Lord Eden of Winton
Conservative industry minister who stood up for radicalism early in the Heath era, and supported hanging and the return of the birch
LORD EDEN OF WINTON, who has died aged 94, was a high-profile Industry Minister in Edward Heath’s government, embodying the firm approach to “lame ducks” agreed at the Selsdon discussions before the 1970 election. For two years Sir John Eden tried to deliver radical policies despite resistance from Sir John Davies, his superior at the Department of Trade and Industry; when Heath made his “U-turn”, he was moved to the backwater of Posts and Telecommunications.
A nephew of Sir Anthony Eden – whom he fiercely defended over the Suez crisis – he was far closer ideologically to Margaret Thatcher than to Heath, to whom he nevertheless showed great loyalty. But she preferred to advance Nicholas Ridley, whom Heath had sacked. Eden had the small consolation of being asked to run her political office during the 1983 election.
An intended target of both the farleft Angry Brigade and the IRA, Eden supported hanging and the return of the birch. He cited as proof of the former’s deterrent value a constituent who told him he was ready to murder his estranged wife if it meant serving 15 years, but would not swing for her.
Eden was equally trenchant over events in Africa, accusing the United Nations of a “new imperialism” in the Congo. When Ian Smith declared UDI, Eden conceded that the action was “criminal and stupid”, but blamed Labour for having “undermined the position of the European in Africa”. He championed the Kalahari bushmen and appreciated racial sensitivities at home, saying Heath had had “no alternative” but to sack Enoch Powell for his “Rivers of Blood” speech.
As MP for Bournemouth West for 29 years, Eden sought rating reductions for holiday resorts, opposed Labour’s Selective Employment Tax on tourism, and raised funds for a new home for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He survived a threat from his constituency to drop him unless he opposed his colleague Peter Walker’s move of Bournemouth into the county of Dorset during the reorganisation of local government.
Eden was a 7th and 9th Baronet, titles created in 1672 and 1776 which passed to his father’s line from different forebears. One was Robert Eden, Governor of Maryland, the last of America’s British colonial governors to leave, days before the Declaration of Independence. Eden was fêted when he visited Maryland in 1976 for “Eden Day”, the bicentenary of his ancestor’s departure.
A long-time vice-president of the International Tree Foundation, Eden took great interest in the “Liberty Tree”, a tulip poplar in Annapolis under which the early settlers met. A successor proved hard to grow, so he donated a seedling reared at Kew.
Eden’s mother started a girls’ school in Kensington; he himself chaired Lady Eden’s Schools for 27 years until its sale to Thomas’s Schools. He was president in 1969-71 of the
Independent Schools Association, reckoning Britain then “perilously close to condoning the annihilation” of public schools.
John Benedict Eden was born on September 15 1925, the son of Sir Timothy Calvert Eden, 6th and 8th Baronet, an actor, author and painter, and the former Patricia White; he succeeded his father to the titles in 1963.
Educated at Eton and St Paul’s, New Hampshire, he was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1943, and seconded to the Second King Edward’s Own Goorkha Rifles and Gilgit Scouts. Demobilised in 1947 after a spell with the Government of India, he became a tree nurseryman in Woking.
Eden cut his political teeth holding meetings outside a Southampton shipyard, and in 1953 fought a byelection at Paddington North. He made 15 street-corner speeches a day and campaigned by barge from Little Venice; his uncle, then Foreign Secretary, paid a visit and Churchill sent a message of support. Campaigning to stop immigrant landlords evicting white tenants, he halved Labour’s majority.
The next February he comfortably won a calmer by-election at Bournemouth West. Eden gave up his nursery, but was soon complaining he could not get a job to supplement his parliamentary salary because employers found MPS’ hours difficult.
Eventually he became an insurance broker and a director of British Timken and Chesham Amalgamations; on leaving the Commons he joined the board of Chesham’s parent, Central and Sheerwood Trust, bringing in new management in 1984 to stem heavy losses.
Eden made his maiden speech in a debate on Indo-china opened by his uncle, but first won headlines accusing the staff at a school at Acton of spreading communism. The Daily Worker christened him the “Bournemouth edition of Senator Mccarthy”.
By the 1955 election, Anthony Eden had succeeded Churchill, giving his nephew a further cachet. But after barely 18 months he resigned from ill health in the wake of Suez. John Eden told the Commons he had felt “humiliation” at the announcement that Britain was halting its action.
Eden blamed Labour MPS for encouraging President Nasser to nationalise the Suez Canal and sponsored a rebel motion urging the government to reject Nasser’s terms for using it. He complained that Britain had forfeited the initiative instead of fighting its case at the UN, and opposed the withdrawal of British troops.
In May 1957 he abstained on a Labour censure motion over Suez; carpeted by the whips, he was backed overwhelmingly by his constituents. His fellow Bournemouth MP Nigel Nicolson was deselected for opposing the Suez operation; seven years later, Labour’s George Wigg enraged Eden by claiming that he had helped stage the coup.
