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Sir John Major, KG, CH, ACIB (born 29 March 1943), was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party during 1990 to 1997. During his time as Prime Minister, the world went through a period of transition after the end of the Cold War. This included the growing importance of the European Union and the debate surrounding Britain's ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Major and his government were also responsible for the United Kingdom's exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after Black Wednesday on 16 September 1992.
The Conservatives, under Major's leadership, lost the 1997 general election to Tony Blair's Labour Party.
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Quotations
I am walking over hot coals suspended over a deep pit at the bottom of which are a large number of vipers baring their fangs.
Nicholas Wood and Michael Prescott, "Major threatens general election if he fails to win Maastricht vote", Sunday Times, 25 October 1992.
Summers simply won't be the same without him.
Frank Keating, "Tributes flow as Johnners, voice of English cricket, dies at 81", The Guardian, 6 January 1994., Tribute on the death of cricket commentator Brian Johnston.
The right hon. and learned Member is the man who likes to say yes in Europe — Monsieur Oui, the poodle of Brussels.
Hansard, HC 6 ser, vol 240 col 134 (22 March 1994)., A jibe against the Leader of the Labour Party.
Encyclopedia
Sir John Major, KG, CH, ACIB (born 29 March 1943), was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party during 1990 to 1997. During his time as Prime Minister, the world went through a period of transition after the end of the Cold War. This included the growing importance of the European Union and the debate surrounding Britain's ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Major and his government were also responsible for the United Kingdom's exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after Black Wednesday on 16 September 1992.
The Conservatives, under Major's leadership, lost the 1997 general election to Tony Blair's Labour Party. This was one of the worst electoral defeats in British politics since the Great Reform Act of 1832. After the defeat he was replaced as leader of the party by William Hague, continuing as an MP until he retired from the House of Commons at the 2001 general election.
Before becoming Prime Minister, Major was a Cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher. He was Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, making him one of the few people to have served in three of the four Great Offices of State.
Early life
Major was born at St. Helier Hospital, Carshalton on 29 March 1943, the son of Tom Pascal Hubert Major-Ball, a former music-hall artiste. He was christened John Roy Major, but only John is shown on his birth certificate. He used the middle name Roy until the early 1980s.
Major attended primary school at Cheam Common. From 1954, when he passed the eleven-plus, he attended Rutlish Grammar School in Merton, since converted to a comprehensive school and renamed Rutlish School. There he had an undistinguished education. In the 1950s his father's garden ornaments business failed, and the family was forced to move to Brixton in 1955. He watched his first debate in the House of Commons in 1956, and attributes his political ambitions to that event and a chance meeting with Clement Attlee in the King's Road.
Major left school at 16 in 1959, with three O-levels: History, English Language, and English Literature. He later gained three more by correspondence course, in British Constitution, Mathematics and Economics. Shortly after becoming prime minister, when pressed about his precise qualifications, he answered "he couldn't remember" what he had attained. Major applied to become a bus conductor after leaving school but was beaten to the post by another applicant. Many accounts have said this was due to his height: early media reports claimed wrongly that this was due to poor arithmetic. His first job was as a clerk in an insurance brokerage firm Pratt & Sons in 1959. Disliking this, he quit and for a time he helped with his father's garden ornaments business with his brother, Terry Major-Ball. He joined the Young Conservatives in Brixton at this time.
After a spell of unemployment, he started working at the London Electricity Board (where his successor as PM Tony Blair also worked when young) in 1963, and decided to undertake a correspondence course in banking. He took up a post as an executive at Standard Chartered Bank in May 1965 and rose quickly through the ranks; he was sent to Nigeria by the bank in 1967, and nearly died after an automobile accident there.
Political career
Major was interested in politics from an early age. Encouraged by fellow conservative Derek Stone, he started giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton market. He stood as a candidate for Lambeth Borough Council at the age of 21 in 1964, and was unexpectedly elected in the Conservative landslide in 1968. While on the council he was Chairman of the Housing Committee, being responsible for the building of several council housing estates. Despite moving to a ward which was easier for the Conservatives to win, he lost his seat in May 1971.
