Alfred Ernest Marples, Baron Marples of WallaseyWallasey is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England, on the mouth of the River Mersey, at the northeastern corner of the Wirral Peninsula...
in CheshireCheshire ; also known, archaically, as the County of Chester) is a ceremonial county in North West England. The traditional county town is the city of Chester, although Cheshire's largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Widnes, Runcorn, Macclesfield,...
PCHer Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. Its members are largely senior politicians, who were or are members of either the House of Commons or House of Lords of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.The Privy Council, the...
(9 December 1907 – 6 July 1978) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
ConservativeThe Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, the Conservative Party, or Tory Party is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom...
politicianA politician or political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest,...
who served as
Postmaster GeneralThe Postmaster General of the United Kingdom is a defunct Cabinet-level ministerial position in HM Government. Aside from maintaining the postal system, the Telegraph Act of 1868 established the Postmaster General's right to exclusively maintain electric telegraphs...
and
Minister of TransportThe Secretary of State for Transport is the member of the cabinet responsible for the British Department for Transport. The role has had a high turnover as new appointments are blamed for the failures of decades of their predecessors...
. Following his retirement from active politics in 1974, Marples was elevated to the peerage. His life ended in ignominy, however, after he fled the country to escape various legal and taxation difficulties.
Marples was born at 45 Dorset Road,
LevenshulmeLevenshulme is an urban area of the City of Manchester, in North West England. It borders Longsight, Gorton, Burnage, Heaton Chapel and Reddish, and is approximately from Manchester City Centre on the A6 road. Levenshulme is also situated on the main Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston railway...
,
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. In 2007, the population of the city was estimated to be 458,100...
,
LancashireLancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Lancashire County Council is based in Preston. However, Lancaster is still considered to be the county town...
.
Alfred Ernest Marples, Baron Marples of WallaseyWallasey is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England, on the mouth of the River Mersey, at the northeastern corner of the Wirral Peninsula...
in CheshireCheshire ; also known, archaically, as the County of Chester) is a ceremonial county in North West England. The traditional county town is the city of Chester, although Cheshire's largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Widnes, Runcorn, Macclesfield,...
PCHer Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. Its members are largely senior politicians, who were or are members of either the House of Commons or House of Lords of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.The Privy Council, the...
(9 December 1907 – 6 July 1978) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
ConservativeThe Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, the Conservative Party, or Tory Party is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom...
politicianA politician or political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest,...
who served as
Postmaster GeneralThe Postmaster General of the United Kingdom is a defunct Cabinet-level ministerial position in HM Government. Aside from maintaining the postal system, the Telegraph Act of 1868 established the Postmaster General's right to exclusively maintain electric telegraphs...
and
Minister of TransportThe Secretary of State for Transport is the member of the cabinet responsible for the British Department for Transport. The role has had a high turnover as new appointments are blamed for the failures of decades of their predecessors...
. Following his retirement from active politics in 1974, Marples was elevated to the peerage. His life ended in ignominy, however, after he fled the country to escape various legal and taxation difficulties.
Early life
Marples was born at 45 Dorset Road,
LevenshulmeLevenshulme is an urban area of the City of Manchester, in North West England. It borders Longsight, Gorton, Burnage, Heaton Chapel and Reddish, and is approximately from Manchester City Centre on the A6 road. Levenshulme is also situated on the main Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston railway...
,
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. In 2007, the population of the city was estimated to be 458,100...
,
LancashireLancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Lancashire County Council is based in Preston. However, Lancaster is still considered to be the county town...
. His father had been a renowned engineering charge-hand and Manchester
LabourThe Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded at the start of the 20th century, it has been seen since 1920 as the principal party of the Left in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, where it has only recently begun to organise again...
campaigner, and his mother had worked in a local hat factory. Marples attended Victoria Park Council School and won a scholarship to
Stretford Grammar SchoolStretford Grammar School is a selective state school in the borough of Trafford, England. Until its merger in 1986 with Stretford Grammar School for Boys, it was known as Stretford Grammar School for Girls. The boy's grammar school then became Stretford High School, a comprehensive school.The...
. By the age of 14 he was already active in the
Labour MovementThe term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and political governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing...
, as well as earning money by selling cigarettes and sweets to Manchester football crowds. He also played football for the
YMCAThe Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide movement of more than 45 million members from 124 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs....
team.
He worked as a miner, a postman, a chef and an accountant. Commissioned into the
Royal ArtilleryThe Royal Artillery is the common name for the Royal Regiment of Artillery, an arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
in 1941 he was later medically discharged with the rank of
CaptainCaptain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...
in 1944. He was instrumental in forming a construction company (Marples Ridgeway Ltd) which was based in Westminster and specialised in civil engineering infrastructure projects. By 1945 he had joined the
Conservative PartyThe Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, the Conservative Party, or Tory Party is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom...
and was elected to
Member of ParliamentA Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a parliament. In many countries the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a unique title, such as senate, and thus also have unique titles for its members, such as senators. Members of...
for
WallaseyWallasey is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...
