Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He previously held various Cabinet positions under Margaret Thatcher. Major was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. Since stepping down, Major has focused on writing and his business, sporting, and charity work, and commentating on political developments.
Major left school before 16, worked as an insurance clerk, joined the Young Conservatives in 1959, and became a highly active member. He was elected to Lambeth London Borough Council in 1968 and, a decade later, to parliament as a Conservative MP at the 1979 general election. Major held junior government positions under Thatcher from 1984 to 1987, including parliamentary private secretary and assistant whip. He served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 1987 to 1989, Foreign Secretary in 1989, and Chancellor from 1989 to 1990. Following Thatcher's resignation in 1990, Major stood in the 1990 Conservative leadership election and emerged victorious, becoming prime minister.
Major's more conciliatory political style contrasted with Thatcher's, though much of his policy agenda continued the Thatcherite programme. His government introduced the Citizen's Charter, replaced the poll tax with council tax, oversaw Britain's participation in the Gulf War, took charge of the UK's negotiations over the Maastricht Treaty, led the country during the early 1990s economic crisis, withdrew the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday, launched the Back to Basics campaign, and oversaw the privatisation of the railways and coal industry. With Irish taoiseach Albert Reynolds, Major issued the 1993 Downing Street Declaration, a pivotal step in the Northern Ireland peace process. Two years into his premiership, Major led the Conservatives to a fourth consecutive electoral victory, winning more than 14 million votes, which remains the highest total won by a British political party. In 1995, Major resigned as party leader amid internal divisions over UK membership of the EU, parliamentary scandals and questions over his economic credibility. Despite winning the 1995 leadership election, his government remained unpopular and lost its majority. The Labour Party pulled ahead of the Conservatives in every local election during Major's premiership, and its lead increased after Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994. The Conservatives were defeated by Labour in a landslide in the 1997 general election, ending 18 years of Conservative government.
After Blair became prime minister, Major served as Leader of the Opposition during the leadership election to replace him, which was won by William Hague. Major remained in the House of Commons as a backbencher, regularly attending and contributing to debates, until he stood down at the 2001 election to focus on writing and his business, sporting and charity work. Major has maintained a low profile, occasionally making political interventions. He supported the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union, and has often criticised Brexit since the 2016 referendum. Major was appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter (KG) in 2005 for services to politics and charity, and became a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1999 for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process. Major's premiership has generally ranked near the middle of later survey tables: in a 2021 survey of historians and political scientists it placed joint seventh among fourteen completed post-war premierships, while a public Ipsos survey that year placed Major sixth by the proportion saying he had done a good job. Since Thatcher's death in 2013, he has been the oldest living former British prime minister.
Early life and education (1943–1959)
John Major was born on 29 March 1943 at St Helier Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in St Helier, Surrey, to Gwen Major (née Coates, 1905–1970) and former music hall performer Tom Major-Ball (1879–1962), who was 63 years old when Major was born. He was christened "John Roy Major" but only "John Major" was recorded on his birth certificate; he used his middle name until the early 1980s. His birth had been a difficult one, with his mother suffering from pleurisy and pneumonia and John requiring several blood transfusions due to an infection that caused permanent scarring to his ankles.
The Major family—including John, his parents, and his two older siblings Terry and Pat—lived at 260 Longfellow Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, a middle-class area where Major's father ran a garden ornaments business and his mother worked in a local library and as a part-time dance teacher. John Major later described the family's circumstances at this time as being "comfortable but not well off". Following a German V-1 flying bomb attack in the area in 1944 which killed several people, the Majors moved to the village of Saham Toney, Norfolk, for the remainder of the war.
John began attending primary school at Cheam Common School from 1948. His childhood was generally happy, and he enjoyed reading, sports (especially cricket and football) and keeping pets, such as his rabbits. In 1954 John passed the 11+ exam, enabling him to go to Rutlish School, a grammar school in Merton Park, though, to John's chagrin, his father insisted that he register as 'John Major-Ball'.
The family's fortunes took a turn for the worse, with his father's health deteriorating and the business in severe financial difficulties. A recalled business loan which the family were unable to repay forced Tom Major to sell the house in Worcester Park in May 1955, with the family moving to a cramped, rented top-floor flat at 144 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. With his parents distracted by their reduced circumstances, John's difficulties at Rutlish went unnoticed.
Acutely conscious of his straitened circumstances in relation to the other pupils, Major was something of a loner and consistently under-performed except in sports, especially cricket, coming to see the school as "a penance to be endured". Major left school just before his 16th birthday in 1959 with just three O-level passes in History, English Language and English Literature, to his parents' disappointment.
Major's interest in politics stems from this period, and he avidly kept up with current affairs by reading papers on his commutes from Brixton to Wimbledon. In 1956 Major met local MP Marcus Lipton at a local church fair and was invited to watch his first debate in the House of Commons, where Harold Macmillan presented his only Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Major has attributed his political ambitions to this event. Major returned to Brixton during his premiership for the film The Journey, which was made as a party political broadcast during the 1992 general election.
Early post-school career (1959–1979)
Major's first job was as a clerk in the London-based insurance brokerage firm Price Forbes in 1959, but he found the job dull and offering no prospects and eventually quit. Major began working with his brother Terry at the garden ornaments business; this had been sold in 1959, enabling the family to move to a larger residence at 80 Burton Road, Brixton. Major's father died on 27 March 1962. John left the ornaments business the following year to care for his ill mother, though when she got better he was unable to find a new job and was unemployed for much of the latter half of 1962, a situation he says was "degrading".
After Major became prime minister, it was misreported that his failure to get a job as a bus conductor resulted from his failing to pass a maths test; he had in fact passed all of the necessary tests but had been passed over owing to his height. In the meantime he studied for a qualification in banking via a correspondence course. Eventually in December 1962 he found a job working at the London Electricity Board (LEB) in Elephant and Castle.