Major was an active Young Conservative and according to his biographer Anthony Seldon brought "youthful exuberance" to the Tories in Brixton, but was often in trouble with the professional agent Marion Standing. Also according to Seldon, the formative political influence on Major was Jean Kierans, a divorcée 13 years his elder who became his political mentor and lover. Seldon writes "She... made Major smarten his appearance, groomed him politically and made him more ambitious and worldly." Their relationship lasted from 1963 to sometime after 1968.
He stood for election to Parliament in St Pancras North in both general elections in 1974, but did not win this traditionally Labour seat. In November 1976 he was selected by Huntingdonshire Conservatives as their candidate, winning the safe seat in the 1979 general election. Following boundary changes, Major became Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon in 1983 and retained the seat in the General Elections in 1987, 1992 and 1997. His political agent in all three elections was Peter Brown. His majority in 1992 was a record 36,230 votes. He stood down at the 2001 general election.
He was a Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1981 and an assistant whip from 1983. He was made Under-Secretary of State for Social Security in 1985 and became minister of the same department in 1986. He entered the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1987, and in a surprise re-shuffle on 24 July 1989 a relatively inexperienced Major was appointed Foreign Secretary, succeeding Geoffrey Howe. He spent only three months in that post before becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer after Nigel Lawson's resignation in October 1989. Major presented only one budget (the first one to be televised), in spring 1990. He publicised it as a budget for savings and announced the Tax-Exempt Special Savings Account (TESSA), arguing that measures were required to address the marked fall in the household savings ratio that had been apparent during the previous financial year.
When Michael Heseltine's challenge to Margaret Thatcher's leadership of the Conservative Party in 1990 forced the contest to a second round, Major entered the contest alongside Douglas Hurd after Thatcher withdrew. Though he fell two votes short of the required winning margin of 187 in the second ballot, the result was sufficient to secure immediate concessions from his rivals. He was named Leader of the Conservative Party on 27 November 1990, and was summoned to Buckingham Palace and was appointed Prime Minister the following day.
Prime minister
The Gulf War
Major was Prime Minister during the first Gulf War of 1991, and played a key role in persuading American president George H. W. Bush to support no-fly zones.
Soap Box election
The economy slid into recession again during Major's first year in office, though the signs of this were appearing during Thatcher's final months as Prime Minister, and Major's Conservatives were widely expected to lose the 1992 election to Neil Kinnock's Labour Party. Major took his campaign onto the streets, delivering many addresses from an upturned soapbox as in his Lambeth days. This "common touch" approach stood in contrast to the Labour Party's seemingly slicker campaign and it chimed with the electorate, along with hard-hitting negative campaign advertising focusing on the issue of Labour's approach to taxation. Major won in excess of 14 million votes, the highest popular vote recorded by a British political party in a general election. However, this translated into a reduced majority of 21 seats.
Black Wednesday
The Conservative majority proved too small for effective control over his backbenchers, particularly after the United Kingdom's forced exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) on "Black Wednesday", 16 September 1992, just five months into the new parliament, when billions of pounds were spent in a futile attempt to defend the currency's value. After the release of Black Wednesday government documents, it became apparent that Major came very close to stepping down from office at this point, having even prepared an unsent letter of resignation addressed to the Queen.
Major kept his economic team unchanged for seven months after Black Wednesday before he replaced Norman Lamont with Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Such a delay, on top of the crisis, was exploited by Major's critics as proof of the indecisiveness that was to undermine his authority through the rest of his premiership. But in appointing Clarke as Chancellor, Major made what was arguably the single most important appointment of his tenure.
The UK's forced withdrawal from the ERM was succeeded by a partial economic recovery with a new policy of flexible exchange rates, allowing lower interest rates and devaluation - increased demand for UK goods in export markets.
Political infighting over Europe
Rather than capitalise on the economic 'good news', the Conservative Party soon fell into political infighting over the subject of Europe: Major took a moderate approach but he found himself undermined by the Eurosceptic wing of the party and the Cabinet. In particular, his policy towards the European Union aroused opposition as the Government attempted to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. Although the Labour opposition supported the treaty, they were prepared to tactically oppose certain provisions in order to weaken the government. This opposition included passing an amendment that required a vote on the social chapter aspects of the treaty before it could be ratified. Several Conservative MPs, known as the Maastricht Rebels, voted against the treaty, and the Government was defeated. Major called another vote on the following day, 23 July 1993, which he declared a vote of confidence. He won by 40 votes, but the damage had been done to his authority in parliament.
