When Charles Kerr went to visit his school’s careers adviser and said he wanted to be a bus conductor and/or driver, eyebrows shot up. His academic record may have been less than distinguished, but the school was Eton and his father was Lord Teviot DSO, MC, scion of the Marquesses of Lothian and chairman of the Liberal Party.
A cold and aloof figure who was 60 by the time his son was born, Lord Teviot made no attempt to disguise his disappointment in his son’s career choice. Undeterred, when he left school Kerr presented himself at Brighton’s labour exchange. His unmistakably aristocratic bearing set him apart from the other unemployed men and dissuaded most potential employers from having anything to do with him. It was only after his Catholic landlady secretly appealed to the better nature of one of her fellow parishioners, the manager of the Brighton, Hove and District Omnibus Co Ltd, that he was able to secure his first job as conductor number 40399.
He was soon working the Hollingdean and Hollingbury routes in Sussex — and featuring in the papers.
Kerr may not have been close to his father, but he was to his mother. In a touching newspaper interview, she said: “I have never actually seen Charles in his bus conductor’s uniform, but I know he enjoys it immensely. I think most boys have an ambition to become an engine driver or a bus driver. Charles has stuck to that ambition and is doing what he wanted — what more could you ask for out of life than that?”
His workmates on the buses were initially a little dubious of him, believing him to be destined for a job “upstairs” but, when it became clear that that was not the case, they accepted him as one of their own.
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One — his “clippie” Mary Harris, whom he met after he was promoted to bus driver — he fell in love with and married in 1965. There were just six guests at the ceremony at Hove Register Office. Lady Teviot was there, but his father, then 91, was said to be “too unwell” to attend. They had two children, Charlie and Catherine. The Hon Charles Kerr now succeeds to the peerage.
Charles John Kerr was born in 1934, to Charles and Florence (née Villiers), better known as Lord and Lady Teviot.
As well as feeling peeved about his son’s bus driving, Lord Teviot was embarrassed to see his family name arousing mirth in the press. The idea of a man with his background working on the buses greatly exercised the minds of journalists at the time and, for a while, even his most trivial misdemeanours tended to end up on the front pages.
When he accidentally crashed his bus into a parked car, pushing it forward into the two parked in front of it, the incident was widely reported. The local magistrates suspended his licence for six months.
After six and a half years on the buses, it seemed to Kerr as good a time as any to try something new and he accepted a job as a bacon hand at Sainsbury’s in Hove. It was while he was working there that his father died at the age of 93 and he became, in January 1968, the new Lord Teviot. “It’s Lord Charlie of Sainsbury’s”, the Brighton Evening Argus declared.
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No fortune came with the title, and, seeing that there was more money to be made by going to the Lords every day, he resigned from his job at the shop. At first he chose not to mention details of his early employment in his Who’s Who entry, but, in later life, he conceded that they were probably his happiest days and the insight that they gave him into the conditions of ordinary working men unquestionably gave him a perspective that was rare in the Lords. He spoke about his life as a bus driver for his maiden speech during the debates on the Transport Bill.
Although the Tory whips thought him “unreliable” — he voted against the government on the abolition of the Greater London Council — he came to love the work and became a regular at the House.
Kerr was always the last to try to justify his seat on the basis of merit, but opponents of the hereditary principle inevitably seized on him as a useful anomaly and his own candour often made things worse. In a Channel 4 television documentary about the Lords, he put in a memorable appearance explaining to the newly ennobled Geoffrey Howe, with unseemly enthusiasm, how to go about collecting the maximum amount of expenses permissible.
A keen genealogist, the 2nd Lord Teviot was a fellow of the Society of Genealogists and was a director of Debrett’s Peerage Ltd and a member of the Advisory Council on Public Records. In later life, he observed breezily: “Maybe my life would have been easier if I hadn’t been destined for a peerage, but I have no regrets. It all seems to have turned out for the best.”
Lord Teviot was born on December 16, 1934. He died on October 15, 2023, aged 88