18 Facts About Jim Prior

Jim Prior served in two Conservative cabinets, and outside parliament was Chairman of the Arab British Chamber of Commerce from 1996 to 2004.

Under Edward Heath, Jim Prior was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food from 1970 to 1972, then Leader of the House of Commons until Heath lost office in the wake of the February 1974 election.

Jim Prior's party returned to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and Prior was Secretary of State for Employment from 1979 to 1981, disagreeing with some of her views on trade unions and her monetarist economic policies generally.

Jim Prior was born in Norwich, the son of solicitor Charles Bolingbroke Leathes Jim Prior and Aileen Sophia Mary, daughter of barrister Charles Storey Gilman.

Charles Jim Prior's uncle was head of the family of Jim Prior of Adstock Manor, Bletchley, Buckinghamshire; the family was closely related to the Lake baronets, the Stuart-Menteth baronets, the Blackett family of Wylam, Northumberland, and the Prideaux-Brune family of Prideaux Place, Cornwall.

Jim Prior was educated at Orwell Park School, then at Charterhouse School before going on to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he earned a first class honours degree in Land economy.

Jim Prior performed his two-year National Service as an officer in the Royal Norfolk Regiment of the British Army, serving in Germany and India.

Jim Prior was first elected to Parliament in 1959, and was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food from 1970 to 1972, then Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council until March 1974.

Jim Prior was one of several unsuccessful candidates in the Conservative Party's 1975 leadership election, entering at the second round and gaining 19 votes to Margaret Thatcher's 146.

Jim Prior is believed to have annoyed Thatcher by being too friendly with trade union leaders, with Thatcher writing,.

At the time of the reshuffle, it was reported that Jim Prior considered following the sacked Ian Gilmour to the back benches to oppose the Thatcher Government's economic policies.

However, Jim Prior ultimately decided to accept being moved to the Northern Ireland Office after consulting cabinet colleagues William Whitelaw, then Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party, and Francis Pym.

However, when Jim Prior resigned, Thatcher revealed that she was going to offer him another Cabinet post during the reshuffle, which would have very likely been a non-economic one.

Jim Prior retired from Parliament in 1987, and was created a life peer as Baron Prior, of Brampton in the County of Suffolk, on 14 October 1987.

Jim Prior was chairman and later vice-president of the Rural Housing Trust.

In January 1954 Jim Prior married Jane Primrose Gifford Lywood, daughter of Air Vice-Marshal Oswyn George William Gifford Lywood, CB, CBE, a developer of the Typex cypher machines, of a landed gentry family of Woodlands, near Sevenoaks, Kent.

James Jim Prior died on 12 December 2016 at the age of 89.

Jim Prior had a ruddy face, he played up to being the farmer.