.
Government work
He joined the British government in 1957 as Postmaster General, and introduced the
subscriber trunk diallingSubscriber trunk dialling is a term for a telephone system allowing subscribers to dial trunk calls without operator assistance.- Terminology :...
(STD) telephone system which eliminated the use of operators on national phone calls. (At that time the telephone network was still under the control of the
General Post OfficeThe name General Post Office is or has been used by most Commonwealth countries for postal and telecommunications services.*United Kingdom, see General Post Office which operated under that name until 1969. After 1981 see Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd...
). On 2 June 1957, he started the first draw for the new
Premium BondA Premium Bond is a lottery bond issued by the United Kingdom government's National Savings and Investments scheme. The government promises to buy back the bond, on request, for its original price. They were introduced by Harold Macmillan in his 1956 budget....
s scheme. As Postmaster he introduced postcodes to the UK; a website seeking to make postcode information available without charge has been named
www.ernestmarples.com after Marples.
As
Minister of TransportThe Secretary of State for Transport is the member of the cabinet responsible for the British Department for Transport. The role has had a high turnover as new appointments are blamed for the failures of decades of their predecessors...
(14 October 1959–16 October 1964), he brought in roadside yellow lines,
parking meterA parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. Parking meters can be used by municipalities as a tool for enforcing their integrated on-street parking policy, usually related to their traffic and...
s and
seat beltA seat belt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop...
s. It was also under Ernest Marples that Dr
Richard BeechingRichard Beeching, Baron Beeching , commonly known as Doctor Beeching, was chairman of British Railways and a physicist and engineer...
was appointed chairman of the
British Railways BoardThe British Railways Board was a nationalised industry in the United Kingdom that existed from 1962 to 2001. From its foundation until 1997, it was responsible for most railway services in Great Britain, trading under the brand names British Railways and, from 1965, British Rail...
. After a study of railway traffic, Beeching produced a report in 1963 proposing the closure of a further of the remaining of Britain's railway network. The resultant closures, most of which were carried out under the
Wilson Labour Government of 1964–1970Members of the Cabinet are in bold face.Source: D. Butler and G. Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts 1900-2000...
, became known as the
Beeching AxeThe Beeching Axe is an informal name for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom. The name is that of the main author of The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr Richard Beeching...
. To avoid a conflict of interest Marples undertook to sell his controlling shareholder interest in his road construction company as soon as he became Minister of Transport in October 1959, although there was a purchaser's requirement that he buy back the shares after he ceased to hold office, at the original price, should the purchaser so require. The purchaser was later revealed to be his own wife.
He retired from the
House of CommonsThe House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 646 members, who are known as "Members...
at the
February 1974 general electionThe UK general election of February 1974 was held on 28 February 1974. It was the first of two United Kingdom general elections held that year, and the only election since the Second World War not to produce an overall majority in the House of Commons for the winning party, instead producing a hung...
, and in May that year he was made a
life peerIn the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the Peerage whose titles may not be inherited. Nowadays life peerages, always of baronial rank, are created under the Life Peerages Act 1958 and entitle the holders to seats in the House of Lords, presuming they meet qualifications such as...
as
Baron Marples, of
WallaseyWallasey is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England, on the mouth of the River Mersey, at the northeastern corner of the Wirral Peninsula...
in
CheshireCheshire ; also known, archaically, as the County of Chester) is a ceremonial county in North West England. The traditional county town is the city of Chester, although Cheshire's largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Widnes, Runcorn, Macclesfield,...
.
Flight to Monaco
In early 1975, Marples suddenly fled to Monaco. Among the journalists who investigated his unexpected flight was
Daily Mirror editor
Richard StottRichard Keith Stott was a British journalist and editor.Born in Oxford, he attended Clifton College in Bristol. He started his journalistic career in 1963. Stott is the only man to have edited two UK national newspapers twice. The Daily Mirror from 1985-1989 and again from 1991-1992. The People...
:
"In the early 70s ... he tried to fight off a revaluation of his assets which would undoubtedly cost him dear ... So Marples decided he had to go and hatched a plot to remove £2 million from Britain through his Lichtenstein company ... there was nothing for it but to cut and run, which Marples did just before the tax year of 1975. He left by the night ferry with his belongings crammed into tea chests, leaving the floors of his home in Belgravia littered with discarded clothes and possessions ... He claimed he had been asked to pay nearly 30 years' overdue tax ... The Treasury froze his assets in Britain for the next ten years. By then most of them were safely in Monaco and Lichtenstein." (Richard Stott, 'Dogs and Lampposts', Metro Publishing, 2002, pages 166 – 171)
In addition to being wanted for tax fraud Marples was being sued in Britain by tenants of his slum properties and by former employees. He never returned to Britain.
When Lord Denning made his 1963 investigation into the Profumo affair, as well as the officially published report he also reported secretly to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that two government ministers were in the habit of using prostitutes. He named Ernest Marples as one of them.
External links