Eden went on to attack the defence minister Harold Watkinson for predicting massive cuts in service manpower – to 400,000 – when conscription ended. He voiced concern that the Nassau agreement for Britain to take Polaris instead of developing Skybolt would leave the nation dependent on a single, foreign source for delivering its nuclear deterrent.
Between the 1964 and 1966 elections, Eden was an Opposition defence spokesman. He castigated the cancellation of several aircraft projects, with American products like the “unsuitable” C-130 (still in service with the RAF today) procured instead. Labour’s cancellation of the TSR-2 fighter-bomber was to him the final straw.
Under Heath’s leadership he took an increasing interest in industry. He had always spoken on coal, given his family’s ties with the Durham coalfield. He opposed Labour’s Bill to renationalise iron and steel, and in 1968 became spokesman on power.
When Heath won the 1970 election Eden became Minister of State in Geoffrey Rippon’s Ministry of Technology, a mega-department inherited from Tony Benn. Eden had advocated such a department years before, but Heath was committed to abolish it and that October created the DTI. He put Davies, a former directorgeneral of the CBI, in charge, with Eden and Ridley under him.
Eden wanted to denationalise steel, but had been forced to commit the Tories to a “halfway house”, and Davies was loath to do even that. In January 1971 Eden predicted that parts of several industries would be sold off that year. This produced a threat from Lord Robens to quit as chairman of the Coal Board; Eden kept him sweating on whether he would be reappointed, so Robens resigned, accusing him of “gross discourtesy”.
He then opened talks with British Steel about hiving off fringe activities and forming joint ventures with the private sector. When BSC sacked Will Camp, its director of information who had doubled as a PR man for Harold Wilson, Camp claimed Eden was behind it.
Eden allowed coal imports for the first time since 1947 to avert power shortages. When power station workers started a go-slow over pay, he accused them of endangering lives. Within months he could announce that enough oil had been found in the North Sea to cover a quarter of Britain’s energy needs.
In April 1971 Eden told Britain’s failing shipyards there would be no more handouts. Then Upper Clyde Shipbuilders collapsed, and shop stewards organised a work-in. Eden visited UCS with Heath, and flew to Glasgow to secure an 11th-hour rescue; it collapsed because he could not promise shop stewards to protect all 6,000 jobs and all four yards in the group. The work-in continued until March 1972, when Marathon took over the Clydebank yard; three of the four UCS yards were saved.
By now Eden was struggling with a miners’ strike that made Arthur Scargill a household name, insisting: “There is absolutely no desire whatever to break the miners.” Colleagues were alarmed when he admitted: “I have no idea how industry works,” and as criticism grew of his handling of the situation, Heath tasked Earl Jellicoe with getting Britain back to work.
Heath had already nationalised Rolls-royce, and the settlement with the miners completed his U-turn.
Eden and Ridley were both tipped for the sack, but Eden survived the April 1972 reshuffle, made a Privy Counsellor and moved to Posts and Telecommunications.
Eden extended the BBC Charter and the Act governing ITV until 1981, and commissioned inquiries into a fourth channel and the needs of the regions; after he had gone, it recommended such a channel with priority for Welsh.
He announced which 25 towns and cities would host the first legal commercial radio stations; the first, LBC, opened in London in 1973, defended by Eden against criticism after a rocky start punctuated by rows between management and staff. He ruled out allocating television channels to the highest bidder, rejected calls for a five pence pensioners’ television licence, and sidestepped pressure from Mary Whitehouse to ban Chuck Berry’s My Ding-a-ling.
Royal Mail was losing money, service was deteriorating and there was a five-month wait for a phone. But Eden refused to sack the Post Office chairman, Sir William Ryland, believing he needed time to turn things round.
When Heath lost the snap February 1974 election Eden did not blame his leader; indeed after the further defeat that October he was one of only two speakers at the 1922 Committee who wanted Heath to stay.
Eden asked shrewd questions as British Leyland stumbled into nationalisation. He also campaigned for a ban on using beagles in cigarette testing, impressing the RSPCA so much that it invited him to open one of its clinics – only for him to declare himself a devotee of hare coursing.
With Mrs Thatcher as leader, Eden chaired the Select Committee on European Legislation and backed Reginald Maudling’s drive against sanctions on Rhodesia. After she came to power, he urged ministers to take on the unions, especially in the steel industry. For two years he chaired the Home Affairs Select Committee, proposing a narrower role for the Commission for Racial Equality and a small parliamentary committee to oversee security matters.
During the Falklands conflict he urged calm among MPS as casualties rose, and a speedy conclusion so the Task Force did not “hang around in inhospitable waters too long”.
He left the Commons in 1983 with a life peerage.
Three years later Eden was appointed to chair the Royal Armouries, the repository of 38,771 guns, bows, pikes, swords and pieces of armour. Under his leadership, a £45 million plan was announced in 1992 to move the collection from the Tower to its present home in Leeds.
John Eden married first, in 1958, Belinda Jane Pascoe (dissolved 1974); they had two sons and two daughters. He married secondly, in 1977, Margaret Ann, Viscountess Strathallan. He is succeeded in the baronetcies by his elder son, Robert Frederick Calvert Eden.
Lord Eden of Winton, born September 15 1925, died May 23 2020