Leo Blair (barrister)

Leo Charles Lynton Blair (born Charles Leonard Augustus Parsons; 4 August 1923 – 16 November 2012) was a British barrister and law lecturer at Durham University. He was the author of the book The Commonwealth Public Service. He was the father of Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and of Sir William Blair, a High Court judge.

Biography

Born Charles Leonard Augustus Parsons in Filey, Yorkshire, England, he was the illegitimate son of two middle class travelling entertainers. His father Charles Parsons (16 July 1887 – 19 January 1970) had the stage name Jimmy Lynton while his mother Mary Augusta Ridgway Bridson (1886–1969) was known as Celia Ridgway and was a daughter of Augustus William Bridson (1849–1933) and Maria Emily Montford (1864–1944). The couple met on tour in England. Their hectic lifestyles prompted them to give up baby Leo, who was fostered out to (and later adopted by) a working class couple, a Glasgow shipyard worker named James Blair and his wife Mary, taking their surname. On 2 June 1927 his biological parents married and tried to reclaim him, but Mary Blair refused to return him and later prevented him from contacting his biological parents. (Leo later had a reunion with his half-sister, Pauline Harding, née Tordiffe.)

Blair grew up in a tenement in Golspie Street, Govan, Glasgow, and attended Govan High School. When he left school he worked as a copy boy on the Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker and was Secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League 1938-41. He studied law at the University of Edinburgh, becoming a barrister and later, a university law lecturer.

Blair married Hazel Elizabeth Rosaleen Corscaden (1923-1975), from a Protestant family in Donegal, Ireland. They had two sons, both of whom they sent to Fettes College, an independent school in Edinburgh. Their first son, Sir William Blair, became a High Court judge and domestic and international banking and finance law specialist. Their second son, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (Tony Blair), was born in 1953 and also became a barrister before becoming a politician and (in 1997) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Leo and Hazel lived for a time in Adelaide, Australia, where Leo lectured in law at the University of Adelaide.

Blair and his family later returned to England, living in Durham, where Blair lectured in Law at Durham University Law School. He was a member of St Cuthbert's Society, one of the university's collegiate bodies. Despite having been a communist in his youth, Leo became active in the Conservative Party. He had ambitions to stand for Parliament in Durham, plans which were thwarted when he had a stroke when his son, Tony, was 11.

Blair became a widower when Hazel (born 12 June 1923) died 28 June 1975 of thyroid cancer. Later, he remarried and lived in Shrewsbury, Shropshire with his second wife, Olwen, until his death. Cherie and Tony Blair named their youngest son Leo after his grandfather.

Blair was a "militant atheist" according to his son Tony.

Blair died at the age of 89 on 16 November 2012.

Academic work

Blair's book The Commonwealth Public Service (1958) was described by the journal Canadian Public Administration as "an excellent primer on the Australian Federal Public Service".

External links

• Tony Blair on his father's adoption