From three O-levels and a Brixton flat to Downing Street
John Major left school just before turning 16 with three O-levels, spent months of 1962 out of work, and was once passed over for a bus conductor's job because of his height. Less than three decades later he was Prime Minister, leading Britain from 1990 to 1997 after Margaret Thatcher resigned.
He was born in Surrey in March 1943 to a former music hall performer who was 63 at the time. The family was comfortable at first, running a garden ornaments business, until his father's health and finances collapsed. In 1955 they sold the house and moved to a cramped rented top-floor flat in Brixton. Major felt out of place at his grammar school, underperformed in everything except sport, above all cricket, and came to regard school as a penance.
Politics took hold early. In 1956 a local MP met him at a church fair and invited him to the Commons, where he watched Harold Macmillan deliver his only Budget, an experience Major credited with sparking his ambition. He joined the Young Conservatives in 1959, gave soapbox speeches in Brixton Market, and after a string of jobs, including a dull insurance clerkship, found steadier work at the London Electricity Board and then in banking. A posting to Jos in Nigeria ended when a car crash broke his leg.
He won a Lambeth council seat in 1968, chaired its housing committee, and entered Parliament for Huntingdon in 1979. Under Thatcher he rose quickly, serving as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor. The story that he failed a maths test for the bus job was a myth; he had passed and was simply judged too tall.
As Prime Minister his manner was more conciliatory than his predecessor's, though much of the agenda continued hers. His government replaced the poll tax with Council Tax, took Britain into the Gulf War, negotiated the Maastricht Treaty, and pulled the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday. He left Parliament in 2001 to concentrate on writing, business, sport and charity.
Source: John Major
