While still a second-year undergraduate at Oxford, Channon was elected at the by-election for Southend West in January 1959 at the age of 23. The seat had connections with his family since 1912, when his grandfather, Rupert Guinness, became MP for South East Essex. Guinness became MP for the new seat of Southend in 1918. When Guinness succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Iveagh in 1927, the seat was won by his wife, Gwendolen Guinness, Countess of Iveagh, who remained MP for Southend until she retired in 1935. She, in turn, was replaced by her son-in-law, Henry "Chips" Channon, who kept the seat until it was divided in 1950, and who then represented one of the seats that replaced it, Southend West, until his death in October 1958.[1][2]
Channon won the nomination to his father's seat ahead of 129 other applicants and in spite of a campaign in Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express against the apparent nepotism.[1][3] His grandmother, Lady Iveagh, the former MP, congratulated the voters of Southend for "backing a colt when you know the stable he was trained in".[1][2][3]
He left university to sit in Parliament, and remained the youngest MP until Teddy Taylor was elected in 1964 (Taylor was later MP for the neighbouring constituency of Southend East).
In opposition, Conservative leader Edward Heath appointed Channon as a spokesman on public building and works in 1965, and then on arts in 1967.[1] He served as a junior minister in the government led by Heath from 1970 to 1974, as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in 1970, then as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the new Department of the Environment from 1970 to 1972, briefly as Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office for six months in 1972, and then Minister of Housing and Construction from 1972 to 1974.[4]Secretary of State for Northern IrelandWilliam Whitelaw met IRA leader Sean MacStiofain and other Republicans at Channon's house in Chelsea on 7 July 1972.[2] The talks ended in failure, and the IRA bombed Belfast repeatedly on Bloody Friday just two weeks later. After the February 1974 general election, Channon joined Heath's shadow cabinet as environment spokesman. His services were dispensed with by Margaret Thatcher when she became leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975.[2]
Channon joined the Conservative delegation to the Council of Europe and Western European Union in 1976, and considered standing in the first UK elections to the European Parliament in 1979, but failed to win the nomination for the North-East Essex seat.[1]
Channon was appointed Secretary of State for Transport on 13 June 1987. His tenure as Transport Secretary was blighted by several major transport disasters: 31 died in the King's Cross fire on 18 November 1987; 35 were killed when three trains crashed near Britain's busiest railway station in the Clapham Junction rail crash on 12 December 1988; 270 died when Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down by a bomb over Scottish town of Lockerbie in the Lockerbie Disaster on 21 December 1988; and 44 died when a British Midland plane crashed beside the M1 motorway in the Kegworth air disaster on 8 January 1989. He was roughly treated in the House of Commons by Labour's transport spokesman, John Prescott, who pilloried him for underinvestment in the rail network, and for taking a family holiday to Mustique shortly after the Lockerbie disaster.[2]
The American investigative columnist, Jack Anderson, has had some scoops in his time but none more significant than his revelation – in January 1990 – that in mid-March 1989, three months after Lockerbie, George Bush rang Margaret Thatcher to warn her to 'cool it' on the subject. On what seems to have been the very same day [in March 1989], perhaps a few hours earlier, Thatcher's Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, was the guest of five prominent political correspondents at a lunch at the Garrick Club. It was agreed that anything said at the lunch was 'on strict lobby terms' – that is, for the journalists only, not their readers. Channon then announced that the Dumfries and Galloway Police – the smallest police force in Britain – had concluded a criminal investigation into the Lockerbie crash. They had found who was responsible and arrests were expected before long. So sensational was the revelation that at least one of the five journalists broke ranks; and the news that the Lockerbie villains would soon be behind bars in Scotland was divulged to the public. Channon promptly said that he was not the source of the story. Denounced in a front page story in the Daily Mirror as a "liar", he did not sue or complain. A few months later he was quietly sacked. Thatcher could not blame her loyal minister for his indiscretion, which coincided with her instructions from the White House.[6]
Channon harboured hopes of becoming the fourth member of his family to become Speaker of the House of Commons,[1][2] but he withdrew from the election to replace Bernard Weatherill in 1992. He later served as chairman of the House of Commons Finance and Services Committee and chairman of the Transport Select Committee.
Outside politics, he was a member of the board of directors of Guinness, and served with the Guinness Trust.[1]
Personal life
In 1963, Channon married Ingrid Guinness (née Wyndham), the former wife of his cousin Jonathan Guinness. He inherited three stepchildren, and they had three children: Henry, Georgia, and Olivia Gwendolen. In 1986, 22-year-old Olivia died from the effects of drink and drugs during a party in the Christ Church, Oxford, rooms of Count Gottfried von Bismarck.[8] The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure.[1] Henry Channon died on 24 October 2021, aged 51.
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