Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh

Richard William Marsh, Baron Marsh, (14 March 1928 – 29 July 2011) was a British politician and business executive. His father subsequently worked for the Great Western Railway, and the family moved to Swindon. He was educated at Jennings Street Secondary School, Swindon, Woolwich Polytechnic and Ruskin College, Oxford.

When Labour came to power in 1964 he became a Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and subsequently, in 1965, in the new Ministry of Technology. He piloted the legislation for the nationalisation of the steel industry. He was also reported as having taught his father to drive, but having given up trying to perform the same favour for his wife, applying what forty years later appears as imprudent candour in characterising the attempt as "traumatic". However, all plans for road signs to go metric were subsequently postponed by the following Conservative Government, with "no alternative date in mind".

Chairman of British Rail

He left the House of Commons in 1971 to become Chairman of the British Railways Board, a position he held until 1976. On leaving British Rail, he was knighted, and became chairman of the Newspaper Publishers' Association (NPA). The first chairman of the NPA to come from outside of the industry, he served until 1990.

Peerage

Thatcher won the election, and she created him a life peer in the 1981 Birthday Honours with the Letters Patent issued giving his style and title as Baron Marsh, of Mannington in the County of Wiltshire on 15 July 1981.

In 1975 Marsh's second wife Caroline died in a road accident in Spain in which the wife of broadcaster David Jacobs also lost her life; Marsh and Jacobs both survived the crash.