Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton

{{short description|British Conservative politician (1904–1983)}} {{Lead too short|date=April 2025}} {{Use British English|date=January 2021}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2021}} {{Infobox officeholder | honorific_prefix = The Right Honourable | name = The Viscount Boyd of Merton | honorific_suffix = CH PC DL | image = Lennox-Boyd.jpg | caption = Lennox-Boyd in 1936 | office = Secretary of State for the Colonies | term_start = 28 July 1954 | term_end = 14 October 1959 | prime_minister = {{ubl|Winston Churchill|Sir Anthony Eden|Harold Macmillan}} | predecessor = Oliver Lyttelton | successor = Iain Macleod | office1 = Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation | term_start1 = 7 May 1952 | term_end1 = 28 July 1954 | prime_minister1 = Winston Churchill | predecessor1 = John Maclay | successor1 = John Boyd-Carpenter | office2 = Minister of State for the Colonies | term_start2 = 2 November 1951 | term_end2 = 7 May 1952 | prime_minister2 = Winston Churchill | predecessor2 = John Dugdale | successor2 = Henry Hopkinson | office3 = Member of the House of Lords<br />Lord Temporal | term_start3 = 8 September 1960 | term_end3 = 8 March 1983<br />Hereditary peerage | predecessor3 = Peerage created | successor3 = The 2nd Viscount Boyd of Merton | office4 = Member of Parliament<br />for Mid Bedfordshire | term_start4 = 27 October 1931 | term_end4 = 8 September 1960 | predecessor4 = Milner Gray | successor4 = Stephen Hastings | birth_name = Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd | birth_date = {{birth date|1904|11|18|df=y}} | birth_place = Bournemouth, Dorset, England | death_date = {{Death date and age|1983|3|8|1904|11|18|df=y}} | death_place = London, England | resting_place = Church of St Stephen, Saltash, Cornwall | party = Conservative | education = Sherborne School | alma_mater = Christ Church, Oxford | spouse = {{marriage|Lady Patricia Guinness|1938}} | children = 3 }}

'''Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton''', CH, PC, DL (18 November 1904 – 8 March 1983), was a British Conservative politician.

==Background, education and military service== Lennox-Boyd was born on 18 November 1904 in Bournemouth, the son of Alan Walter Lennox-Boyd by his second wife Florence Annie, daughter of James Warburton Begbie and Anna Maria née Reid.<ref name = ODNB>{{cite ODNB|title = Boyd, Alan Tindal Lennox-, first Viscount Boyd of Merton (1904–1983), politician|last = Murphy|first = Philip|date = 2004|doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/31352}}</ref> He had an elder half-sister and three full brothers, two of whom were killed in the Second World War and one who died in Germany in April 1939.<ref name = ODNB/> He was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, with a BA later promoted to MA. In the Second World War he saw active service as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve with Coastal Forces.<ref>Flag 4 by Dudley Pope, London 1954</ref>

==Political career== Lennox-Boyd was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Bedfordshire in 1931 (at the age of 26), and was admitted to Inner Temple, as a barrister in 1941.<ref name = ODNB/> He was a member of Winston Churchill's peacetime government as Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation from 1952 to 1954.<ref name = ODNB/> 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 third Woodhead Tunnel on the British Railways electrified railway across the Pennines on 3 June 1954.<ref name=RB_W>{{cite web|url=http://railways-of-britain.com/Woodhead.html |title=The Woodhead Route |work=Railways of Britain |access-date=27 January 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080302082848/http://railways-of-britain.com/Woodhead.html |archive-date=2 March 2008 }}</ref>

In 1954, he became Secretary of State for the Colonies, where he oversaw early stages of decolonisation, with the granting of independence to Cyprus, Ghana, Malaya and Sudan. He was in office during the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and was persuaded to stay in office by Harold Macmillan after being censured for the Hola massacre. He talked openly about independence for the Federation of Malaya, and invited the then Chief Minister of Malaya, Tunku Abdul Rahman and his colleagues to Lancaster 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 to New 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 the British Nationality Act 1948. This act, implemented by the previous Labour government, granted British citizenship to the entire Commonwealth; in 1955, Lennox-Boyd would either accept controls on the whole Commonwealth or none at all. As the Conservatives were committed to the rights of Old Commonwealth citizens to come to Britain, they chose to have no controls.<ref name="hansen">{{cite book |last1=Hansen |first1=Randall |title=Citizenship and immigration in Post-War Britain : the institutional origins of a multicultural nation |date=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780191583018 |page=18 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qj8GEjW91oEC}}</ref>