Later that day, Major gave an interview to ITN's Michael Brunson. During an unguarded moment when Major thought that the microphones had been switched off, Brunson asked why he did not sack the ministers who were conspiring against him. He replied: "Just think it through from my perspective. You are the prime minister, with a majority of 18... where do you think most of the poison is coming from? From the dispossessed and the never-possessed. Do we want three more of the bastards out there? What's Lyndon B. Johnson's maxim?" Major later said that he had picked the number three from the air and that he was referring to "former ministers who had left the government and begun to create havoc with their anti-European activities", but many journalists suggested that the three were Peter Lilley, Michael Portillo and Michael Howard, three of the more prominent "Eurosceptics" within his Cabinet. Throughout the rest of Major's premiership the exact identity of the three was blurred, with John Redwood's name frequently appearing in a list along with two of the others. The tape of this conversation was leaked to the Daily Mirror and widely reported, embarrassing Major.
"Sleaze"
At the 1993 Conservative Party Conference, Major began the "Back to Basics" campaign, which he intended to be about the economy, education, policing, and other such issues, but it was interpreted by many (including Conservative cabinet ministers) as an attempt to revert to the moral and family values that the Conservative Party were often associated with. "Back to Basics", however, became synonymous with scandal, often exposed by tabloid newspapers such as The Sun. David Mellor, a cabinet minister, was exposed as having an extramarital affair. The wife of the Earl of Caithness committed suicide amongst rumours of the Earl committing adultery. David Ashby was 'outed' by his wife after sleeping with men. A string of other conservative MPs, including Alan Amos, Tim Yeo and Michael Brown, were involved in sexual scandals.
Other debilitating scandals included "Cash for Questions", in which it was revealed that Graham Riddick, David Tredinnick, Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton had received money from Mohamed Al Fayed to ask questions in the House of Commons. Later, David Willetts resigned as Paymaster General after he was accused of rigging evidence to do with Cash for Questions.
Defence Minister Jonathan Aitken, whose Parliamentary Aide was Stephen Milligan, was accused of secretly doing deals with leading Saudi princes. He denied all accusations and promised to wield the "sword of truth" in libel proceedings which he brought against The Guardian newspaper. At an early stage in the trial however, it became apparent that he had lied under oath, and he was subsequently convicted of perjury and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. Milligan later died a spectacularly bizarre autoerotic death.
Northern Ireland
Major opened talks with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) upon taking office. When he declared to the House of Commons in November 1993 that "to sit down and talk with Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA... would turn my stomach", Sinn Féin gave the media an outline of the secret talks indeed held regularly since that February. The Downing Street Declaration was issued on 15 December 1993 by Major and Albert Reynolds, the Irish Taoiseach, with whom he had a friendly relationship: an IRA ceasefire followed in 1994. In the House of Commons Major refused to sign-up to the first draft of the "Mitchell Principles", which resulted in the ending of the ceasefire. Major paved the way for the Belfast Agreement, also known as the 'Good Friday Agreement', which was signed after he left office.
In March 1995, Major refused to answer the phone calls of United States President Bill Clinton for several days because of his anger at Clinton's decision to invite Gerry Adams to the White House for St Patrick's Day.
Leadership challenge
On 22 June 1995, tired of continual threats of leadership challenges that never arose, Major resigned as Leader of the Conservative Party and announced he would be contesting the resulting leadership election. John Redwood, the Secretary of State for Wales stood against him. Major won by 218 votes to Redwood's 89 (with 12 spoiled ballots, eight abstentions and two MPs abstaining), easily enough to win in the first round, but only three more than the target he had privately set himself. (The Conservative Party has since changed its rules to allow a simple vote of no confidence in the leader, rather than requiring a challenger to stand; this mechanism was later used to remove Iain Duncan Smith from the leadership).
1997 general election defeat by landslide
His re-election as leader of the party failed to restore his authority. Despite efforts to restore (or at least improve) the popularity of the Conservative party, Labour remained far ahead in the opinion polls as the 1997 election loomed. By December 1996 the Conservatives had lost their majority in the House of Commons. Major managed to survive to the end of the Parliament, but called an election on 17 March 1997 as the five-year limit for its timing approached. Major delayed the election in the hope that a still improving economy would help the Conservatives win a greater number of seats, but it did not.
