Paul Channon

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Earl of Gowrie
Member of Parliament
for Southend West
In office
29 January 1959 – 8 April 1997
Preceded byHenry Channon
Succeeded byDavid Amess
Personal details
Born(1935-10-09)9 October 1935
London, United Kingdom
Died27 January 2007(2007-01-27) (aged 71)
Brentwood, United Kingdom
Political partyConservative
Spouse
Ingrid Guinness
​
(m. 1963)​
Children3
Parent(s)Sir Henry Channon
Lady Honor Guinness
Alma materChrist Church, Oxford

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.

Early life

Channon was the only child of

Second World War.[1]

Education

Channon was educated at two private schools: at Lockers Park School in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire and Eton College in Eton, Berkshire. Playwright Terence Rattigan, an intimate companion of his father, dedicated his play The Winslow Boy (1946) to him.

Channon completed his

Princess Margaret,[1] and then attended Christ Church, Oxford, from 1956.[2] He was president of the Oxford University Conservative Association.[3]

Early parliamentary career

While still a second-year undergraduate at Oxford, 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]

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).

In government

Channon was

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

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 two weeks later. After the February 1974 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

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

GEC.[4] Channon was later alleged to have been involved in the government's secret supply of weapons of mass destruction to Iraq.[5]

Transport Secretary

Channon was appointed

British Midland plane crashed beside the M1 motorway in the Kegworth air disaster on 8 January 1989. He was roughly treated in the House of Commons by Labour's transport spokesman, 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]

A coincidence led to Channon's sacking in July 1989 as Transport Secretary. British

Lockerbie, George Bush rang Margaret Thatcher to warn her to 'cool it' on the subject. On what seems to have been the very same day [in March 1989], perhaps a few hours earlier, Thatcher's Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, was the guest of five prominent political correspondents at a lunch at the Garrick Club. It was agreed that anything said at the lunch was 'on strict lobby terms' – that is, for the journalists only, not their readers. Channon then announced that the Dumfries and Galloway Police – the smallest police force in Britain – had concluded a criminal investigation into the Lockerbie crash. They had found who was responsible and arrests were expected before long. So sensational was the revelation that at least one of the five journalists broke ranks; and the news that the Lockerbie villains would soon be behind bars in Scotland was divulged to the public. Channon promptly said that he was not the source of the story. Denounced in a front page story in the Daily Mirror as a "liar", he did not sue or complain. A few months later he was quietly sacked. Thatcher could not blame her loyal minister for his indiscretion, which coincided with her instructions from the White House.[6]

Channon was replaced by Cecil Parkinson on 24 July 1989.

Backbenches and retirement

Channon harboured hopes of becoming the fourth member of his family to become Speaker of the House of Commons,[1][2] 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 general election and was created a life peer as Baron Kelvedon, of Ongar in the County of Essex, on 11 June 1997,[7] 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]

Personal life

In 1963, Channon married Ingrid Guinness (née Wyndham), the former wife of his cousin

Jonathan Guinness. He inherited three stepchildren, and they had three children: Henry, Georgia, and Olivia Gwendolen. In 1986, 22-year-old Olivia died from the effects of drink and drugs during a party in the Christ Church, Oxford, rooms of Count Gottfried von Bismarck.[8] The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure.[1]
Henry Channon died on 24 October 2021, aged 51.

He had the unusual ability to speak backwards and demonstrated this at the end of an edition of "Question Time" in the 1980s, by transposing "Sir Robin Day" into "Ris Nibor Yad" on the fly.

Death

In later years, Channon suffered from Alzheimer's disease.[2][3] He died at his home in Brentwood, Essex, on 27 January 2007, at the age of 71.[9]

Ancestry

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 Archived 2 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 31 January 2007.
  5. ^ Britain's dirty secret, The Guardian (David Leigh and John Hooper), 6 March 2003.
  6. ^ Paul Foot (6 January 1994). "Taking the Blame". London Review of Books. Retrieved 3 January 2009.
  7. ^ "No. 54812". The London Gazette. 20 June 1997. p. 7187.
  8. ^ Curse of the count, The Times, 27 August 2006.
  9. ^ Former Tory cabinet minister dies, BBC News, 29 January 2007

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Southend West
1959–1997 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Baby of the House
1959–1964 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by
Minister of State for the Arts

1981–1983 		Succeeded by
The Earl of Gowrie
Preceded by
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry

1986–1987 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary of State for Transport
1987–1989 		Succeeded by
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