Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh

Richard William Marsh, Baron Marsh PC (14 March 1928 – 29 July 2011) was an English politician and business executive.

Marsh was educated at Woolwich Polytechnic and was elected as Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Greenwich at the 1959 general election. He served in the second Wilson Government as the Minister of Power (1966–68), and in the Cabinet as Minister of Transport (1968–69). When appointed to the transport ministry he let it be known that (unlike Barbara Castle, his predecessor in the post) he was a motorist, though he insisted that the family car, a Ford Cortina was run by his wife while he relied on ministerial cars for his transport needs. 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 characterizing the attempt as "traumatic". In 1975 Marsh's second wife Caroline died in a road accident in which the wife of broadcaster David Jacobs also lost her life; Marsh and Jacobs both survived the crash.

He left the House of Commons in 1971 to become Chairman of the British Railways Board, a position he held until 1976. He was knighted and later created a life peer as Baron Marsh, of Mannington in the County of Wiltshire, in 1981. He then sat in the House of Lords as a Crossbench peer.

References

Richard Marsh. "Off the Rails: An Autobiography". Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1978. ISBN 0 297 77387 9. Lord Marsh died the morning of 29 July 2011 at a nursing home in Wimbledon, London

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Richard Marsh

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Joseph Reeves	Member of Parliament for Greenwich 1959–1971	Succeeded by Guy Barnett
Political offices
Preceded by Barbara Castle	Minister of Transport 1968–1969	Succeeded by Fred Mulley