Tom Boardman, Baron Boardman

Early life

Thomas Gray Boardman was born in Daventry on 12 January 1919, just after the end of the First World War. He was educated at Bromsgrove School in Worcestershire (and later in life he became the "President of the School" from 1983 to 1994). His father was a landowner and Lord Mayor of Daventry, who farmed 500 acres in Northamptonshire. Like many of his generation, Boardman's formative years were shaped by the increasingly real prospect of war. On leaving school, Boardman paid £500 to become an articled clerk with a local solicitor, but in 1938, despite an early interest in the law and politics, enlisted into the British Army as a trooper in the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry.

Military service

At the start of the World War II, Boardman was selected for training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 14 September 1940. He was promoted through the ranks to Lieutenant-Colonel and commanded the 1st Battalion Northamptonshire Yeomanry during the North West Europe campaign. He won the Military Cross (MC) in Normandy during Operation Overlord, in the early part of the operation to trap German forces in the Falaise Pocket.

After the D-Day landings in 1944, Boardman was detailed to act as navigator for four armoured columns formed from the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, and 1st Battalion Black Watch. The columns were to take Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil, about 20 kilometres south of Caen.

On 6 and 7 August 1944, Boardman conducted reconnaissance in no man's land, despite German fire, to allow him to establish the route in darkness. In the night attack of 7/8 August, he then successfully spearheaded the columns forward through the Falaise Gap towards the village of St Aignan de Cramesnil, several times dismounting from his tank, and going back on foot to find parts of the columns which had lost touch. He had to illuminate the way forward with Very lights, making himself a highly visible target for enemy fire. Having used all his flares, Boardman had to run back to the second tank in the column to find more, in so doing he almost fell into a slit trench full of Germans; but the objective was achieved.

On 8 August 1944, Kurt Meyer, of the SS Hitlerjugend Division, ordered elements of his command to counterattack and recapture the high ground taken by The Allies. Michael Wittmann 'The Black Baron' a notable German Waffen-SS tank commander, led a group of seven Tiger tanks, from the Heavy SS-Panzer Battalion 101, supported by additional tanks and infantry. Boardman, with A Squadron 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, ambushed the Tigers crossing open terrain towards the high ground from the tree line. It was Boardman's order to the gunner Joe Ekins, which killed Wittman. According to the historian Hart, Boardman's unit was positioned in a wood on the right flank of the advancing Tiger tanks. At approximately 12:47, they engaged them, halting the attack, and killing Wittmann. Boardman's squadron (of which he was second in command) beat off the heavy counter-attack and the citation for his Military Cross gives much of the credit for this, and the destruction of 12 German tanks, to him. His MC was gazetted on 21 December 1944.

Boardman was later the commanding officer of the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, when they became part of the Territorial Army.

Political service

At the end of the World War II, Boardman took his law exams at Gibson & Wheldon (subsequently renamed The University of Law) and passed out top. He qualified and practised as a solicitor in Northampton, and served on the boards of several companies; his sound judgment made him a valued contributor to business as director. He became the Finance Director of Allied Breweries and, in 1958, he became chairman of Chamberlain Phipps, the Wellingborough manufacturer of adhesives, insulation, cladding and footwear components. He held this position until 1978.

Boardman's interest in Conservative politics brought his adoption as the Conservative candidate for Leicester South-West, where he fought Labour's Chief Whip, Herbert Bowden, in the 1964 and 1966 elections. Bowden was elevated to the House of Lords in 1967 and Boardman, at the age of 48, then won the parliamentary seat in a sensational by-election beating the Labour candidate Neville Sandelson and turning a Labour majority into a Conservative majority of 3,939 (15.7 per cent).

It was a period of considerable Conservative success and Boardman consolidated his hold on the seat. In 1970, he beat off a fierce Labour challenge by just 106 votes.

