Jonathan Bryan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne (born 16 March 1930), is a British
peer and businessman. A member of the
Guinness family, he is the elder of the two sons of
Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne, and his first wife
Diana Mitford (later Lady Mosley). Until his retirement, he was a
merchant banker with Messrs Leopold Joseph.
He was a long-standing and early member (1968) of the
Conservative Monday Club, serving on several of its committees. He was a member of the club's executive council in 1971, when he became chairman of their 'Action Fund'. In the spring 1972 edition of Monday World he contributed an article titled "The Club Today – Opportunities and Growing Pains". He was subsequently elected national chairman on 5 June following, fighting off challenges from
Richard BodyMP and Timothy Stroud.[1]
The Guardian and The Times referred to his election as "a right-wing victory". At the club's annual general meeting in April 1973 Guinness retained the chairmanship for another year, defeating
George Kennedy Young by 30 percent of the vote.[2] In mid-1974 he was invited to address conservative students at
Portsmouth Polytechnic, but was "prevented from entering by a solid wall of militant protesters hurling abuse".[3] Guinness was a supporter of Rhodesia and, with
John Stokes and the
Lord Barnby addressed a Monday Club meeting on the issue in 1974 in Caxton Hall.[4]
On 10 October 1989, at the Conservative Party Conference, he chaired a fringe meeting organised by the Young Monday Club, advertised as The End of the English? – Immigration and Repatriation. The other speakers were MPs
Tim Janman and
Nicholas Budgen.[5]
As chairman of the club's Race Relations & Immigration Committee, he also wrote the same month to all Club members; "There has been a lot of ill-thought out agitation following events in
China, urging the government to amend the
British Nationality Act so as to give the right of UK residence to more than three million people from
Hong Kong who hold British passports. At the time of writing the government has stayed firm on this, but it is under pressure. If you have not already done so, please write to your M.P., your local and national newspapers, or the Prime Minister expressing support for the government's stand. Remember, a passport is not a residence permit, but a travel document; and think of the sheer physical burden of housing and accommodating a sudden influx of this size."
He was also Club Vice-Chairman until late 1990 when he was replaced by
Andrew Hunter,
MP.[6]
Lord Moyne was accused of involvement in a Swedish financial scandal. The case concerns a now defunct Swedish investment company, Trustor, of which Lord Moyne was made a figurehead director. It was alleged that Guinness was involved in the disappearance of £50,000,000 from Trustor's accounts, £35,000,000 of which were soon found on Trustor AB:s own bank account as they had never left the company. Guinness maintained that he was innocent of any wrongdoing, claiming he has been "stitched up". During the proceedings, Swedish authorities were successful in obtaining a freezing order over what little assets he had left. He was found innocent by the Swedish court.[7]
Support for Falun Gong
Lord Moyne has spoken in support of the
Falun Gong movement in China since it was banned there in 1999, as reported in
Hansard.[8][9]
Director of Guinness plc
Lord Moyne was a non-executive director from 1960 to 1988 of the company set up by his family. His book Requiem for a Family Business[10] gives an uninvolved insider's account of the corporate developments leading to the
Guinness share-trading fraud.
Personal life and family
Lord Moyne has been married twice and has eight children.
To avert a scandal over the extramarital affair with Taylor, Lord Moyne published Shoe – The Odyssey of a Sixties Survivor in 1989. The Sun newspaper ran a double-page article with pictures entitled Always a Mistress – Never the Bride on 6 July 1989.
Moyne and his daughter Daphne both had letters published in the same edition of The Daily Telegraph (16 August 2003) attacking the writer
Andrew Roberts over his criticism in the same newspaper on 13 August 2003 of Jonathan's mother,
Lady Mosley, following her death.
Lord Moyne's younger brother,
Desmond Guinness, died in August 2020.
Guinness, Jonathan, with Jeremy Harwood and
John Biggs-Davison, M.P., Ireland – Our Cuba?, The Monday Club, London, 1970, (P/B).
Guinness, Jonathan, Arms for South Africa – the Moral Issue, The Monday Club, London, 1971, (P/B).
Courtney, Anthony T,
OBE, RN (Retd), [M.P., for Harrow East 1959–1964], The Enemies Within, Foreword by the Hon. Jonathan Guinness, The Monday Club, London, 1972, (P/B).
Guinness, Jonathan, with Catherine Guinness, The House of Mitford, Hutchinson & Co., London, 1984,
ISBN0-7538-1803-5
Italics in entries mean the titleholder also holds a previously listed barony of greater precedence. ^* Also a Lord in the
Peerage of Scotland, ^• Also a Baron in the
Peerage of Ireland