Norman St John-Stevas

Norman Antony Francis St John-Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley, ( ; born Norman Panayea St John Stevas; 18 May 1929 – 2 March 2012) was a British Conservative politician, author and barrister. He served as Leader of the House of Commons in the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1981. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Chelmsford from 1964 to 1987, and was made a life peer in 1987. His surname was created by compounding those of his father (Stevas) and mother (St John-O'Connor).

Early life

Stevas was born in London. His birth certificate specified that his Christian names were Norman Panayea St John, and that his father was Spyro Stevas, a hotel proprietor of Greek origin. His ''Who's Who'' entry specified that his father was Stephen Stevas, an engineer and company director. His mother was Kitty St John O'Connor. His parents divorced, whereupon his mother hyphenated the name St John. He was reputedly closer to his mother than to his father. His older sister was the actress Juno Alexander, first wife of actor Terence Alexander.

Stevas was educated at St Joseph's Salesian School, Burwash, East Sussex, and then at the Catholic school, Ratcliffe College, Leicester. He was active in the Young Conservatives as a speaker for Conservative and Catholic causes. He was a contemporary of Gordon Reece, whom he reported to his superiors for atheism.

Subsequently, he was for six months enrolled at the English College, Rome, a seminary for the Roman Catholic priesthood, but found that he had no vocation. He remained a Catholic throughout his life, however. He then read law at what was then Fitzwilliam Hall, now Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he lived at St Edmund's House (now St Edmund's College, which at the time was a predominantly Roman Catholic institution) and served as President of the Cambridge Union in 1950. He graduated with first class honours and won the Whitlock Prize.

He studied also at Oxford University, where he gained a Second in the examination for the BCL degree at Christ Church and was the Secretary of the Oxford Union. He obtained a PhD degree with thesis titled ''A study of censorship with special reference to the law governing obscene publications in common law and other jurisdictions'' (on the early work of Walter Bagehot) from the University of London and a JSD degree from Yale University. He was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1952.

Academic and legal career

St John-Stevas was appointed as a lecturer at Southampton University (1952–1953) and King's College London (1953–1956). He then went to Oxford University to tutor in Jurisprudence at Christ Church (1953–1955) and Merton College (1955–1957). He also lectured in the United States and held a visiting professorship at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1954 to 1959 he was legal adviser to Sir Alan Herbert's Committee on book censorship.

Stevas also won many prizes and scholarships: the Blackstone and Harmsworth Scholarship (1952); the Blackstone Prize (1953); The Yorke Prize of Cambridge University (1957); a fellowship at Yale Law School (1958); a Fulbright award; and a Fund for the Republic fellowship (1958).

In 1956 his book ''Obscenity and the Law'' was published. This "became a key work of reference during subsequent reforms" and also "reflected an intellectual shift toward the law's retreat from the pulpit". He also wrote ''Life, Death and the Law'' (1961), ''The Right to Life'' (1963) and ''The Law and Morals'' (1964). These were "earnest...with a liberal Catholic lawyer addressing difficult questions in a thoughtful spirit".

In 1959, he joined ''The Economist'' and became its Legal and Political Correspondent. Stevas edited the collected works of the Victorian journalist and politician Walter Bagehot. Between 1965 and 1986, ''The Economist'' itself published his edition "to great acclaim", what have been called fifteen "beautifully produced and highly regarded volumes". These volumes have been labelled Stevas's "memorial".

Politician

A founding member of the Conservative Bow Group, in 1951 St John-Stevas stood unsuccessfully for the safe Labour seat of Dagenham. He was later elected as Member of Parliament for the safe Conservative seat of Chelmsford in Essex at the 1964 general election holding this seat until stepping down at the 1987 general election. In later elections, the seat became marginal, and his majority at his final election contest in 1983 was less than a thousand votes.

He had opposed Sir Anthony Eden's invasion of Suez in 1956, was a long-standing opponent of capital punishment and immigration restrictions based on race, and favoured a relaxation of the obscenity laws. Owing to his Catholic views, he opposed Leo Abse's Divorce Bill and David Steel's Abortion Bill. In 1966, he was a co-sponsor of Abse's private member's bill to reform the law to permit homosexual acts between consenting adults, which became the Sexual Offences Act 1967.

In the later stages of Prime Minister Edward Heath's government, St John-Stevas was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science (where Margaret Thatcher was the Secretary of State), and the Minister for the Arts (1973–1974).

After the defeat of Heath's government, St John-Stevas supported Heath in the first ballot of the 1975 Conservative Party leadership election but switched his vote to Thatcher in the second ballot. He then served as a member of the Shadow Cabinet from 1974 to 1979, being the Shadow Spokesman for Education between 1975 and 1978. His deputy was Sir Rhodes Boyson, a working-class Thatcherite from Lancashire. Stevas and Boyson did not get along and loathed each other. Stevas gave Boyson the ironic nickname "Colossus". He became Shadow Leader of the House of Commons in 1978. When the Conservative Party was returned to power at the 1979 general election, he was appointed as Minister for the Arts for a second time from 1979 to 1981, while simultaneously holding the roles of Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

In his role as Leader of the House, he has been credited with the creation of the House of Commons' system of select committees. These committees enable backbench MPs to hold ministers to account, and exert considerable influence within Parliament. In January 1981, St John-Stevas was the first of the Tory "wets" to be dismissed from the Cabinet by Margaret Thatcher (whom he had previously nicknamed "Tina" for her "there is no alternative" rhetoric). Thatcher explained to Roy Strong, "Norman was too much", and added, "Look at the way he'd done his office up. No sense of economy".

Now on the back-benches, Stevas remained loyal to Thatcher whilst criticising Thatcherite economic policies: "He was a One Nation Conservative who looked to Disraeli rather than Milton Friedman". In 1984 appeared his book ''The Two Cities'', in which he said that Thatcher could see "everything in black and white utthe universe I inhabit is made up of many shades of grey". He continued his interest in Parliamentary accountability, in 1983, he won the ballot for private members' bills and brought in the bill which became the National Audit Act 1983 establishing the UK's National Audit Office and making it clear that the Comptroller and Auditor General, its head, was an officer of the House of Commons with rights to inspect the value for money of government spending.

St John-Stevas stood down from the House of Commons at the 1987 general election, being created a life peer in the House of Lords with the title Baron St John of Fawsley of Preston Capes in the County of Northamptonshire on 19 October 1987.

Chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission

He was Chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission from 1985 to 1999. His tenure was wracked by controversy. It was hoped that his appointment would revitalise and popularise the commission, which had not even produced an annual report for many years. Stevas succeeded in "inject nga bit of panache and excitement" into the commission. However it also became a mouthpiece for Lord St John's own views and preferences (most prominently in the annual Building of the Year award). Lord St John adorned his office with paintings from national collections, documents were presented in red boxes and he was served by a chauffeur and ex-civil servants, in accommodation more lavish than that of most secretaries of state: prompting one commentator to quip that "if he cannot have power, he must have the trappings". This was all criticised in a savage government review by Sir Geoffrey Chipperfield.

The Commission strongly criticised the plans for the Millennium Wheel on London's South Bank even though three of the Commissioners were enthusiastic about it. After an ill-tempered meeting in which Stevas was allegedly rude to the Wheel's architects, Sherban Cantacuzino

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