Leon Brittan, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne

Leon Brittan, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne, (25 September 193921 January 2015) was a British Conservative politician and barrister who served as a European Commissioner from 1989 to 1999. As a member of Parliament from 1974 to 1988, he served several ministerial roles in Margaret Thatcher's government, including Home Secretary from 1983 to 1985.

Early life

Leon Brittan was born in London, the son of Rebecca (née Lipetz) and Joseph Brittan, a doctor. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who had migrated to Britain before the Second World War.

He was educated at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society and Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association. Brittan then studied at Yale University on a Henry Fellowship. Sir Samuel Brittan, the economics journalist, was his brother. The former Conservative MP Malcolm Rifkind, and the music producer Mark Ronson, were cousins.

Political career

MP and minister

After unsuccessfully contesting the constituency of Kensington North in 1966 and 1970, he was elected to parliament in the general election of February 1974 for Cleveland and Whitby, and became an opposition spokesman in 1976. He was made a Queen's Counsel in 1978. Between 1979 and 1981 he was Minister of State at the Home Office, and was then promoted to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury, becoming the youngest member of the Cabinet. He warned cabinet colleagues that spending on social security, health and education would have to be cut "whether they like it or not".

At the 1983 election Brittan was elected MP for Richmond. Following the election, he was promoted to Home Secretary, becoming the youngest since Churchill. During the 1984–85 miners' strike, Brittan was a strong critic of the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers. He accused them of organising violence by flying pickets, whom he described as "thugs". One factor in the defeat of the strike was central control of local police forces. As soon as the strike began, Brittan set up a National Reporting Centre in New Scotland Yard to co-ordinate intelligence and the supply of police officers between forces as necessary. Margaret Thatcher's government had carefully planned for a miners' strike and a Whitehall committee had been meeting in secret since 1981, to prepare for a long dispute.

In 1984, after the murder of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London, Brittan headed the government's crisis committee as both Thatcher and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, were away at the time. In January 2014, secret government documents released by the National Archives disclosed that British officials were twice warned by Libya that the Libyan embassy protest would become violent – hours before WPC Fletcher was killed.

In September 1986, Brittan was cleared by a High Court Judge of acting unlawfully when, as Home Secretary, he gave MI5 permission to tap the telephone of a leader of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

In September 1985, Brittan was moved to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The reason for his demotion, according to Jonathan Aitken, was that the prime minister Margaret Thatcher felt that Brittan was "not getting the message across on television". In her memoirs, Thatcher wrote of Brittan: "Everybody complained about his manner on television, which seemed aloof and uncomfortable."

Brittan had been criticised as a poor communicator and for his role in the suppression of a BBC
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