Lord Vinson

Nigel Vinson, Baron Vinson, LVO (born 27 January 1931), is a British entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist, and former Conservative member of the House of Lords.

Early life and education

Nigel Vinson was born on 27 January 1931, the second son of Ronald Vinson (d. 1976), a gentleman farmer of Huguenot descent, and his second wife, Bettina Myra Olivia (d. 1966), daughter of a general practitioner, Gerald Southwell-Sander. She studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, but left her studies to marry. She was a "voracious reader" who supplemented her sons' education by reading them classics. Vinson grew up in a wealthy family, benefiting from access to education and leisure activities, such as fishing, riding, and shooting on his father's property. Before the Second World War, the family employed five servants: a butler, a housekeeper, two maids, and a nanny.Making Things Happen: The Life and Original Thinking of Nigel Vinson, Gerald Frost, Biteback Publishing, 2015, Chapter 1- To the manor born, pp. 1-10, Appendix

Vinson was educated at Brambletye School before attending Pangbourne College. Although he qualified for a place at the University of London, his lack of a classics qualification prevented him from attending Oxford or Cambridge . He chose instead to focus on gaining practical business experience instead of a degree. After school, he served in the Queen's Royal Regiment from 1948 to 1950, reaching the rank of Lieutenant.

Early career

In 1952, Vinson founded a small plastic company with two employees, which was later named Plastic Coatings. The company operated from a Nissen hut in Guildford and was among the pioneers in applying plastic coatings to metal for various industrial applications. By 1969, when the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange, it employed over 1,000 workers in five different locations and won the Queen's Award for Industry in 1971. At the time of the floatation, Vinson gave 10% of the shares to the company's employees before selling his stake in the firm to Imperial Tobacco and resigning as executive chairman a year later.Gerald Frost, ''Making Things Happen: The Life and Original Thinking of Nigel Vinson'', Biteback, London, 2015

Vinson was the Deputy Chairman of Electra Investment Trust from 1990 to 1998.

Political career

Vinson chose to leave his full-time business career to reverse economic and political trends that he believed would impoverish and restrict Britain. He also aimed to champion the concept of a social market economy. After an unsuccessful attempt to be selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Aldershot in 1974, he assisted others challenging the prevailing economic orthodoxy. Introduced to Antony Fisher, the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Vinson financially supported the Institute when its finances were unstable. Vinson became an IEA trustee and chairman of its trustees from 1989 to 1995, as well as life IEA vice-president, becoming a close friend and ally of Ralph Harris (later Lord Harris of High Cross), the Institute's General Director. Harris introduced Vinson to Sir Keith Joseph, who had shifted from his party's commitment to the neo-Keynesian middle way in favour of market-based policies.

In 1974, Vinson joined Joseph and Margaret Thatcher as a co-founder of the Centre for Policy Studies, which, according to Thatcher, "was where our Conservative revolution began." Vinson, who secured the Centre's first premises, underwrote the lease, employed its staff, and served as honorary treasurer, while also contributing to the think-tank's intellectual discourse. The Centre's role was "to act as an outsider, skirmisher, trail-blazer, to moot new ideas and policies. Our task was to question the unquestioned, think the unthinkable, and blaze new trails..."Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, ''Think Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution'',Harper Collins, London 1994 Vinson co-authored the Centre's first publication, ''Why Britain Needs a Social Market Economy'' (1974). According to Vinson's biographer, he played a role in discussions surrounding Joseph’s decision not to stand for the Conservative Party leadership in 1975, a decision that preceded Margaret Thatcher’s candidacy. When he resigned as CPS treasurer in 1980, Thatcher acknowledged in a letter Vinson's role in shifting British politics: "What has been achieved during the last six years by way of winning the intellectual argument in favour of free enterprise and against socialism and corporatism would never have been possible without your patient guidance and tireless ability to provide, and then maintain, the foundation stone on which we have built."

According to a study on the role of conservative and neoliberal think tanks in reversing political trends during the 1970s and 1980s, the CPS's Personal Capital Foundation Group, chaired by Vinson, was among the most influential. It produced three proposals that became government policy: personal pensions, personal equity plans (now ISAs), and the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. While he generally supported the pro-market policies advanced by the IEA and CPS, Vinson repeatedly argued that the high interest rates imposed as the centrepiece of Thatcher's counter-inflation policy were unnecessarily harsh, causing severe hardship. When an independent assessment of UK monetary policy confirmed this, monetary policy was gradually relaxed.John Hoskyns, ''Just in Time: Inside the Thatcher Revolution'', Aurum Press, London 2000

On 7 February 1985, he was created a life peer as Baron Vinson, of Roddam Dene in the County of Northumberland.

He regularly attended House of Lords debates and in the 2007 and 2014 sessions, spoke in support of nuclear power, and against policies based on costly British renewable generation solutions, which he believed increased fuel poverty, while the growing world population issue remained unaddressed.

On 4 August 2012, Lord Vinson threatened to defect to UKIP unless the Conservatives took a more of a Better Off Out approach to Europe. On 4 June 2013, he spoke and voted in the Lords against the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill.

From 1980 to 1990, Vinson served as chairman of the Rural Development Commission, during which time he initiated reforms designed to remove restrictions and controls on rural enterprise. These included a change to planning laws that enabled redundant farm buildings to be turned into workshops, leading to the creation of thousands of small rural firms. Vinson believed that the reforms slowed and reversed the population drift from the countryside to towns and cities.

Vinson was Deputy Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry's Smaller Firms Council from 1979 to 1984 and President of the Industrial Participation Association from 1979 to 1989.

Since 2003, he has been a trustee of the British think tank Civitas.

He retired from the House of Lords in July 2022.

Philanthropy

The Nigel Vinson Charitable Trust, established in 1970 with an initial donation representing ten percent of Vinson's current wealth, has since donated more than £10 million to educational, humanitarian, and environmental projects, as well as to individual scholars and public policy foundations. Beneficiaries have included the University of Buckingham, which unveiled the £8 million Vinson Building housing the Vinson Centre for Economics and Entrepreneurship in 2018.

He was the founder donor of the Martin Mere Wildfowl Reserve in 1972 and donated a village green to Holburn, Northumberland, in 2006.

He was a member of the Design Council from 1973 to 1980. From 1976 to 1978, he was an honorary director of the Queen's Silver Jubilee Appeal. He was a Member of the Northumbrian National Parks and Countryside Committee between 1977 and 1987 and a member of the Foundation for Science and Technology between 1991 and 1996.

In a 2019 article in ''Standpoint'' magazine, Vinson criticized several major UK charities for misusing donor funds, overpaying senior staff, and engaging in political activism.

Personal life

In 1972, Vinson married speech therapist Yvonne Ann, daughter of Dr John Olaf Collin (d. 2000), MB BCh, of Forest Row, East Sussex. They have three daughters and nine grandchildren.

Vinson was invested as a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) in the 1979 New Year Honours.

He was a council member of St George's House, Windsor Castle, from 1990 to 1996.

Arms

Notes

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vinson, Nigel
1931 births
Vinson
Lieutenants of the Royal Victorian Order
Living people
People educated at Pangbourne College
Members of the Freedom Association
Life peers created by Elizabeth II
Peers retired under the House of Lords Reform Act 2014