Following the Suez Crisis of 1956, Lennox-Boyd appears to have made the initial approach to writer Ian Fleming about the possibility of Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden's using Fleming's Jamaican 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 of Lady Eden) liaise over the arrangements, Fleming at first assumed that he was planning an extra-marital assignation.<ref>Richard Davenport-Hines (2013) ''An English Affair''</ref>

After the 1959 general election, Lennox-Boyd was replaced as Colonial Secretary by Iain Macleod. In September 1960, Lennox-Boyd was raised to the peerage as '''Viscount Boyd of Merton''' of Merton-in-Penninghame in the County of Wigtown. This caused a by-election for his Mid Bedfordshire constituency, which was won by Stephen Hastings. He was further honoured the same year when he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. Being opposed to the line taken in Harold Macmillan's Wind of Change speech, Lennox-Boyd subsequently became an early patron of the right-wing Conservative Monday Club. Whilst this may appear to contrast with his earlier objection to racialised immigration controls, according to David Goodhart, this was explained by him being "a believer in the imperial idea rather than racial equality".<ref name="goodhart">{{cite book |last1=Goodhart |first1=David |title=The British dream : successes and failures of post-war immigration |date=2013 |publisher=Atlantic Books |location=London |isbn=9780857899750 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1GeaMuG2Q8AC}}</ref>

==Other public positions and business career== Lord Boyd of Merton held the office of Deputy Lieutenant of Bedfordshire between 1954 and 1960 and Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall in 1965. He was managing director of Arthur Guinness & Sons between 1959 and 1967, and was a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour and Privy Counsellor.

==Mau Mau rebellion== Lennox-Boyd was Minister of State for the Colonies 1951–52, making his first visit to Kenya in 1952. Kenya was governed by Sir Evelyn Baring under emergency powers. The policing of those powers was in the hands of Lieutenant-General Sir 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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Elkins |first1=Caroline |title=Legacy of violence: a history of the British Empire |date=2022 |publisher=The Bodley Head |location=London |isbn=9781847921062 |page=550}}</ref>

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.)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Elkins |first1=Caroline |title=Legacy of violence: a history of the British Empire |date=2022 |publisher=The Bodley Head |location=London |isbn=9781847921062 |page=563}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Elkins |first1=Caroline |title=Legacy of violence: a history of the British Empire |date=2022 |publisher=The Bodley Head |location=London |isbn=9781847921062 |page=570}}</ref>

In June 1957, Lennox-Boyd received a secret memorandum written by Sir Eric Griffiths-Jones, the Attorney 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 from ''Hansard'' 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 by Barbara Castle, who made her own visit to Kenya for the ''Daily 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".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Castle |first1=Barbara |title=Hansard 1957 |url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1956/jun/06/kenya-situation#S5CV0553P0_19560606_HOC_391 |access-date=11 June 2023}}</ref>

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 the British Empire as a natural expression of racial superiority in an unequal world.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Murphy |first1=Philip |title=Alan Lennox Boyd: a biography |date=1999 |publisher=I. B. Tauris |location=London |isbn=978-1860644061}}</ref> His later joining the Monday Club was of a piece with rejecting Macmillan's adjustment of Conservatism to a post-colonial future. In April 2011, a ''Guardian'' report<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/11/mau-mau-high-court-foreign-office-documents |title=Secret memo gave guidelines on abuse of Mau Mau in 1950s |work= The Guardian |location= London |date=11 April 2011 |author1=Cobain, Ian |author2= Walker, Peter |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110412173711/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/11/mau-mau-high-court-foreign-office-documents| archive-date= 12 April 2011 |url-status= live}}</ref> 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's ''Britain's Gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Elkins |first1=Caroline |title=Britain's Gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya |date=2014 |publisher=The Bodley Head |location=London |isbn=978-1847922946}}</ref>

==Marriage and children== Lennox-Boyd married Lady Patricia Guinness (1918–2001), daughter of Rupert 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 to Sir 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 sons:<ref>Hammond, Peter W., editor. The Complete Peerage or a History of the House of Lords and All its Members From the Earliest Times, Volume XIV: Addenda & Corrigenda. Stroud, Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 1998.</ref><ref>Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003, volume 1, p. 470.</ref>

* Simon Donald Rupert Neville Lennox-Boyd, 2nd Viscount Boyd of Merton (born 7 December 1939) * Hon. Christopher Alan Lennox-Boyd (22 July 1941 – 3 August 2012)<ref>[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/9504619/Christopher-Lennox-Boyd.html Christopher Lennox-Boyd, obituary], ''The Daily Telegraph'', published 28 August 2012-</ref> * Hon. Sir Mark Alexander Lennox-Boyd (4 May 1943 – 24 July 2025)

