Alfred Ernest Marples, Baron Marples, (9 December 1907 – 6 July 1978) was a
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization ...
politician who served as
Postmaster General
A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. The practice of having a government official responsib ...
(1957–1959) and
Minister of Transport
A ministry of transport or transportation is a ministry responsible for transportation within a country. It usually is administered by the ''minister for transport''. The term is also sometimes applied to the departments or other government ag ...
(1959–1964).
As Postmaster General, he oversaw the introduction of the
Premium Bond scheme and of
postcode
A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, included in a postal ...
s. His period as Minister of Transport was controversial. He both oversaw significant road construction (he opened the first section of the
M1 motorway
The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which la ...
) and the closure of a considerable portion of the national railway network with the
Beeching cuts. His involvement in the road construction business
Marples Ridgway
Marples Ridgway was a British civil engineering company founded in 1948 by engineer Reginald Ridgway and accountant Ernest Marples. Marples later became British Minister of Transport. In 1964, the company was taken over by the Bath and Portland Gr ...
, of which he had been managing director, led to concerns regarding possible
conflict of interest. In later life, Marples was elevated to the peerage before fleeing to
Monaco at very short notice to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.
Early life
Marples was born at 45 Dorset Road,
Levenshulme
Levenshulme () is an area of Manchester, England, bordering Fallowfield, Longsight, Gorton, Burnage, Heaton Chapel and Reddish; it is approximately halfway between Stockport and Manchester city centre on the A6. Levenshulme is predominantl ...
,
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
.
His father had been a renowned engineering charge-hand and Manchester
Labour campaigner, and his mother had worked in a local hat factory. Marples attended Victoria Park Council School and won a scholarship to
Stretford Grammar School. By the age of 14 he was already active in the
Labour Movement
The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other.
* The trade union movement ...
, as well as earning money by selling cigarettes and sweets to Manchester football crowds. He also played football for a
YMCA
YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...
team.
Marples worked as a miner, a postman, a chef and an accountant. In the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
he was commissioned into the
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...
in 1941, rose to the rank of
captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
and was medically discharged in 1944.
In 1937 Marples married Edna Florence Harwood, the daughter of a
Nottingham
Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robin ...
businessman. This marriage was dissolved in 1945.
[
In 1956 Marples married his former secretary Ruth Dobson (1919–2014), who on his elevation to the ]peerage
A peerage is a legal system historically comprising various hereditary titles (and sometimes non-hereditary titles) in a number of countries, and composed of assorted noble ranks.
Peerages include:
Australia
* Australian peers
Belgium
* Belgi ...
in 1974 became Lady Marples.[
]
Political career
Marples joined the Conservative Party and in 1945 was elected as Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members ofte ...
for Wallasey
Wallasey () is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England; until 1974, it was part of the historic county of Cheshire. It is situated at the mouth of the River Mersey, at the north-eastern corner of the Wirral P ...
. In 1951, Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...
appointed him a junior minister in the Conservative Government 1951–1955.[ Marples was a minister under ]Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", h ...
and Alec Douglas-Home throughout the Conservative Government 1957–1964
Conservatism is a Philosophy of culture, cultural, Social philosophy, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in r ...
.
Postmaster General
In 1957, Harold Macmillan appointed Marples Postmaster General
A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. The practice of having a government official responsib ...
. On 2 June 1957, Marples started the first draw for the new Premium Bond scheme. At that time the telephone network was controlled by the General Post Office
The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Before the Acts of Union 1707, it was the postal system of the Kingdom of England, established by Charles II in 1660. ...
, and saw the introduction of subscriber trunk dialling
Subscriber trunk dialling (STD), also known as subscriber toll dialing, is a telephone numbering plan feature and telecommunications technology for the dialling of trunk calls by telephone subscribers without the assistance from switchboard oper ...
(STD), which eliminated the use of operators on national phone calls, and it has also been claimed that he introduced the first postcode
A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, included in a postal ...
s to the UK, although these were both actually technical innovations which would probably have been inevitable regardless of the presiding politician.
