Sir Christopher John Chataway (31 January 1931 – 19 January 2014) was a British
middle- and
long-distance runner, television news broadcaster, and
Conservative politician.
Education
He was born in
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area.
Chelsea histori ...
, the son of James Denys Percival Chataway, OBE. He spent his childhood in the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, as his father was a member of the
Sudan Political Service.
He was educated at
Sherborne School
(God and My Right)
, established = 705 by Aldhelm,
re-founded by King Edward VI 1550
, closed =
, type = Public school Independent, boarding school
, religion = Church of England
, president =
, chair_label = Chairman of the governor ...
— where he excelled at rugby, boxing and gymnastics but did not win a race until he was 16
— and
Magdalen College
Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the ...
,
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, where he gained a
philosophy, politics and economics degree,
[Sir Chris Chataway: Former British athlete dies Chris Chataway dies at BBC Sport]
Retrieved 19 January 2014 but his studies were outshone by his success on the athletics track as a long-distance runner.
Athletics career
Chataway had a short but distinguished athletics career. At the
Helsinki
Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a multi ...
of 1952, in the
5000 metres final, after being passed on the last bend by the
Czech long-distance runner,
Emil Zátopek
Emil Zátopek (; 19 September 1922 – 21 November 2000) was a Czech long-distance runner best known for winning three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He won gold in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs, but his final me ...
, France's
Alain Mimoun
Alain Mimoun, born Ali Mimoun Ould Kacha (1 January 1921 – 27 June 2013), was an Algerian-born French long-distance runner who competed in track events, cross-country running and the marathon. He was the 1956 Olympic champion in the marathon. ...
, and
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...
's
Herbert Schade
Herbert Otto Emanuel Schade (26 May 1922 – 1 March 1994) was a West German long-distance runner who competed for Germany at the 1952 Summer Olympics and for the United Team of Germany at the 1956 Summer Olympics. In 1952 he won a bronze medal ...
, Chataway's foot brushed the curb and he crashed headlong to the ground. Chataway managed to finish the race in fifth place. On leaving university he took an executive job with
Guinness. When Sir
Hugh Beaver of Guinness came up with the idea for the ''
Guinness Book of Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing worl ...
'', it was Chataway who suggested his old university friends
Norris and
Ross McWhirter
Alan Ross McWhirter (12 August 1925 – 27 November 1975) was, with his twin brother, Norris, the cofounder of the 1955 ''Guinness Book of Records'' (known since 2000 as ''Guinness World Records'') and a contributor to the television programm ...
as editors, knowing of their liking for facts.
Chataway continued with his running. When
Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile on 6 May 1954 at Oxford University's
Iffley Road Track, Chataway and
Chris Brasher were his pacemakers. He finished in second place in the 5000 m at the
European Athletics Championship of 1954, 12.2 seconds behind the winner
Vladimir Kuts
Volodymyr Petrovych Kuts ( uk, Володимир Петрович Куц, russian: Владимир Петрович Куц, 7 February 1927 – 16 August 1975) was a Soviet long-distance runner. He won the 5000 and 10000 m races at the 1956 ...
, but two weeks later turned the tables at a London v. Moscow athletics competition at
White City White City may refer to:
Places Australia
* White City, Perth, an amusement park on the Perth foreshore
* White City railway station, a former railway station
* White City Stadium (Sydney), a tennis centre in Sydney
* White City FC, a football c ...
, setting a
world record time of 13 minutes 51.6 seconds. The contest was televised via the Eurovision network and made Chataway a sporting celebrity; that December he won the first
BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. After competing in the
1956 Olympics, Chataway retired from international athletics, though he continued to race for Thames Hare and Hounds.
Broadcasting and politics
Soon after leaving Oxford with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics, he decided to aim for a political career. He thought a suitable job in the rapidly expanding world of television might help. He refused offers in sports TV and with panel and quiz shows but secured a job in August 1955 with
ITN. He and
Robin Day were its first two newscasters. After six months, when loss-making ITV cut back on its news output, Chataway switched to the
BBC and was for three and a half years one of ''
Panorama''s highly regarded team of reporters with a different assignment each week, sometimes at home, but usually abroad. By this time, he was also considering another career, this time in politics. He had been narrowly elected as a
Conservative to the
London County Council
London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kn ...
in 1958 in
Lewisham North, and was then selected to stand for Parliament in the same seat. Lewisham North was a highly marginal seat won by
Labour in a by-election in 1957, but Chataway's charm helped to win the seat with a majority bigger than it had been in the previous general election.
His
maiden speech expressed the hope that the
England cricket team
The England cricket team represents England and Wales in international cricket. Since 1997, it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club (the MCC) since 1903. En ...
would refuse to play a tour in
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
South Africa, a highly unusual opinion for a Conservative. In Parliament, Chataway took up the issue of refugees, especially in Africa, and campaigned so hard during World Refugee Year that he was awarded a
Nansen Medal. He served as a Parliamentary Private Secretary before being appointed as a junior Education Minister in July 1962. In the 1964 election, his majority was slashed to 343 and the seat looked distinctly vulnerable; in 1966 he lost.
