The Right Honourable The Lord Kelvedon PC
Secretary of State for Transport
In office 13 June 1987 – 24 July 1989
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	John Moore
Succeeded by	Cecil Parkinson
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
In office 24 January 1986 – 13 June 1987
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Leon Brittan
Succeeded by	The Lord Young of Graffham
Minister of State for the Arts
In office 5 January 1981 – 11 June 1983
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Norman St John-Stevas
Succeeded by	The Earl of Gowrie
Member of Parliament forSouthend West
In office 29 January 1959 – 8 April 1997
Preceded by	Henry Channon
Succeeded by	David Amess
Personal details
Born	(1935-10-09)9 October 1935 London, United Kingdom
Died	27 January 2007(2007-01-27) (aged 71) Brentwood, United Kingdom
Political party	Conservative
Spouse	Ingrid Guinness ​ (m. 1963)​
Children	3
Parent(s)	Sir Henry Channon Lady Honor Guinness
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford

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

Channon was the only child ofSir Henry "Chips" Channon, the politician and diarist, and Lady Honor Channon, eldest daughter ofRupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh. His family were well connected: his father's dearest friend wasPrince Paul of Yugoslavia; he received a toy panda fromKing Edward VIII in the run up to the abdication; and he was friends with theDuke of Kent, who was born on the same day, from childhood.^[1] He was evacuated to live with theAstor family during theSecond World War.^[1]

Channon was educated at twoprivate schools: atLockers Park School inHemel Hempstead inHertfordshire andEton College inEton, Berkshire. PlaywrightTerence Rattigan, an intimate companion of his father, dedicated his playThe Winslow Boy (1946) to him.

Channon completed hisnational service in theRoyal Horse Guards (the Blues) from 1955 to 1956, serving in Cyprus during the 1956Cyprus emergency.^[1] In London, he was a member of the set aroundPrincess Margaret,^[1] and then attendedChrist Church, Oxford, from 1956.^[2] He was president of theOxford University Conservative Association.^[3]

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 forSouth East Essex. Guinness became MP for the new seat ofSouthend 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 inLord Beaverbrook'sDaily Express against the apparentnepotism.^[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 theyoungest MP untilTeddy Taylor was elected in 1964 (Taylor was later MP for the neighbouring constituency ofSouthend East).

Channon wasparliamentary private secretary toRichard Wood, (later Lord Holderness), theMinister of Power, from 1959 to 1960,^[4] and then toR. A. Butler from 1961 to 1964 (while Butler wasHome Secretary,First Secretary of State and thenForeign Secretary).^[2] Channon's father had once held the same position.^[1][2] Channon was elected to the executive of the1922 Committee in 1965.^[2] He was one of few Conservative MPs to support the 1965 bill that endedcapital punishment, and also opposed theunilateral declaration of independence byIan Smith'sRhodesia.^[3]

In opposition, Conservative leaderEdward 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 newDepartment of the Environment from 1970 to 1972, briefly as Minister of State at theNorthern Ireland Office for six months in 1972, and then Minister of Housing and Construction from 1972 to 1974.^[4]Secretary of State for Northern IrelandWilliam Whitelaw met IRA leaderSean MacStiofain and other Republicans at Channon's house inChelsea on 7 July 1972.^[2] The talks ended in failure, and the IRA bombed Belfast repeatedly onBloody Friday just two weeks later. Following theFebruary 1974 general election, Channon joined Heath'sshadow 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 theCouncil of Europe andWestern European Union in 1976, and considered standing in the first UK elections to theEuropean Parliament in 1979, but failed to win the nomination for the North-East Essex seat.^[1]

He became Minister of State at theCivil Service Department when the Conservatives returned to power in 1979, and joined thePrivy Council in 1980. After the department was abolished in 1981, he becameMinister of the Arts. The call from10 Downing Street came while he was swimming in the sea near his villa on the island ofMustique.^[2] He became Minister of State for Trade at theDepartment of Trade and Industry following the1983 general election. He took charge of the department for two short periods, afterCecil Parkinson resigned following theSara Keays affair in 1983, and while his successor,Norman Tebbit, recovered from his injuries sustained in theBrighton bombing in 1984. Channon becamePresident of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on 24 January 1986, afterLeon Brittan resigned following theWestland affair.

Channon's time as Trade and Industry Secretary was marred in several ways. A major issue of the day was a takeover by theGuinness group using an inflated stock value via third parties – theGuinness share-trading fraud during its takeover ofDistillers. As a member of theGuinness family, Channon had to stand aside from any investigation into the affair as he would have been accused of aconflict of interest.^[2] In addition, proposed sales of troubled nationalised carmarkersBritish Leyland toGeneral Motors and ofAustin Rover toFord also fell through.^[2]Leyland Trucks was later sold toDAF.^[1] He blocked a proposed merger ofTate and Lyle withBritish Sugar and a takeover bid forPlessey byGEC.^[4] Channon was later alleged to have been involved in the government's secret supply ofweapons of mass destruction to Iraq.^[5]

Channon was appointedSecretary of State for Transport on 13 June 1987. His tenure as Transport Secretary was blighted by several major transport disasters: 31 died in theKing's Cross fire on 18 November 1987; 35 were killed when three trains crashed near Britain's busiest railway station in theClapham Junction rail crash on 12 December 1988; 270 died whenPan Am Flight 103 was brought down by a bomb over Scottish town of Lockerbie in theLockerbie Disaster on 21 December 1988; and 44 died when aBritish Midland plane crashed beside theM1 motorway in theKegworth 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 toMustique shortly after the Lockerbie disaster.^[2]

A coincidence led to Channon's sacking in July 1989 as Transport Secretary. Britishinvestigative journalist,Paul Foot, in a 1994 article for theLondon Review of Books, described what happened:

The American investigative columnist,Jack Anderson, has had some scoops in his time but none more significant than his revelation – in January 1990 – that in mid-March 1989, three months afterLockerbie,George Bush rangMargaret 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 theGarrick 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 theDumfries 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 inScotland was divulged to the public. Channon promptly said that he was not the source of the story. Denounced in a front page story in theDaily 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 theWhite House.^[6]

Channon was replaced byCecil Parkinson on 24 July 1989.

Channon harboured hopes of becoming the fourth member of his family to becomeSpeaker of the House of Commons,^[1][2] but he withdrew from the election to replaceBernard 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 the1997 general election and was created alife peer asBaron Kelvedon, ofOngar in the County ofEssex, on 11 June 1997,^[7] named after the family's house atKelvedon Hall.^[1]

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

In 1963, Channon married Ingrid Guinness (née Wyndham), the former wife of his cousinJonathan 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 theChrist Church, Oxford, rooms of CountGottfried von Bismarck.^[8] Thecoroner recorded a verdict ofmisadventure.^[1] Henry Channon died on 24 October 2021, aged 51.

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

• Hansard 1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by Paul Channon
• Kelvedon Hall
• As a baby, in LIFE magazine, March 1, 1937

• 1935 births
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• British military personnel of the Cyprus Emergency
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