Minister of Transport
Marples was Minister of Transport
A ministry of transport or transportation is a ministry responsible for transportation within a country. It usually is administered by the ''minister for transport''. The term is also sometimes applied to the departments or other government ag ...
from 14 October 1959 until the Conservatives lost the 1964 general election on 16 October 1964.
As Minister of Transport, Marples oversaw the introduction of parking meter
A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. Parking meters can be used by municipalities as a tool for enforcing their integrated on-street par ...
s and the provisional driving licence in 1958, panda crossings in 1962 and two Transport Acts. The Road Traffic Act of 1960 introduced the MOT test
The MOT test (or simply MOT) is an annual test of vehicle safety, roadworthiness aspects and exhaust emissions required in the United Kingdom for most vehicles over three years old. In Northern Ireland the equivalent requirement applies a ...
, roadside single yellow lines and double yellow lines, s, and the 250 cc engine limit for learner motorcyclists.
The Transport Act 1962
The Transport Act 1962 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Described as the "most momentous piece of legislation in the field of railway law to have been enacted since the Railway and Canal Traffic Act 1854", it was passed by Har ...
dissolved the British Transport Commission (BTC) which had overseen the railways, canals and road freight transport and established the British Railways Board
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
; it also put in place measures which simplified the process of closing railways. The Act was described as the "most momentous piece of legislation in the field of railway law to have been enacted since the Railway and Canal Traffic Act 1854".
In anticipation of the 1962 Act, the government appointed Dr Richard Beeching
Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 – 23 March 1985), commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who for a short but very notable time was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the e ...
as Chairman of the British Railways Board with a brief to recommend and implement such changes as were necessary to end the losses that were growing rapidly at the time. The Beeching cuts, or "Beeching Axe" that followed resulted in the major closures for both stations and lines. It may not be entirely a coincidence that as Beeching was closing railway lines, the government was providing funding for the construction of motorways, which were being built by companies in which Marples had an interest.
Peerage
Marples retired from the House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
at the February 1974 general election. On 8 May 1974 he was made a life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages A ...
as ''Baron Marples'' of Wallasey
Wallasey () is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England; until 1974, it was part of the historic county of Cheshire. It is situated at the mouth of the River Mersey, at the north-eastern corner of the Wirral P ...
in the County of Merseyside
Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Mersey Estuary and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirra ...
.
Business interests
In the late 1940s Marples was a director of a company called Kirk & Kirk, which was a contractor in the construction of Brunswick Wharf Power Station
Brunswick Wharf Power Station (also known as Blackwall Power Station) was a coal- and oil-fired power station on the River Thames at Blackwall in London. The station was planned from 1939 by Poplar Borough Council but construction only starte ...
at Blackwall in London. Marples met civil engineer Reginald Ridgway (1908–2002), who was working as a contractor for Kirk & Kirk.[ In 1948 the two men founded Marples Ridgway and Partners, a civil engineering company that started with one five-ton ex-army truck and one crane.][
The new partnership took over Kirk & Kirk's contract at Brunswick Wharf][ and in 1950 Marples severed his links with Kirk & Kirk.][ Marples Ridgway's subsequent contracts included building power stations in England, the Allt na Lairige dam in Scotland, roads in ]Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the no ...
and (significantly) England, and a port in Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispanio ...
.[ The Bath and Portland Group took over Marples Ridgway in 1964.][
]
Controversies
Conflict of interest
Shortly after he became a junior minister in November 1951, Marples resigned as managing director of Marples Ridgway but continued to hold some 80% of the firm's shares. When he was made Minister of Transport in October 1959, Marples undertook to sell his shareholding in the company as he was now in clear breach of the House of Commons' rules on conflicts of interest. He had not done so by January 1960, at which time the ''Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after b ...
'' reported that Marples Ridgway had won the tender to build the Hammersmith Flyover and that the Ministry of Transport's engineers had endorsed 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 kno ...
's rejection of a lower tender.
Marples' first attempt to sell his shares was blocked by the Attorney-General on the basis that he was using his former business partner, Reg Ridgway, as an agent to ensure that he could buy back the shares upon leaving office. Marples therefore sold his shares to his wife, reserving himself the possibility to reacquire them at the original price after leaving office;[ ] by this time, his shares had come to be worth between £350,000 and £400,000.
