The Record 2009 - Keble College - University of Oxford

Keble College: The Record 2009
page 106]. It will be an odd feeling no longer to be in that
role after a tenure of sixteen years since 1994. But I am very
much still in post and will be Warden until 30 September of
next year (2010). There is still a lot to do and I know that the
Development Office will make sure that there will be plenty of
opportunities to see you all before I disappear in my pumpkin.
Lord Stokes
The Rt Hon. Donald Gresham
Stokes, Lord Stokes of Leyland,
Honorary Fellow. Born 22
March 1914, died 21 July 2008.
Dennis Nineham, former Warden
writes:
This is not the place for a full-length obituary, of which a
number appeared in the national press at the time of his
death. Suffice it to say that soon after leaving Blundell’s
School at Tiverton, Stokes joined Leyland Motors as a student
engineering apprentice, and stayed with the firm for the rest of
his working life. He showed a marked ability as a salesman and
by 1949 had become General Sales and Service Manager for
the company. He continued to progress up the hierarchy until
by 1964 he had become a nationally known figure, and in 1967
was appointed Chairman and Director of the Leyland Motor
Corporation. A year later, British Leyland merged with British
Motor Holdings (BMH), and though British Leyland was the
smaller company, it in fact took over its rival; in 1968, Stokes
became Chairman and Managing Director of the new combine.
In 1969 he was made a life peer and took on a number of public
roles, a Director of the National Westminster Bank and of
London Weekend Television.
At first the newly enlarged firm did well, but a combination
of factors, including persistent industrial unrest and poor
car design, meant that things declined, until in 1975 there
was a government led restructuring, which left no room for
Stokes except in a purely titular role. It may well be that the
1968 merger presented an impossible task, or at any rate
something of a poisoned chalice to anyone who might have
been in charge. However, it must be admitted that Stokes was
a natural salesman rather than a manager, especially when
the managerial role in question involved long-term planning
and the establishment of impersonal managerial systems.
Stokes was essentially a hands-on man. Nevertheless he was a
successful exponent of the cult of modern management much
in vogue in the sixties, and his flair for public relations and
gift for salesmanship earned him a high reputation among
industrialists.
When he was at the height of his reputation in the late
1960s, the College felt that so eminent an industrialist, with
10