The Lord St John of Fawsley | |
|---|---|
 St John-Stevas in 1968 | |
| Minister of State for the Arts | |
| In office 5 May 1979 – 5 January 1981 | |
| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | The Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge |
| Succeeded by | Paul Channon |
| In office 2 December 1973 – 4 March 1974 | |
| Prime Minister | Edward Heath |
| Preceded by | The Viscount Eccles |
| Succeeded by | Hugh Jenkins |
| Leader of the House of Commons | |
| In office 5 May 1979 – 5 January 1981 | |
| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | Michael Foot |
| Succeeded by | Francis Pym |
| Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster | |
| In office 5 May 1979 – 5 January 1981 | |
| Prime Minister | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | Harold Lever |
| Succeeded by | Francis Pym |
| Shadow Leader of the House of Commons | |
| In office 6 November 1978 – 4 May 1979 | |
| Leader | Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | Francis Pym |
| Succeeded by | Michael Foot |
| Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science | |
| In office 28 February 1974 – 6 November 1978 | |
| Leader | Edward Heath Margaret Thatcher |
| Preceded by | William van Straubenzee |
| Succeeded by | Mark Carlisle |
| Member of theHouse of Lords | |
| Life peerage 19 October 1987 – 5 March 2012 | |
| Member of Parliament forChelmsford | |
| In office 15 October 1964 – 18 May 1987 | |
| Preceded by | Hubert Ashton |
| Succeeded by | Simon Burns |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Norman Panayea St John Stevas (1929-05-18)18 May 1929 London, England |
| Died | 2 March 2012(2012-03-02) (aged 82) London, England |
| Party | Conservative |
| Domestic partner | Adrian Stanford (1956–2012) Civil Partnership 2008 |
| Alma mater | |
Norman Antony Francis St John-Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley,PC, FRSL (/ˌsɪndʒənˈstiːvəs/sin-jən-STEE-vəs; bornNorman Panayea St John Stevas;[1] 18 May 1929 – 2 March 2012) was aBritish Conservative politician, author andbarrister. He served asLeader of the House of Commons in the government of Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1981. He wasMember of Parliament (MP) forChelmsford from 1964 to 1987 and was made alife peer in 1987. His surname was created by compounding those of his father (Stevas) and mother (St John-O'Connor).
St John-Stevas was born in London.[2] His birth certificate specified that his Christian names were Norman Panayea St John, and that his father was Spyro Stevas, a hotel proprietor ofGreek origin. In hisWho's Who entry, he gave his father as Stephen Stevas, an engineer and company director. His mother was Kitty St John O'Connor. His parents divorced, whereupon his mother hyphenated the name St John. He was reputedly closer to his mother than to his father.[3] His older sister was the actress Juno Alexander, first wife of actorTerence Alexander.[4]
St John-Stevas was educated at St Joseph's Salesian School,Burwash, East Sussex, and then at the Catholic schoolRatcliffe College,Leicester. He was active in theYoung Conservatives as a speaker for Conservative and Catholic causes. He was a contemporary ofGordon Reece, whom he reported to his superiors foratheism.[5]
Subsequently, he was for six months enrolled at theEnglish College, Rome, a seminary for theRoman Catholicpriesthood, but found that he had no vocation. He remained a Catholic throughout his life, however.[3] He then read law at what was then Fitzwilliam House, nowFitzwilliam College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he lived at St Edmund's House (nowSt Edmund's College, which at the time was a predominantly Roman Catholic institution)[6] and served as President of theCambridge Union in 1950.[5] He graduated withfirst- class honours and won theWhitlock Prize.
He studied also at theUniversity of Oxford, where he gained second-class honours in the examination for theBCL degree atChrist Church and was the Secretary of theOxford Union.[3] He then studied for a PhD degree from theUniversity of London with a thesis titledA study of censorship with special reference to the law governing obscene publications in common law and other jurisdictions (on the early work ofWalter Bagehot)[7] and aJSD degree fromYale University. He wascalled to the Bar at theMiddle Temple in 1952.