In 1959, shortly after becoming minister, Marples opened the first section of the M1 motorway
The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which la ...
. It was understood that although his former company was not directly contracted to build the M1, Marples Ridgway was alleged to have "certainly had a finger in the pie". Marples Ridgway built the Hammersmith flyover in London at a cost of £1.3 million, immediately followed by building the Chiswick flyover
The Chiswick flyover is a short elevated section of the M4 motorway in the western approaches to London, United Kingdom. The flyover in the west London suburb of Chiswick, was opened in 1959 with the intention of reducing congestion and the im ...
.[
Marples Ridgway was also involved in other major road projects in the 1950s and 1960s including the £4.1 million extension of the M1 into London, referred to as the Hendon Urban Motorway at the time.
]
Use of prostitutes
When Lord Denning
Alfred Thompson "Tom" Denning, Baron Denning (23 January 1899 – 5 March 1999) was an English lawyer and judge. He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938. Denning became a judge in 1944 when ...
made his 1963 investigation into the security aspects of the Profumo affair
The Profumo affair was a major scandal in twentieth-century British politics. John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with 19-year-old model Christine Keeler beg ...
and the rumoured affair between the Minister of Defence
A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in so ...
, Duncan Sandys
Edwin Duncan Sandys, Baron Duncan-Sandys (; 24 January 1908 – 26 November 1987), was a British politician and minister in successive Conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a son-in-law of Winston Churchill and played a key ro ...
and the Duchess of Argyll
The Duchess of Argyll is typically the wife of the Duke of Argyll, an extant title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom created in 1892. The Duke is also Duke of Argyll in the Peerage of Scotland, which was originally created in the 1701.
The fa ...
, he confirmed to Macmillan that a rumour that Ernest Marples was in the habit of using prostitutes appeared to be true. In early 2020, the rumours were corroborated by broadcaster and investigative journalist Tom Mangold, based on the diaries of Lord Denning's then-secretary, Thomas Critchley. The diaries reported the transport minister's fetish for being whipped while dressed in women's clothing, as described in great detail by one of the prostitutes who had provided these services to Marples, and confirmed at the time by her detailed knowledge of the interior of Marples' home where the events took place. The story was suppressed and did not appear in Denning's final report.
Flight to Monaco
Early in 1975, Marples suddenly fled to Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is l ...
. He left just before the end of the tax year, fearing that he would otherwise be liable for a substantial tax bill.
Among the journalists who investigated his unexpected flight was Richard Stott (later editor of the ''Daily Mirror
The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print ...
''):
In the early 70s ... he tried to fight off a revaluation of his assets which would undoubtedly cost him dear ... So Marples decided he had to go and hatched a plot to remove £2 million from Britain through his Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy ...
company ... there was nothing for it but to cut and run, which Marples did just before the tax year of 1975. He left by the night ferry with his belongings crammed into tea chests, leaving the floors of his home in Belgravia
Belgravia () is a district in Central London, covering parts of the areas of both the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Belgravia was known as the 'Five Fields' during the Tudor Period, and became a dangero ...
littered with discarded clothes and possessions ... He claimed he had been asked to pay nearly 30 years' overdue tax ... The Treasury froze his assets in Britain for the next ten years. By then, most of them were safely in Monaco and Liechtenstein.
The flight came at a time when Marples was facing problems on several fronts. Tenants of his block of flats in Harwood Court, Upper Richmond Road, Putney
Putney () is a district of southwest London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
History
Putney is an ancient par ...
, London, were demanding that he repair serious structural faults and had threatened legal action. He was being sued for £145,000 by the Bankers Trust
Bankers Trust was a historic American banking organization. The bank merged with Alex. Brown & Sons in 1997 before being acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. Deutsche Bank sold the Trust and Custody division of Bankers Trust to State Street Corpo ...
merchant bank
A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commod ...
in relation to an agreement made with the French company Ernest Marples et Cie. He was also being sued by John Holmes, the chartered surveyor and director of Marples' property company Ecclestone Enterprises, for wrongful dismissal and who was claiming £70,000 in damages. The Inland Revenue
The Inland Revenue was, until April 2005, a department of the British Government responsible for the collection of direct taxation, including income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, corporation tax, ...
was demanding that he pay nearly 30 years' back taxes on his residence in Eccleston Street, Belgravia, London, as well as capital gains tax on his properties in Kensington. In addition, in 1974, he had lost 130 cases of wine to a fire in a store he owned under a railway line in Brixton, and he had been convicted of drinking and driving
Drunk driving (or drink-driving in British English) is the act of driving under the influence of alcohol. A small increase in the blood alcohol content increases the relative risk of a motor vehicle crash.
