Lord Thomas of Macclesfield
Managing Director of the Co-op Bank who set an example with his commitment to ethical banking
LORD THOMAS OF MACCLESFIELD, who has died aged 80, was a pioneer of ethical banking at the Co-operative Bank and a leader of economic development in the North West of England. Terry Thomas rose from marketing manager of Co-op Bank to join its board in 1984 and serve as managing director from 1988 to 1997. Under his leadership the bank’s assets tripled and its deposits multiplied fourfold, but his most significant achievement was the introduction of its customer-led ethical and environmental policy.
Drawn up and updated on the basis of customer polls, the policy gave the bank a distinctive marketing image and set an example for like-minded businesses to follow. It declared that Co-op Bank would not offer services to any business or organisation that failed to respect human rights, manufactured weapons, caused environmental damage or harm to human health, or promoted gambling.
Later surveys showed some four-fifths of customers chose to keep their accounts with Co-op Bank because they liked its ethical stance.
Thomas’s determination to spotlight businesses that breached the bank’s code kept its in-house legal team constantly busy. Possessed of great charm and “hywl” (the Welsh word for inspirational force), he was revered by his employees and highly respected throughout the wider cooperative movement.
One colleague observed that Thomas was not just ahead of all other British banks in the ethical field, “he was way ahead of the vast majority of environmental campaigning groups … He is arguably the most important co-operator of modern times.”
The son of a transport manager, Terence James Thomas was born on October 19 1937 at Carmarthen and was educated at the town’s Queen Elizabeth Grammar School. Having by his own account “drifted along” during his schooldays, he began to realise his potential during National Service with the Royal Artillery at Woolwich.
In 1962 he joined National Provincial Bank, which became part of Natwest in 1970. He left the following year to work for a credit card company before being recruited in 1973 to Co-op Bank by Lewis Lee, the bank’s then chief general manager, who became his mentor. It was Lee who changed the bank’s structure from a 19th-century co-operative to a limited company and won access to the clearing system operated by the “big four” high street banks, despite their opposition.
Thomas worked alongside Lee to refocus the Co-op Bank’s strategy on retail customers – rather than the co-operative societies, local authorities and trades unions that had formed its traditional client base. In 1974, well ahead of the high street banks, they introduced “free” banking for customers who remained in credit and in 1982 they led the way again by launching interest-bearing current accounts. In doing so they transformed a fading Victorian institution into a serious player in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
But Thomas’s driving passion was to achieve a positive social impact through his work, and one of his proudest achievements was to have erected a statue of the 19thcentury mill-owner Robert Owen, a utopian socialist and social reformer, in front of Co-op Bank’s Manchester headquarters. In 1984 he was also involved in the creation of Unity Trust, a joint venture with the trade union movement to provide banking services to unions and charities.
Terry Thomas was appointed CBE in 1997 and was created a life peer, in the Labour and Co-operative Party interest, in the same year. Named “Mancunian of the Year” in 1998, he was a champion of economic development efforts in the North West, chairing among other bodies the East Manchester Partnership (which laid the groundwork for the city’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2002), the North West Partnership and the Northwest Regional Development Agency.
He also served on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy committee in 1998-99 and was president of the International Cooperative Banking Association from 1988 to 1995.
He was a visiting professor at Stirling University, a chief examiner for the Chartered Institute of Bankers, a trustee of Unicef and a governor of Umist. In later years he was also chairman of Internexus, a Lancashire-based internet service provider, and a non-executive director of Capita and Stanley Leisure.
In 2008 Thomas published a memoir, An Inclusive Community with Integrity, and revealed that the Co-operative Wholesale Society had secretly tried to sell Co-op Bank, against his advice, to a German bank in 1995. He made no public comment on the later travails of the bank, which came close to collapse as a result of bad lendings inherited with the acquisition of the Britannia building society in 2009.
Thomas suffered a stroke in 1999 that restricted his mobility but he remained active in public life until the mid-2000s. Together with three other peers, he ceased to be a member of the House of Lords in May 2016, having failed to attend its 2015-16 sittings without leave of absence.
He is survived by his wife Lynda, née Stevens, whom he married in 1963, and by their three sons.