St John-Stevas was appointed as a lecturer atSouthampton University (1952–1953) andKing's College London (1953–1956). He then went to Oxford University to tutor inJurisprudence atChrist Church (1953–1955) andMerton College (1955–1957). He also lectured in the United States and held a visiting professorship at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara. From 1954 to 1959 he was legal adviser to SirAlan Herbert's Committee on book censorship.[3]
St John-Stevas also won many prizes and scholarships: the Blackstone and Harmsworth Scholarship (1952); the Blackstone Prize (1953); theYorke Prize of Cambridge University (1957); a fellowship atYale Law School (1958); aFulbright award; and aFund for the Republic fellowship (1958).[3]
In 1956, his bookObscenity and the Law was published. This "became a key work of reference during subsequent reforms"[3] and also "reflected an intellectual shift toward the law's retreat from the pulpit".[7] He also wroteLife, Death and the Law (1961),The Right to Life (1963) andThe Law and Morals (1964). These were "earnest...with aliberal Catholic lawyer addressing difficult questions in a thoughtful spirit".[7]
In 1959, he joinedThe Economist and became its Legal and Political Correspondent. St John-Stevas edited the collected works of the Victorian journalist and politicianWalter Bagehot. Between 1965 and 1986,The Economist itself published[8] his edition "to great acclaim",[5] what have been called fifteen "beautifully produced and highly regarded volumes".[3] These volumes have been labelled Stevas's "memorial".[7]
A founding member of the ConservativeBow Group,[9] in 1951 St John-Stevas stood unsuccessfully for the safe Labour seat ofDagenham. He was later elected as Member of Parliament for the safe Conservative seat ofChelmsford in Essex at the1964 general election holding this seat until stepping down at the1987 general election. In later elections, the seat became marginal, and his majority at his final election contest in 1983 was less than a thousand votes.
He had opposed SirAnthony Eden'sinvasion of Suez in 1956, was a long-standing opponent ofcapital punishment andimmigration restrictions based on race, and favoured a relaxation of theobscenity laws.[5] Owing to his Catholic views, he opposedLeo Abse's Divorce Bill andDavid Steel'sAbortion Bill. In 1966, he was a co-sponsor of Abse'sprivate member's bill to reform the law to permit homosexual acts between consenting adults,[10] which became theSexual Offences Act 1967.
In the later stages of Prime MinisterEdward Heath's government, St John-Stevas was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at theDepartment of Education and Science (whereMargaret Thatcher was the Secretary of State), and theMinister for the Arts (1973–1974).
Following the defeat of Heath's government, St John-Stevas supported Heath in the first ballot of the1975 Conservative Party leadership election but switched his vote to Thatcher in the second ballot.[5] He then served as a member of theshadow cabinet from 1974 to 1979, being the Shadow Spokesman for Education between 1975 and 1978. His deputy was SirRhodes Boyson, a working-class Thatcherite from Lancashire. Stevas and Boyson did not get along and loathed each other.[7] Stevas gave Boyson the ironic nickname "Colossus".[3] He becameShadow Leader of the House of Commons in 1978. When the Conservative Party was returned to power at the1979 general election, he was appointed asMinister for the Arts for a second time from 1979 to 1981, while simultaneously holding the roles of Leader of the House of Commons andChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
In his role as Leader of the House, he has been credited with the creation of the House of Commons' system ofselect committees. These committees enablebackbench MPs to hold ministers to account, and exert considerable influence within Parliament. In January 1981, St John-Stevas was the first of the Tory "wets" to be dismissed from the Cabinet by Margaret Thatcher (whom he had previously nicknamed "Tina" for her "there is no alternative" rhetoric). Thatcher explained toRoy Strong, "Norman was too much", and added, "Look at the way he'd done his office up. No sense of economy".[11]
Now on the back-benches, Stevas remained loyal to Thatcher whilst criticisingThatcherite economic policies: "He was aOne Nation Conservative who looked toDisraeli rather thanMilton Friedman".[5] In 1984 appeared his bookThe Two Cities, in which he said that Thatcher could see "everything in black and white [but] the universe I inhabit is made up of many shades of grey".[5] He continued his interest in Parliamentary accountability, in 1983, he won the ballot for private members' bills and brought in the bill which became the National Audit Act 1983 establishing the UK's National Audit Office and making it clear that the Comptroller and Auditor General, its head, was an officer of the House of Commons with rights to inspect the value for money of government spending.
