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The Viscount Boyd of Merton | |
|---|---|
 Lennox-Boyd in 1936 | |
| Secretary of State for the Colonies | |
| In office 28 July 1954 – 14 October 1959 | |
| Prime Minister | |
| Preceded by | Oliver Lyttelton |
| Succeeded by | Iain Macleod |
| Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation | |
| In office 7 May 1952 – 28 July 1954 | |
| Prime Minister | Winston Churchill |
| Preceded by | John Maclay |
| Succeeded by | John Boyd-Carpenter |
| Minister of State for the Colonies | |
| In office 2 November 1951 – 7 May 1952 | |
| Prime Minister | Winston Churchill |
| Preceded by | John Dugdale |
| Succeeded by | Henry Hopkinson |
| Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal | |
| In office 8 September 1960 – 8 March 1983 Hereditary peerage | |
| Preceded by | Peerage created |
| Succeeded by | The 2nd Viscount Boyd of Merton |
| Member of Parliament forMid Bedfordshire | |
| In office 27 October 1931 – 8 September 1960 | |
| Preceded by | Milner Gray |
| Succeeded by | Stephen Hastings |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1904-11-18)18 November 1904 |
| Died | 8 March 1983(1983-03-08) (aged 78) |
| Resting place | Church of St Stephen,Saltash, Cornwall |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Sherborne School |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton,CH,PC,DL (18 November 1904 – 8 March 1983), was a BritishConservative politician.
Lennox-Boyd was the son of Alan Walter Lennox-Boyd by his second wife Florence Annie, daughter ofJames Warburton Begbie and Anna Maria née Reid. He had an elder half-sister and three full brothers, two of whom were killed in theSecond World War and one who died in Germany in April 1939. He was educated atSherborne School, Dorset, and graduated fromChrist Church, Oxford, with a BA later promoted toMA. In theSecond World War he saw active service as a lieutenant in theRoyal Naval Volunteer Reserve withCoastal Forces.[1]
Lennox-Boyd was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) forMid Bedfordshire in1931 (at the age of 26), and was admitted toInner Temple, as a barrister in 1941. He was a member ofWinston Churchill's peacetime government asMinister for Transport and Civil Aviation from 1952 to 1954. In this post he once memorably opined that road accidents were the result not of the taking of large risks, but of the taking of small risks very large numbers of times.
As a Minister, he opened the thirdWoodhead Tunnel on theBritish Railways electrified railway across thePennines on 3 June 1954.[2]
In 1954, he becameSecretary of State for the Colonies, where he oversaw early stages ofdecolonisation, with the granting of independence toCyprus,Ghana,Malaya andSudan. He was in office during theMau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and was persuaded to stay in office byHarold Macmillan after being censured for theHola massacre. He talked openly about independence for theFederation of Malaya, and invited the then Chief Minister of Malaya,Tunku Abdul Rahman and his colleagues toLancaster House to discuss the possibility of independence.
In 1955, Lennox-Boyd threatened to resign from his post when some Tory cabinet members wanted to apply immigration controls toNew Commonwealth countries. This was in the early period of the post-Windrush era of immigration to Britain, which had seen an unexpectedly large inflow to Britain from non-white races as a result of theBritish Nationality Act 1948. This act, implemented by the previousLabour government, granted British citizenship to the entireCommonwealth; in 1955, Lennox-Boyd would either accept controls on the whole Commonwealth or none at all. As the Conservatives were committed to the rights ofOld Commonwealth citizens to come to Britain, they chose to have no controls.[3]
Following theSuez Crisis of 1956, Lennox-Boyd appears to have made the initial approach to writerIan Fleming about the possibility of Prime MinisterSir Anthony Eden's using Fleming'sJamaican house,Goldeneye, for a rest cure, given the precarious state of Eden's health. Because of security considerations, he initially intimated to Fleming that he wanted Goldeneye for a holiday of his own and, when he resisted Fleming's suggestion that his and Fleming's wife (a close friend ofLady Eden) liaise over the arrangements, Fleming at first assumed that he was planning an extra-marital assignation.[4]
After the1959 general election, Lennox-Boyd was replaced as Colonial Secretary byIain Macleod. In September 1960, Lennox-Boyd was raised to the peerage asViscount Boyd of Merton of Merton-in-Penninghame in the County ofWigtown. This caused a by-election for his Mid Bedfordshire constituency, which was won byStephen Hastings. He was further honoured the same year when he was appointed aMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour. Being opposed to the line taken inHarold Macmillan'sWind of Change speech, Lennox-Boyd subsequently became an early patron of the right-wingConservative Monday Club. Whilst this may appear to contrast with his earlier objection to racialised immigration controls, according toDavid Goodhart, this was explained by him being "a believer in the imperial idea rather than racial equality".[5]
Lord Boyd of Merton held the office of Deputy Lieutenant ofBedfordshire between 1954 and 1960 and Deputy Lieutenant ofCornwall in 1965. He was managing director ofArthur Guinness & Sons between 1959 and 1967, and was aMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour andPrivy Counsellor.
