The Right Honourable
The Lord Boyd-Carpenter
PC DL
Photograph from 1949
Chief Secretary to the Treasury
In office
16 July 1962 – 15 October 1964
MonarchElizabeth II
Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan
Alec Douglas-Home
ChancellorReginald Maudling
Preceded byHenry Brooke
Succeeded byJohn Diamond
Ministerial offices 1951-64
Paymaster General
In office
16 July 1962 – 15 October 1964
Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan
Alec Douglas-Home
Preceded byHenry Brooke
Succeeded byGeorge Wigg
Minister of Pensions and National Insurance
In office
20 December 1955 – 16 July 1962
Prime MinisterAnthony Eden
Harold Macmillan
Preceded byOsbert Peake
Succeeded byNiall Macpherson
Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation
In office
28 July 1954 – 20 December 1955
Prime MinisterWinston Churchill
Anthony Eden
Preceded byAlan Lennox-Boyd
Succeeded byHarold Watkinson
Financial Secretary to the Treasury
In office
30 October 1951 – 28 July 1954
Prime MinisterWinston Churchill
Preceded byDouglas Jay
Succeeded byHenry Brooke
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
In office
1 May 1972 – 11 July 1998
Life Peerage
Member of Parliament
for Kingston-upon-Thames
In office
5 July 1945 – 31 March 1972
Preceded byPercy Royds
Succeeded byNorman Lamont
Personal details
Born
John Archibald Boyd-Carpenter

2 June 1908 (1908-06-02)
Knaresborough, England
Died11 July 1998(1998-07-11) (aged 90)
Political partyConservative
Spouse
Margaret Hall
​
(m. 1937)​
Children3
Alma materStowe School
Balliol College, Oxford
Middle Temple

John Archibald Boyd-Carpenter, Baron Boyd-Carpenter, PC, DL (2 June 1908 – 11 July 1998) was a British Conservative politician.

Early life

Boyd-Carpenter was born in Knaresborough in June 1908.[1] He was the only son of Conservative politician Sir Archibald Boyd-Carpenter MP and his wife Annie Dugdale. He was educated at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union in 1930.[2] He graduated with a BA in History, and a Diploma in Economics in 1931. He was Harmsworth Law Scholar at the Middle Temple in 1933 and called to Bar the next year, and practised in the London and South-East Circuit.[3]

War service

Boyd-Carpenter joined the Scots Guards in 1940 and held various staff appointments, including with the Allied Military Government in Italy, retiring with the rank of Major.[2]

Political career

Boyd-Carpenter contested the Limehouse district for the London County Council in 1934. He was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Kingston-upon-Thames in 1945,[4] holding the seat until 1972, when he was raised to the peerage.

He held ministerial office as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1951 to 1954. In 1954 he was promoted to Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation and appointed a Privy Counsellor.[5] In December 1955 he was moved to the position of Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, which he held until July 1962 (the young Margaret Thatcher served under him as Parliamentary Secretary, her first ministerial job, from October 1961).[4] He was then Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General from 1962 to 1964. In this capacity, he approved key funding for the Concorde, and in his later role as chair of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), he would be a passenger on the first Concorde flight, in 1976.[2]

When Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in October 1963, he initially promised Boyd-Carpenter the job of Leader of the House of Commons, but in the end the job went to Selwyn Lloyd who was returning to government from the backbenches.[6] In 1971, Lloyd was elected Speaker of the House, another job that Boyd-Carpenter had desired; The Times said his failure to become speaker was a "major disappointment" of his political career.[2]

Following the Conservative defeat in 1964,[4] he served as Opposition Front Bench Spokesman on Housing, Local Government and Land, 1964–66, and as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee from 1964 to 1970. He later held a number of Party and business appointments.

He was appointed a life peer on 1 May 1972, as Baron Boyd-Carpenter, of Crux Easton in the County of Southampton.[7][8] His successor at the ensuing byelection was Norman Lamont, the future Chancellor of the Exchequer under John Major.[9]

As the first Chairman of the UK's CAA, Boyd-Carpenter was in charge at the time of the collapse of the UK airline Court Line and their subsidiary Clarksons Travel Group in August 1974.

Personal life

In 1937, Boyd-Carpenter married Margaret ("Peggy") Mary, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel George Leslie Hall, OBE, of the Royal Engineers.[10][4] Their son son, Thomas Boyd-Carpenter, was himself knighted following his military and public service careers. One of the couple's two daughters, Sarah Hogg, Baroness Hogg, married Douglas Hogg, 3rd Viscount Hailsham, and is a life peer in her own right. Boyd-Carpenter had residences in London and Hampshire.[2]

Boyd-Carpenter died on 11 July 1998, at the age of 90.[2]

Arms

Coat of arms of John Boyd-Carpenter, Baron Boyd-Carpenter
Crest
On a wreath a globe in a frame all Or.
Escutcheon
Paly of six Argent and Gules on a chevron Azure 3 cross crosslets Or.
Supporters
Two horses party-perfess embattled Argent and Gules.
Motto
"Per Acuta Belli" (Through the Asperities of War).[11][10]

References

  1. ↑ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Lord Boyd-Carpenter". The Times. 14 July 1998. p. 21.
  3. ↑ Green, E. H. H. "Carpenter, John Archibald Boyd-, Baron Boyd-Carpenter". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70217. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Address by Lady Thatcher at the Memorial Service of Lord Boyd-Carpenter, 3 November 1998". Archived from the original on 1 March 2012. Retrieved 17 January 2010.
  5. ↑ "No. 40053". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 December 1953. p. 1.
  6. ↑ Thorpe 1989, p381-2
  7. ↑ "No. 45663". The London Gazette. 4 May 1972. p. 5315.
  8. ↑ "No. 19094". The Edinburgh Gazette. 5 May 1972. p. 399.
  9. ↑ "No. 45668". The London Gazette. 11 May 1972. p. 5627.
  10. 1 2 Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 471
  11. ↑ Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage, ed. Patrick W. Montague, Debrett's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 180
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