St John-Stevas stood down from the House of Commons at the1987 general election, being created alife peer in theHouse of Lords with the titleBaron St John of Fawsley ofPreston Capes in theCounty of Northamptonshire on 19 October 1987.[12]
He was Chairman of theRoyal Fine Art Commission from 1985 to 1999. His tenure was wracked by controversy. It was hoped that his appointment would revitalise and popularise the commission, which had not even produced an annual report for many years. Stevas succeeded in "inject[ing] a bit of panache and excitement" into the commission.[3] However, it also became a mouthpiece for Lord St John of Fawsley's own views and preferences (most prominently in the annual Building of the Year award). He adorned his office with paintings from national collections, documents were presented in red boxes and he was served by a chauffeur and ex-civil servants, in accommodation more lavish than that of most secretaries of state: prompting one commentator to quip that "if he cannot have power, he must have the trappings". The necessity of such extravagance was questioned in a government report by SirGeoffrey Chipperfield.[13]
The Commission strongly criticised the plans for theMillennium Wheel on London'sSouth Bank even though three of the Commissioners were enthusiastic about it. After an ill-tempered meeting in which Stevas was allegedly rude to the Wheel's architects,Sherban Cantacuzino, the commission's secretary, wrote to the architects saying: "I am sure that he enjoys putting people down; all of us have suffered from his bullying".[3]
Despite all predictions, in 1995 Stevas was reappointed for a third term as chairman.[3]
His tenure as Master ofEmmanuel College at Cambridge University (1991 to 1996) was at times controversial. He built a new lecture theatre with ancillary rooms (the Queen's Building) at the cost of some £8 million, the costs of which were pushed upwards by Lord St John's insistence on re-opening thequarries inKetton,Rutland, to obtainlimestone from the same source from which the college'sWren chapel was built.[14] Some of the college's fellows apparently first had doubts about the wisdom of appointing Stevas when several of his friends were caught naked one night in the Fellows' Garden swimming pool.[3]
Stevas succeeded in promoting the college throughHouse and Garden andHello!, although some fellows were angered whenMohammed al-Fayed, who had donated £250,000 to a new extension of the college, was rewarded with a "Harrods Room" and an honorary membership of the college, an honour Stevas invented. The relationship between Master and College worsened to the point that "one tutor started handing out copies of the Master's pronouncements in his role as 'constitutional expert' with a prize for the student who spotted the greatest number of legal mistakes".[3]
Stevas's critics alleged that he spent too much time with a small clique of public school-educated young men who "were favoured with introductions to royalty and captains of industry, to dinners atWhite's, private theatrical performances at the Master's Lodge and long, affectionate letters".[3] Stevas would also cut undergraduates off in mid-sentence with a cutting remark in Latin and to members of other colleges Emmanuel gained the nickname "Mein Camp".[3]
Following his retirement as Master he maintained his ties with Emmanuel College, which he used from time to time as a venue for events of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust.[15]
St John-Stevas was a prominentRoman Catholic. He was also Patron of the AnglicanSociety of King Charles the Martyr, and Grand Bailiff for England and Wales of the Military and HospitallerOrder of Saint Lazarus (statuted 1910).
He was chairman of the Catholic New Bearings group in the early 1970s whose members included the BishopAugustine Harris. New Bearings' purpose was to provide support to priests and nuns who were struggling with their vocation and operated independently from the church.
His partner of over fifty years was Adrian Stanford. They met in 1956 at Oxford, where St John-Stevas taught Stanford law. They entered into acivil partnership shortly before Lord St John's death enabling only the latter to faceinheritance tax when he died. Without this, 40% of £3.3 million would be instantly liable to tax but lessened by any agricultural, active own business and charity bequests, which are not published in the public calendars of probate.
He was noted for his many personal affectations, including proffering his hand in papal fashion, lapsing into Latin whilst speaking, and deliberately mispronouncing modern words.[13] A loyal monarchist, Lord St John enjoyed a close relationship with the British Royal Family.[16] Soon after his elevation to the Lords, photographs of him in purple bedroom slippers appeared inHello! magazine while he lounged in the bedroom of his former rectory home in Northampton with a signed photograph ofPrincess Margaret prominently displayed. All personal notes were written in purple ink. After his elevation to the Lords, he was an active member and used only official House of Lords-headed stationery. He lived in Montpellier Square,Knightsbridge, and had a house inNorthamptonshire.[17]
The Catholic Herald, a newspaper that St John-Stevas had contributed to on many occasions, wrote on his death that 'Unlike a lot of people who have trodden the corridors of power, he was not in the least secretive about his experiences. He idolisedthe Queen Mother, Princess Margaret andPius IX. His house in Northamptonshire was filled with relics and pictures of all three. He even had acassock which was supposed to have belonged to the Blessed Pius, and ... on occasions, he wore it to fancy dress parties'.[18]
He died at his home in London on 2 March 2012, aged 82, after a short illness.[3][19] His homosexuality was summarised bySimon Hoggart inThe Guardian obituary note: "He lived in that period where gay politicians never came "out", yet were happy for everyone to know. He lived life as a camp performance."[20]
|
By Norman St John Stevas
Edited by Norman St John Stevas
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forChelmsford 1964–1987 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Minister of State for the Arts 1973–1974 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the House of Commons 1979–1981 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1979–1981 | |
| Preceded by | Minister of State for the Arts 1979–1981 | Succeeded by |
| Academic offices | ||
| Preceded by | Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge 1991–1996 | Succeeded by |
_(St_Edwards_Crown).svg)
