British Sugar and a takeover bid for Plessey by GEC.[4] Channon was later alleged to have been involved in the government's secret supply of weapons of mass destruction to Iraq.[5]

In 1986, his daughter, Olivia, died from the effects of drink and drugs during a party in the Christ Church, Oxford rooms of Count Gottfried von Bismarck. [6] The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure. Sebastian Guinness was jailed for simple, previous, possession of class a narcotics and Rosie Johnston was jailed for possession and supply of heroin following Olivia's death.[1]

He moved to become Secretary of State for Transport in 13 June 1987. His tenure as Transport Secretary was blighted by several major transport disasters: 31 died in the King's Cross fire on 18 November 1987; 35 were killed when three trains crashed near Britain's busiest railway station in the Clapham Junction rail crash on 12 December 1988; 270 died when Pan-Am flight 103 was brought down by a bomb planted by Libyan agents over Scottish town of Lockerbie in the Lockerbie Disaster on 21 December 1988; and 44 died when a British Midland plane crashed beside the M1 motorway in the Kegworth air disaster. He was roughly treated in the House of Commons by Labour's transport spokeman, John Prescott, who pilloried him for underinvestment in the rail network, and for taking a family holiday to Mustique shortly after the Lockerbie disaster.[2] He was replaced by Cecil Parkinson on 24 July 1989.

[edit] Backbenches and retirement

Channon harboured hopes of becoming the fourth member of his family to become Speaker of the House of Commons,[2][1] but he withdrew from the election to replace Bernard Weatherill in 1992. He later served as chairman of the House of Commons Finance and Services Committee and chairman of the Transport Select Committee.

He retired from Parliament at the 1997 UK general election and was created a life peer as Baron Kelvedon, of Ongar in the County of Essex, named after the family's house at Kelvedon Hall.[1]

Outside politics, he was a member of the board of directors of Guinness, and served with the Guinness Trust.[1]

[edit] Personal life

In 1959, he married Ingrid Guinness (née Wyndham), the former wife of his cousin Jonathan Guinness. He inherited three step-children, and they had three children together: Henry, Georgia, and Olivia.

[edit] Death

In later years, he suffered from Alzheimer's disease.[2][3] He died at his home in Brentwood, Essex in January 2007.[7] In his will he prohibited full publication of his father's diaries until 2018.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2007.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Obituary, The Times, 30 January 2007.
  3. ^ a b c d e Obituary, The Guardian, 31 January 2007.
  4. ^ a b c Obituary, The Independent, 31 January 2007.
  5. ^ Britain's dirty secret, The Guardian (David Leigh and John Hooper), 6 March 2003.
  6. ^ Curse of the count, The Times, 27 August 2006.
  7. ^ Former Tory cabinet minister dies, BBC News, 29 January 2007

[edit] External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Henry Channon		 MP for Southend West
1959–1997		 Succeeded by
David Amess
Preceded by
Patrick Wolrige-Gordon		 Baby of the House
1959–1964		 Succeeded by
Teddy Taylor
Political offices
Preceded by
Norman St John-Stevas		 Minister for the Arts
1981–1983		 Succeeded by
The Earl of Gowrie
Preceded by
Leon Brittan		 Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
1986–1987		 Succeeded by
The Lord Young of Graffham
Preceded by
John Moore		 Secretary of State for Transport
1987–1989		 Succeeded by
Cecil Parkinson
Languages