By then, his fellow Conservatives had already elected him to the executive of the 1922 Committee and he was chairman of the parliamentary panel of the Institute of Directors. Business commitments prevented him accepting the first government job offered to him, as Principal Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher.

Boardman's skills had been rapidly recognised by the incoming Conservative government of Edward Heath in 1970. He quickly earned a reputation for speaking publicly only about subjects that he knew well, particularly in the realms of industry and commerce. In April 1972, he was made Minister for Industry at the Department of Trade and Industry, where he was seen by many as a powerful advocate of progress in industry. Heath brought Boardman in to help take forward the industrial expansion programme, in a reshuffle which followed the unveiling of the Industry Bill. This was Heath's notorious 'U-turn' on industrial policy, in which a free market approach was abandoned in favour of a return to intervention, subsidy for 'lame ducks' and price controls.

Businessman

Boardman rejoined the Allied Breweries board in 1974, rising to vice-chairman the next year. He also became joint honorary treasurer of the Conservative Party, a post he held until 1982. He managed to buy the Tory central office site at Smith Square from Westminster council for £1.32m - enabling it to be sold for three times the amount only two years later. He was president of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce for three years from 1977 and served on the council of the Confederation of British Industry.

Boardman remained politically involved. Announced in the 1980 Birthday Honours, he was created a life peer as Baron Boardman, of Welford in the County of Northamptonshire on 10 July 1980.

In 1978, Boardman became chairman of the building materials group Steetley Industries (he had been a director since 1975), the construction materials group.

In 1979, Boardman joined the board of the National Westminster Bank and followed Lord Kingsdown (who became Governor of the Bank of England) into the chair in 1983. This was a period in which NatWest was overtaking Barclays to become the market leader in High Street banking, and pursuing grand ambitions, notably in investment banking and in North America. "Our philosophy is, and was, and remains that we are going to be a major player in the global market," Boardman proclaimed in 1988 Changes at National Westminster during the Boardman era included returning to Saturday opening in 1985 after 16 years; waiving charges on current accounts in credit; becoming involved in the International Stock Exchange through the “Big Bang” deregulation of 1986; meeting the requirements of the 1986 Financial Services Act; and taking over First Jersey National Corporation of the US. In 1988 National Westminster's shares were listed on the Tokyo stock exchange for the first time. Boardman's avowed technique was to support his management team without getting involved in day-to-day management.

In his decade with what was then the biggest high street bank, Boardman helped make Natwest the country's most profitable and dynamic. Unhappily though, some of his subordinates cut corners, notably at County NatWest, whose handling of the Blue Arrow takeover of Manpower was savaged by inspectors at the Department of Trade and Industry - to Boardman's fury. Three top executives resigned, and Boardman stepped down three months early in 1989. Although not personally implicated in the fraud, and ignorant of any wrongdoing, Boardman chose to resign a few months before his term of office was due to end.

Legal significance

Boardman is also noteworthy in being the appellant in Boardman v Phipps [1967] 2 AC 46 (House of Lords) a leading case on fiduciary duty and constructive trusts. Although he was ultimately required to account to the trust for additional benefits that accrued from his actions, the courts commended him for the service he had delivered to the beneficiaries, to whom the court held he owed fiduciary duties. Whilst he lost and would technically have had to account for the profits, Boardman was allowed in fact to keep the greater part of the profit as reward for his service.

Personal life

In 1948 Lord Boardman married, as her second husband, Deirdre Chaworth-Musters (née Gough) (1923-2014), and the couple had two sons and a daughter together. (Lady Boardman already had another daughter, born in 1943, by her first marriage.) The younger son, Sir Nigel Patrick Gray Boardman, built a successful legal career with Slaughter and May in London. Nigel Boardman came to wider public attention in July 2021 as the compiler of a preliminary report commissioned by English leaders into aspects of the so-called Greensill scandal, involving David Cameron, Lex Greensill and others.

Tom Boardman's daughter Grania Janet Gray Boardman married Rupert Law, 9th Baron Ellenborough.