John Peyton

This article is about the British politician. For the American politician, see John Peyton (Politician, 1964) .

John Wynne William Peyton, Baron Peyton of Yeovil , Privy Council (PC) , (born February 13, 1919 - November 22, 2006 ) was a British Conservative politician , member of the House of Commons and from 1970 to 1974 Minister of Transport in the cabinet of Edward Heath .

biography

University degree, World War II and Member of the House of Commons

During his schooling at Eton College he was also a member of the officer training corps and as such a member of the honor guard at the state funeral of King George V in 1936. He then studied law at Trinity College (Oxford) from 1937 to 1939. After the outbreak of the During the Second World War he joined a cavalry regiment (15th / 19th The King's Royal Hussars) and came with them as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France . In May 1940, he fell into Belgium in German prisoner of war and was until the spring of 1945 in a POW camp in Laufen (Salzach) , Warburg , Eichstaett and Moosburg , where he eventually of US troops was liberated.

He then continued his law studies and was appointed barrister in 1945 . Between 1946 and 1947 he was an employee of Walter Monckton, 1st Viscount Monckton of Brenchley , later Secretary of Defense and then advisor to the Nizam of Hyderabad , in the negotiations for independence from India . On his return he became an insurance broker with Lloyd's of London before embarking on a political career.

In 1950 he ran unsuccessfully as a member of the Conservative Party in Bristol Central , a safe constituency of the Labor Party . Just one year later he was elected a member of the House of Commons (lower house) in the election of October 25, 1951 , where he represented the interests of the constituency of Yeovil until 1983 . Between 1952 and 1958 he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Nigel Birch , who held several "junior ministerial posts" in the cabinets of Winston Churchill , Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan . When he was Secretary of State for Aviation during the Suez Crisis in 1956 , Peyton was a member of the Eden government's close advisory staff. Between 1962 and 1964 he was then in the cabinets of Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretary of State for Energy. He then remained the opposition spokesman for energy until 1966 .

Transport minister and unsuccessful candidacy for chairman of the Conservatives

After the general election of 1970, Prime Minister Edward Heath appointed him Transport Minister in his cabinet on June 19, 1970 . He was one of the six members of the so-called "Monday Club", a right-wing group within the Conservative Party, in the government. After merging with the Ministry of the Environment, he was Minister for the Transport Industry in the Ministry of the Environment from October 1970 until the general election in October 1974. During his tenure as minister, the shipyards of the Mersey Docks and Harbor authority went bankrupt in 1972 and subsequently re-established as a company and the privatization of Thomas Cook and Son , the travel agency of British Rail . As a minister, he also campaigned for the expansion of the motorways . In addition, during his tenure there was the introduction of mandatory helmets for motorcyclists and seat belts for drivers. Finally, with the submission of a so-called Green Paper in 1973 , he re-stimulated the discussion about the construction of the Eurotunnel .

After Heath lost his election, he became a shadow opposition leader in the House of Commons. After the Heath on February 4, 1975 in the 1st ballot for the election as chairman of the Conservative Party against his challenger Margaret Thatcher , he entered in the 2nd ballot on February 11, 1975 against this as an opposing candidate. However, he was defeated by Thatcher and achieved after Thatcher (146 votes) and the favored by Heath William Whitelaw (79 votes) and Geoffrey Howe and James Prior (19 votes each) only 11 votes and thus the last place of the five candidates in the second ballot. He belonged to the shadow cabinet formed by Thatcher as Minister of Agriculture. When Thatcher offered him the post of Minister of Transport after the Conservative victory in the general election of May 3, 1979, he declined to accept his former ministerial post, making him the only member of the shadow cabinet who did not hold a ministerial office in the newly formed government. In the general election in 1983 he decided not to run again, so that the liberal candidate Paddy Ashdown won the election .

On October 5, 1983, he was raised to the nobility as Baron Peyton of Yeovil . As such, he continued to represent right-wing views, but spoke out against the death penalty and was also a major opponent of the privatization of the railway industry under John Major in 1990. He also advocated a reform of the House of Lords , which introduced an introduction provides for a fully elected Second Chamber of Parliament and has found conformity in the House of Lords Act 1999 .

After his political career, he worked for several companies, including Chairman of the Board of the British subsidiary of Texas Instruments from 1974 to 1990 and Chairman of the Board of British Aluminum from 1987 to 1991. After all, he was also Treasurer of the Zoological Society of London between 1984 and 1991 .

He was from the 2002 University of East Anglia , the honorary degree of "Doctor of Letters" (Litt. D.) awarded.

Publications

• Without Benefit of Laundry ( autobiography ), 1997
• "Solly Zuckerman: a scientist out of the ordinary" ( biography ), London, Murray 2001; ISBN 0-7195-6283-X .

source

• "The International Who's Who" , 2003, ISBN 1-85743-217-7 .
• "Lord Peyton of Yeovil. Tory minister who advised Edward Heath to go like a good sport after his defeat by Margaret Thatcher" , obituary THE TIMES November 24, 2006
• "Lord Peyton of Yeovil. Supreme parliamentary tactician," THE INDEPENDENT obituary, November 25, 2006

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ron Bridle, Peter Baldwin, John Porter (MS), Robert Baldwin (Eds.): The Motorway Achievement, Volume 1 (=  The Motorway Achievement ). 1st edition. Thomas Telford, London 2002, ISBN 0-7277-3196-3 , pp. 184 (English, 992 p., Limited preview in Google Book Search).
2. ^ John Wynne William Peyton, Baron Peyton of Yeovil on thepeerage.com , accessed September 12, 2016.
3. ↑ United Kingdom peerage creations 1801 to 2008
4. ↑ Honorary Graduates of the University, p. 127 ( Memento of the original dated June 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 105 kB)