Thomas Johnston Taylor, Baron Taylor of Gryfe

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

DL LLD (27 April 1912 – 13 July 2001) was a British politician and businessman. He was affectionately known as Tom Taylor.

Personal life

Taylor was born in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

on 27 April 1912. His father, John Sharp Taylor, was an Independent Labour Party Member. He died when Tom was three years old and the latter was raised with his two siblings by his mother from that time. He was educated at

Bellahouston Academy Bellahouston Academy is a non-denominational state-run secondary school in Bellahouston, south-west Glasgow, Scotland. History Bellahouston Academy first opened in 1876 as a private school run by Alexander Sim. It was taken over by the Govan ...

. He left school in 1914 and his first job was as an office boy in the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society. He was later their Chairman. In 1931 a scholarship led to his living in Germany, where he also returned later in his youth. In 1931 he was a member of the German Young Socialists but was opposed the rise of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

. During 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 opposin ...

he was a

conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...

. Taylor later became a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

. In 1977 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were

Alick Buchanan-Smith, Baron Balerno Brigadier Alick Drummond Buchanan-Smith, Baron Balerno, (9 October 1898 – 28 July 1984) was a British soldier and prominent geneticist. Life He was born in Glasgow, the son of Alice Lillian (née Buchanan), daughter of Sir George Buchanan, a ...

Robert Allan Smith Dr Robert Allan Smith CBE FRS PRSE (14 May 1909 – 16 May 1980) was a British mathematician and physicist.S.D. Smith, Robert Allan Smith, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol.28, 479-504, 1982. Biography Smith (known to h ...

, Donald McCallum and Sir David Lowe. He died on 13 July 2001.

Family

He was married in 1943 to Isobel Wands and had two daughters: Jill and Joyce.

Political career

As a young man Taylor was a member of the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...

, and was elected to

Glasgow City Council Glasgow City Council is the local government authority for the City of Glasgow, Scotland. It was created in 1996 under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, largely with the boundaries of the post-1975 City of Glasgow district of the S ...

in 1934 as the city's youngest ever councillor. He stood for the ILP as a parliamentary candidate in the 1941 Edinburgh Central by-election. He later joined the Labour Party, then the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties For ...

(SDP) and the

Owenite Owenism is the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th-century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of the cooperative ...

'continuing' SDP, before returning to Labour in 1990. Taylor opposed

Scottish devolution Devolution is the process in which the central British parliament grants administrative powers (excluding principally reserved matters) to the devolved Scottish Parliament. Prior to the advent of devolution, some had argued for a Scottish Parl ...

. Although an opponent of the Government's Railways Bill in 1993, he noted that he had no objection to privatisation as a concept. On 29 January 1968 he was created 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 ...

as Baron Taylor of Gryfe, ''of

Bridge of Weir Bridge of Weir is a village within the Renfrewshire council area and wider historic county of Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. Lying within the Gryffe Valley, Bridge of Weir owes its name to the historic crossing point tha ...

in the

County of Renfrew Renfrewshire or the County of Renfrew is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It contains the local government council areas of Inverclyde, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire, as w ...

''. From then he had a seat in the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...

Outside politics

Taylor served as President of the

Co-operative Wholesale Society A co-operative wholesale society, or CWS, is a form of co-operative federation (that is, a co-operative in which all the members are co-operatives), in this case, the members are usually consumer cooperatives. According to co-operative economi ...

in Scotland and chaired the UK

Forestry Commission The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England. The Forestry Commission was previously also respon ...

. From 1971 to 1980, he was chairman of Scottish Railways and a number of other companies, including twelve years as the chairman of Morgan Grenfell Scotland.

References

The Guardian obituary
*Who's Who 2000 {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Thomas, Baron Taylor Of Gryfe 2001 deaths 1912 births Independent Labour Party National Administrative Committee members Social Democratic Party (UK) life peers Social Democratic Party (UK, 1988–1990) peers Labour Party (UK) life peers British Rail people Scottish conscientious objectors Life peers created by Elizabeth II Scottish Quakers