ILEA
In 1967 the Conservatives unexpectedly won control of the
Inner London Education Authority
The Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was an ad hoc local education authority for the City of London and the 12 Inner London boroughs from 1965 until its abolition in 1990. The authority was reconstituted as a directly elected body corp ...
and the party leadership was horrified to discover that their newly elected councillors were going to try to break up comprehensive schools and replace them with secondary modern and grammar schools. Chataway, with relevant ministerial experience, was persuaded to take over. He was elected an Alderman and appointed Leader of the Education Committee. Eventually cajoling his colleagues into a more moderate line, he avoided a head-on collision with
Edward Short (the Labour Education Secretary) and proceeded with those schemes for secondary reorganisation that he regarded as well founded.
Heath government
Chataway was keen to return to Parliament, and the opportunity came in a
byelection
A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...
in
Chichester
Chichester () is a cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. It is the only ...
in May 1969. He then resigned as ILEA Leader. With the return of a Conservative Government in 1970 after refusing the offer of Sports Minister he was appointed by Edward Heath as
Minister for Posts and Telecommunications and made a Privy Counsellor. In this post he took charge of introducing commercial radio for the first time, ending the BBC monopoly. He also introduced to parliament the complete end to the restrictions on broadcasting hours on television and radio. The restrictions on broadcasting hours were gradually eased from early 1971 and lifted fully in January 1972. After a reshuffle in April 1972 he was Minister for Industrial Development.
Business career
When the Conservatives were defeated in the February 1974 election, Chataway announced his retirement from politics (at the age of 43) and he did not seek re-election at the October 1974 election. He then went into business becoming a Managing Director of Orion Bank,
[Roberts, Richard & Christopher Arnander. (2001) ''Take Your Partners: Orion, the Consortium Banks and the Transformation of the Euromarkets''. Palgrave Macmillan. p.14. ] a consortium bank later acquired by one of its shareholders, the
Royal Bank of Canada. He stayed with Orion, later as Vice Chairman, for 15 years. He held various non-executive directorships. He was also the first Chairman of Groundwork, the environmental charity and Hon Treasurer of the National Campaign for Electoral Reform.
His principal outside interest was
ActionAid, a small overseas development charity, of which he became Hon Treasurer in 1974 and later Chairman. By the time he left the Board of Trustees in 1999 ActionAid's annual turnover had grown to nearly £100 million. When Chataway's son Adam decided to launch a water project in Ethiopia in memory of his fiancée killed in a road traffic accident he chose to do it in partnership with ActionAid. Vicky's Water Project, opened in 2010, has transformed the lives of 20,000 people.
In 1991 Chataway was appointed chairman of the
Civil Aviation Authority
A civil aviation authority (CAA) is a national or supranational statutory authority that oversees the regulation of civil aviation, including the maintenance of an aircraft register.
Role
Due to the inherent dangers in the use of flight vehicles, ...
– a job he relished not least because his father had been one of the early aviators. He supported his friend
Chris Brasher when he established the
London Marathon, and was President of the
Commonwealth Games
The Commonwealth Games, often referred to as the Friendly Games or simply the Comm Games, are a quadrennial international multi-sport event among athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The event was first held in 1930, and, with the ex ...
Council for England from 1990 to 2009. He was
knighted in the
1995 Birthday Honours for services to the aviation industry.
[The United Kingdom:]
In the
2005 general election his stepson
Charles Walker was elected as Conservative MP for
Broxbourne.
Personal life
He was married twice; firstly, to Anna Lett (1959; divorced 1975), with whom he had two sons and a daughter; and secondly, to Carola Walker (1976 to his death), with whom he had two further sons.
His stepson is the Conservative MP
Charles Walker and his brother-in-law the former Conservative MP
Peter Hordern.
Death
Chataway suffered from cancer for the last two and a half years of his life. He died at
St John's Hospice in north west London on January 29, 2014, twelve days before his 83rd birthday.
[Sir Christopher Chataway dies at Daily Telegraph Sport]
Retrieved 19 January 2014
References
*
External links
*
Sunday Times article 13 December 2009
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chataway, Chris
1931 births
2014 deaths
Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford
Athletes (track and field) at the 1952 Summer Olympics
Athletes (track and field) at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
Athletes (track and field) at the 1956 Summer Olympics
Athletes from London
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
British broadcaster-politicians
British sportsperson-politicians
Commonwealth Games gold medallists for England
Commonwealth Games medallists in athletics
Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Deaths from cancer in England
English male long-distance runners
English male middle-distance runners
European Athletics Championships medalists
ITN newsreaders and journalists
Knights Bachelor
Members of London County Council
Members of the Greater London Council
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Ministers in the Macmillan and Douglas-Home governments, 1957–1964
Olympic athletes of Great Britain
Pacemakers
People educated at Sherborne School
People from Chelsea, London
People in sports awarded knighthoods
UK MPs 1959–1964
UK MPs 1964–1966
UK MPs 1966–1970
UK MPs 1970–1974
UK MPs 1974
World record setters in athletics (track and field)
Nansen Refugee Award laureates