A King Among Ministers

Tom King's personal memoirs range across a life of exceptional activity and interest. Aged nineteen, he found himself commanding a military company against Mau Mau terrorists in Kenya; at thirty he became the youngest ever general manager in a major printing and packaging group, in charge of a factory with a staff of 700 and dealing with nine different trade unions. Elected as an MP in 1970, nine years later he took through the legislation that transformed London's vast derelict docklands into the thriving business district of Canary Wharf. Subsequently his five Secretary of State roles saw him carrying through the law that gave union members the right to a secret ballot before a strike, then facing IRA terrorism and Unionist opposition when he launched what became the start of the peace process, then watching the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain and being responsible for the massive UK deployment to help liberate Kuwait. Told with a sharp recollection of his fifty years in Parliament, Tom King's memoirs cover a particularly interesting period of history and his part in shaping the events that led up to the world we live in now.

Tom King, Lord King of Bridgwater CH, was Secretary of State for five different departments in the Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He was Secretary of State for Employment during the miners' strike, and for Northern Ireland during one of the worst periods of terrorism; he was responsible for launching the Anglo-Irish Agreement, a controversial initiative that helped start the peace process. Later, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, King was responsible for the biggest deployment of British troops and heavy armour since World War II. He was appointed by John Major as first Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, overseeing MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, and on the change of government was reappointed by Tony Blair.