==Death== Lord Boyd of Merton died on 8 March 1983, when he was struck by a car on Fulham Road in London.<ref name = ODNB/> After cremation, he was buried at St Stephen's Church, Saltash, Cornwall.<ref>{{cite book |title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 7 |year=2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=25 |isbn=0-19-861357-1}} Article by Philip Murphy.</ref> He was succeeded in the viscountcy 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.<ref>{{cite news |title=Cornish gardens scoop four trophies |url=http://www.smallholder.co.uk/news/11153255.Cornish_gardens_scoop_four_trophies/?ref=var_0 |newspaper=Smallholder}}</ref>

According to many sources, Lennox-Boyd was bisexual.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/16/double-lives-a-history-of-sex-and-secrecy-at-westminster Double lives – a history of sex and secrecy at Westminster], ''The Guardian'', 16 May 2015</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=eMvCNbVq_4EC&dq=alan+lennox-boyd+gay&pg=PA174 ''Covent Garden: The Untold Story : Dispatches from the English Culture War 1945–2000''], Norman Lebrecht, UPNE, 2001, p. 174.</ref> He is depicted in James Lees-Milne's diary of 1942–1943, ''Ancestral Voices'', as being infatuated with the American aesthete Stuart Preston.<ref>Lees-Milne, James. "Ancestral Voices". London: Faber and Faber (1984), {{ISBN|0571133258}}, pp. 173–182.</ref> His passionate gay love affairs (and their recklessness), are revealed in Channon's diaries.<ref>Heffer, Simon. "Henry 'Chips' Channon: The Diaries, 1938-1943". London: Hutchinson (2021), {{ISBN|978-1786331816}}.</ref> 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 the 14 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."<ref>Bloch, Michael (2015). Closet Queens. Little, Brown. {{ISBN|1408704129}}, p. 157.</ref>

==Arms== {{Infobox COA wide |escutcheon = Azure a fess chequy Argent and Gules between an abbatical mitre simplex of the second filleted of the third in chief and in base a rose of the second seeded Vert and barbed of the third. |crest = A dexter hand erect in pale having two fingers turned in and the rest pointing upwards Proper the wrist habited in a close sleeve Azure with cuff chequy Argent and Gules. |supporters = Two squirrels Proper having collars chequy Argent and Gules <ref>{{cite book|title=Debrett's Peerage |date=2000}}</ref> }}

==Further reading== * {{cite book |last1=Anderson |first1=David |title=Histories of the hanged |date=2011 |publisher=Hachette |location=London |isbn=978-1780222882}} * {{cite book |last1=Channon |first1=Henry |title=The diaries. Volume 2: 1938-43 |date=2021 |publisher=Hutchinson |location=London |isbn=9781786331823 |pages=as indexed}} * {{cite book |last1=Channon |first1=Henry |title=The diaries. Volume 3: 1943-57 |date=2022 |publisher=Hutchinson |location=London |isbn=9781529151725}} * {{cite book |last1=Saunders |first1=Gail |title=Race and Class in the Colonial Bahamas 1880-1860 |publisher=University Press of Florida |location=Gainesville, Florida |isbn=9780813064512|year=2017|language=en}}

==References== {{Reflist|30em}}

== External links == * {{Hansard-contribs | mr-alan-lennox-boyd | the Viscount Boyd of Merton }}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Boyd of Merton, Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount}} Category:1904 births Category:1983 deaths Category:20th-century British lawyers Category:Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Category:Anglo-Scots Category:British people of the Mau Mau rebellion Lennox-Boyd, Alan Category:Deputy lieutenants of Bedfordshire Category:Deputy lieutenants of Cornwall Category:British LGBTQ conservatives Category:LGBTQ peers Lennox-Boyd, Alan Category:English LGBTQ politicians Category:Members of the Inner Temple Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Ministers in the Chamberlain peacetime government, 1937–1939 Category:Ministers in the Chamberlain wartime government, 1939–1940 Category:Ministers in the Churchill caretaker government, 1945 Category:Ministers in the Churchill wartime government, 1940–1945 Category:Ministers in the Eden government, 1955–1957 Category:Ministers in the Macmillan and Douglas-Home governments, 1957–1964 Category:Ministers in the third Churchill government, 1951–1955 Category:Viscounts created by Elizabeth II Category:Pedestrian road incident deaths Category:People educated at Sherborne School Category:Presidents of the Oxford Union Category:Road incident deaths in London Category:Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve personnel of World War II Category:Royal Navy officers of World War II Category:Secretaries of state for transport (UK) Category:Secretaries of state for the colonies Lennox-Boyd, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Alan Category:UK MPs who were granted peerages Category:British LGBTQ military personnel