Few then were surprised when Major's Conservatives lost the 1997 general election to Tony Blair's "New Labour", though the immense scale of the defeat was not widely predicted: the Conservative party suffered the worst electoral defeat since the Great Reform Act of 1832. In the new parliament Labour held 418 seats, the Conservatives 165, and the Liberal Democrats 46, giving Labour a majority of 179.
Major was re-elected in his constituency of Huntingdon with a majority of 18,140. However, 179 other Conservative MPs were defeated, including present and former Cabinet ministers such as Norman Lamont, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Portillo.
At about noon on 2 May 1997, Major officially returned his seals of office as Prime Minister to Queen Elizabeth II. Shortly before his resignation, he gave his final statement from 10 Downing Street, in which he said "when the curtain falls, it is time to get off the stage". Major then famously told the press that he intended to go with his family to The Oval to watch cricket.
Following his resignation as Prime Minister, Major briefly became Leader of the Opposition and remained in this post until the election of William Hague as leader of the Conservative Party in June 1997. His Resignation Honours were announced in August 1997.
Major retired from the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, made public on the Breakfast show with David Frost.
Summary of Major's premiership
Major's mild-mannered style and moderate political stance made him theoretically well-placed to act as a conciliatory leader of his party. However, conflict raged within the Conservative Party, particularly over the extent of Britain's integration with the European Union. Major never succeeded in reconciling the relatively small group of "Euro-rebels" among his MPs to his European policy, and episodes such as the Maastricht Rebellion inflicted serious political damage on him and his government. During the 1990s, the bitterness on the right wing of the Conservative Party at the manner in which Lady Thatcher had been removed from office did not make Major's task any easier.
On the other hand, it was during Major's premiership that the British economy recovered from the recession of 1990-1992. Conservatives subsequently spoke of Tony Blair's government inheriting a "golden legacy" in 1997, and both parties from 1992 onwards presided over the longest period of economic growth in British history.
Paddy Ashdown, the leader of the Liberal Democrats during Major's term of office, once described him in the House of Commons as a "decent and honourable man". Few observers doubted that he was an honest man, or that he made sincere and sometimes successful attempts to improve life in Britain and to unite his deeply divided party. He was also, however, perceived as a weak and ineffectual figure, and his approval ratings for most of his time in office were low, particularly after "Black Wednesday" in September 1992. Conversely on occasions he attracted criticism for dogmatically pursuing complex and unworkable schemes favoured by the right of his party, notably the privatisation of British Rail, and for closing down most of the coal industry.
The former Labour MP Tony Banks said of Major in 1994 that "He was a fairly competent chairman of Housing [on Lambeth Council]. Every time he gets up now I keep thinking, 'What on earth is Councillor Major doing?' I can't believe he's here and sometimes I think he can't either."
Retirement
Since leaving office Major has tended to take a low profile retirement, indulging his love of cricket as president of Surrey County Cricket Club until 2002. He has been a member of Carlyle Group's European Advisory Board since 1998 and was appointed Chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001. He stood down in August 2004.
In March 2001, he gave the tribute to Colin Cowdrey (Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge) at his memorial service in Westminster Abbey. In 2005 he was elected to the Committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), historically the governing body of the sport, and still guardian of the laws of the game. Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Major was appointed a special guardian to Princes William and Harry, with responsibility for legal and administrative matters.
Major/Currie affair
Major's post retirement low-profile was disrupted by the revelation by Edwina Currie in September 2002 that, prior to his promotion to the Cabinet, Major had had a four-year extramarital affair with her. Commentators were quick to refer to Major's previous "Back to Basics" platform to throw charges of hypocrisy. In a press statement, Major said that he was "embarrassed" by the affair and that his wife had forgiven him.
Since 2005
In February 2005, it was reported that Major and Norman Lamont delayed the release of papers on Black Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act. Major denied doing so, saying that he had not heard of the request until the scheduled release date and had merely asked to look at the papers himself. He told BBC News that he and Lamont had been the victims of "whispering" to the press. He later publicly approved the release of the papers.
According to the Evening Standard, Major has become a prolific after-dinner speaker. He earns over £25,000 per engagement for his "insights and his own opinions on the expanding European Union, the future of the world in the 21st century, and also about Britain", according to his agency.