In the United States, alcohol is inv ...
for which he received a one-year ban and a £45 fine.
His departure came in the wake of the failure of a plan to avoid paying tax on his properties by involving a Liechtenstein-based company with which he had been involved for more than ten years. He was to sell his Harwood Court block of flats for £500,000 to Vin International which would refurbish and sell them for between £2.25 million and £2.5 million. Marples would only be liable for capital gains tax at 30% on the transfer to Vin which, as an offshore company, would only be liable for stamp duty
Stamp duty is a tax that is levied on single property purchases or documents (including, historically, the majority of legal documents such as cheques, receipts, military commissions, marriage licences and land transactions). A physical revenu ...
at 2%. The plan failed following the change of government in 1974. After reports of this plan were published in the ''Daily Mirror'', the Treasury froze Marples' assets in Britain. In November 1977, he paid £7,600 to the British government in settlement of his breach of exchange control regulations, following which he made a return to London.
Marples' final years were spent on his 45-acre vineyard estate in Fleurie
Fleurie () is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France.
Medieval charters record Fleurie as ''Floriacum''.
Fleurie AOC is a division of the Beaujolais wine region.
In the 1970s the British Conservative politician and tax fugit ...
, France. He died in a Monte Carlo hospital on 6 July 1978. In his will, he left property valued at £388,166. He is buried in a family plot in Southern Cemetery, Manchester
Southern Cemetery is a large municipal cemetery in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, England, south of the city centre. It opened in 1879 and is owned and administered by Manchester City Council. It is the largest municipal cemetery in the United ...
.
Popular culture
In 2009, his name was used for a website 'ernestmarples.com' that campaigned to have the UK Postcode dataset released as Open Data
Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...
and drew threats of legal action by the Royal Mail
, kw, Postya Riel, ga, An Post Ríoga
, logo = Royal Mail.svg
, logo_size = 250px
, type = Public limited company
, traded_as =
, foundation =
, founder = Henry VIII
, location = London, England, UK
, key_people = * Keith Williams ...
against its founders. The dataset was opened up on 1 April 2010 following support from many people, including MPs, and Code-Point Open can now be downloaded free with data.gov.uk
data.gov.uk is a UK Government project to make available non-personal UK government data as open data. It was launched in closed beta in September 2009 and publicly launched in January 2010. As of February 2015 it contained over 19,343 datasets, r ...
.
The founders of the site claim not to have been aware of the controversies concerning Ernest Marples when they chose his name for the website.
References
External links
*
BBC film interview with Marples
discussing his passion for jogging
Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. The main intention is to increase physical fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running but more than walking, or to maintain a steady speed for longer periods ...
The Papers of Ernest Marples
held at Churchill Archives Centre
The Churchill Archives Centre (CAC) at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge is one of the largest repositories in the United Kingdom for the preservation and study of modern personal papers. It is best known for housing the papers o ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marples, Ernest
1907 births
1978 deaths
British Secretaries of State
Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Conservative Party (UK) life peers
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Ministers in the Eden government, 1955–1957
Ministers in the Macmillan and Douglas-Home governments, 1957–1964
Ministers in the third Churchill government, 1951–1955
People educated at Stretford Grammar School
Maples, Ernest
Royal Artillery officers
Secretaries of State for Transport (UK)
UK MPs 1945–1950
UK MPs 1950–1951
UK MPs 1951–1955
UK MPs 1955–1959
UK MPs 1959–1964
UK MPs 1964–1966
UK MPs 1966–1970
UK MPs 1970–1974
UK MPs who were granted peerages
United Kingdom Postmasters General
Burials at Southern Cemetery, Manchester
Life peers created by Elizabeth II