Tom Boardman, Baron Boardman
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Thomas Grey Boardman (12 January 1919 – 10 March 2003) was an English Conservative politician and businessman.
Boardman was born into a Northamptonshire farming family, and lived in the county all his life, becoming deputy Lord Lieutenant of the county in 1977 and High Sheriff in 1979.
During the Second World War he served in the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, and won the Military Cross during the Normandy landings. Boardman was later the commander of the Yeomanry when they became part of the Territorial Army. In peacetime he qualified and worked as a solicitor, and served on the boards of several companies, including Allied Breweries. After two unsuccessful attempts, in a 1967 by-election he won the parliamentary constituency of Leicester South-West for the Conservative Party.
In 1972, he was made Minister for Industry, and a month before the February 1974 general election (in which he stood for the newly reconstituted Leicester South), he joined Edward Heath's cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In the October election of the same year, he lost his parliamentary seat to the Labour Party.
Boardman returned to the world of business, rejoining Allied Breweries and several other companies, and was president of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce for three years from 1977. He joined the board of the National Westminster Bank in 1979, and became chairman in 1983, leaving in 1989 in the wake of the Blue Arrow scandal. 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.
Although he never rejoined the House of Commons after the 1974 defeat (he applied to become the Tory candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, but was rejected), Boardman remained politically involved. In 1980, he was made a life peer (Lord Boardman of Welford), and the following year he became joint treasurer of the Conservative Party. After leaving the NatWest Bank, he was active in the House of Lords almost until his death, being on the socially conservative and traditionalist wing of the party. He was a keen huntsman, riding with the Pytchley hunt well into his retirement.
Boardman married Deirdre Chaworth-Musters in 1948, and the couple had two sons and a daughter (his wife also had a daughter by her first marriage).
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