In December 2006, Major led calls for an independent inquiry into Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq, following revelations made by Carne Ross, a former British senior diplomat, that contradict Blair's case for the invasion. He was touted as a possible Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London elections in 2008, but turned down an offer from Conservative leader David Cameron. A spokesperson for Major said "his political future is behind him".
Representation in the media
During his leadership of the Conservative Party, Major was portrayed as honest ("Honest John") but was unable to rein in the philandering and bickering within his party. Major's appearance was noted in its greyness, his prodigious philtrum, and large glasses, all of which were exaggerated in caricatures. For example, in Spitting Image, Major's puppet was changed from a circus performer to that of a grey man who ate dinner with his wife in silence, occasionally saying "nice peas, dear". The media (particularly The Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell) used the allegation by Alastair Campbell that he had observed Major tucking his shirt into his underpants to caricature him wearing his pants outside his trousers, as a pale grey echo of both Superman and Supermac, a parody of Harold Macmillan.
Private Eye parodied Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, age 13¾ to write The Secret Diary of John Major, age 47¾, featuring "my wife Norman" and "Mr Dr Mawhinney" as recurring characters. The magazine still runs one-off specials of this diary (with the age updated) on occasions when Sir John is in the news, such as on the breaking of the Edwina Currie story or the publication of his autobiography. The magazine also ran a series of cartoons called 101 Uses for a John Major, in which Major was illustrated serving a number of bizarre purposes, such as a train-spotter's anorak.
Major's Brixton roots were used in a campaign poster during the Conservative Party's 1992 election campaign: "What does the Conservative Party offer a working class kid from Brixton? They made him Prime Minister."
Major was often mocked for his nostalgic evocation of what sounded like the lost England of the 1950s. He once said:
Major complained in his memoirs that these words (which drew upon a passage in the socialist writer George Orwell's "The Lion and the Unicorn") had been misrepresented as being more naive and romantic than he had intended.
Titles and honours
Styles from birth
* John Archibald Major, (1943 – 1979)
- John Archibald Major, MP (1979 – 1987)
- The Rt Hon John Archibald Major, MP (1987 – 1999)
- The Rt Hon John Archibald Major, CH, MP (1999 – 2001)
- The Rt Hon John Archibald Major, CH (2001 – 2005)
- The Rt Hon Sir John Archibald Major, KG, CH (2005 – )
Honours
In the New Year's Honours List of 1999 Major was made a Companion of Honour for his work on the Peace Process. In a 2003 interview he spoke about his hopes for peace in the region.
On 23 April 2005 Major was made a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II. He was installed at St. George's Chapel, Windsor on 13 June. Membership of the Order of the Garter is limited in number to 24, and is an honour traditionally bestowed on former British Prime Ministers and a personal gift of the Queen.
Major has so far declined the customary life peerage awarded to former Prime Ministers on standing down from Parliament.
On 20 June 2008 Major was granted the Freedom of the City of Cork.
Personal life
Major married Norma Johnson (now Dame Norma Major, DBE) on 3 October 1970. She was a teacher and a member of the Young Conservatives. They met on polling day for the Greater London Council elections in London. They became engaged after only ten days. They had two children; a son, James, and a daughter, Elizabeth. They have a holiday home on the coast of north Norfolk, near Weybourne, that has round-the-clock police surveillance. Major is an Associate of the Institute of Bankers.
Major's elder brother, Terry, who died in 2007, became a minor media personality during Major's period in Downing Street, writing an autobiography and newspaper columns, and appearing on TV shows such as Have I Got News For You. He faced brickbats about his brother but always remained loyal.
His son James married and divorced model Emma Noble. Previously she modelled prizes with Bruce Forsyth on The Price is Right game show.
Further reading
- Major, John (1999) – Autobiography (London: Harper Collins, ISBN 0-00-257004-1)
- Major, John (2007) – More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years (London: Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0-00-718364-7)
External links
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- from The Observer
- voting record
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- on the Downing Street website.
- , lecture by Vernon Bogdanor at Gresham College on 21 June 2007 (with video and audio files available for download).
- and of the visit by Sir John to the College Historical Society for the .
- relating to John Major on Royal Historical Society Bibliography.
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