Lennox-Boyd was Minister of State for the Colonies 1951–52, making his first visit to Kenya in 1952. Kenya was governed bySir Evelyn Baring under emergency powers. The policing of those powers was in the hands ofLieutenant-GeneralSir George Erskine, commander in chief of East Africa Command. Their War Council included the deputy governor and a representative of the white settlers but of no other social, racial or tribal group.[6]
In 1954, Lennox-Boyd was made Colonial Secretary. Lennox-Boyd's early hands-on visit to South Nyeri in the Kikuyu reserves, for instance, was accompanied by Baring and Erskine. (Virtually the entire Kikuyu population had been moved into fortified villages or detention camps, though the statistics were fudged.)[7] They had a lengthy meeting with Chief Mundia. The Chief and his Home Guards were charged with beating several detainees, one of whom had died. Governor Baring quietly suggested to the assistant police commissioner that it would be politically inexpedient to prosecute such a loyal ally. But dropping the charges offended the impartiality of Colonel Arthur Young, the new chief commissioner. Informed of Young's intention to resign on principle, Lennox-Boyd persuaded Young to reduce his objection to a "difference of opinion", thus leaving Baring and Erskine's manoeuvre in place and Lennox-Boyd's reputation untouched. Supporters of Young were subsequently encouraged to take jobs outside Kenya.[8]
In June 1957, Lennox-Boyd received a secret memorandum written bySir Eric Griffiths-Jones, theAttorney General of Kenya. The letter described the abuse of Mau Mau detainees. The memorandum was passed on by Baring, who is alleged to have added a covering letter asserting that inflicting "violent shock" was the only way to deal with Mau Mau insurgents. It is clear fromHansard reports of Lennox-Boyd's answers to questions in the House of Commons that Lennox-Boyd entirely supported the Baring–Erskine regime and the attitudes that went with it.
The hermetic seal on the flow of information about Kenya was blown byBarbara Castle, who made her own visit to Kenya for theDaily Mail and subsequently reported to the House on the government's failure to recognise "that the Africans are human beings with fundamental human rights as people".[9]
There seems to be no evidence that Lennox-Boyd then or later supported any movement towards the independence of Kenya. From his earliest years in politics he had openly admired the fascist dictators; reluctantly accepted democracy in Britain; supported theBritish Empire as a natural expression of racial superiority in an unequal world.[10] His later joining theMonday Club was of a piece with rejectingMacmillan's adjustment of Conservatism to a post-colonial future.
In April 2011, aGuardian report[11] described a cache of government documents which might indicate that, despite clear briefings, Lennox-Boyd repeatedly denied that the abuses were happening, and publicly denounced those colonial officials who came forward to complain. The cache confirmed the earlier findings of Catherine Elkins'sBritain's Gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya.[12]
Alan Lennox-Boyd married Lady Patricia Guinness (1918–2001), daughter ofRupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh, on 29 December 1938. His mother-in-law,Gwendolen Guinness, Countess of Iveagh, had been an MP in 1927–1935, and he was brother-in-law toSir Henry ('Chips') Channon, also an MP (1935–1958), making them jointly a first mother-in-law and son-in-law set of MPs. Lennox-Boyd and Lady Patricia had three children:[13][14]
Lord Boyd of Merton was knocked down and killed by a car when walking across theFulham Road in London in March 1983, aged 78, and, after cremation, was buried atSt Stephen's Church, Saltash, Cornwall.[16] He was succeeded by his eldest son, Simon.
Lady Boyd of Merton died in May 2001, aged 83. She gave her name to the Viscountess of Merton cup, awarded at the Cornwall Spring Flower Show.[17]
According to many sources, Lennox-Boyd wasbisexual.[18][19] He is depicted inJames Lees-Milne's diary of 1942–1943,Ancestral Voices, as being infatuated with the American aesthete Stuart Preston.[20] His passionate gay love affairs (and their recklessness), are revealed in Channon's diaries.[21] Historian and biographer Michael Bloch describes the former regent and Crown Prince of Iraq,'Abd al-Ilah, as being homosexual and a "close friend" of Lennox-Boyd. Bloch writes that after 'Abd al-Ilah was killed during the14 July Revolution in 1958, "the revolutionaries discovered intimate letters from Lennox-Boyd among the Prince's papers, which they released to the world's press."[22]
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| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forMid Bedfordshire 1931–1960 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Minister of State for the Colonies 1951–1952 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Transport 1952–1953 | Succeeded by himself as Minister of Transportand Civil Aviation |
| Minister of Civil Aviation 1952–1952 | ||
| New title | Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation 1953–1954 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Secretary of State for the Colonies 1954–1959 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New creation | Viscount Boyd of Merton 1960–1983 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
