Horace Cutler
Sir Horace Walter Cutler
Origin
Cutler was born in Stoke Newington into a large but wealthy family. He went to Harrow County Grammar School, and then joined his father's building business. He spent World War II in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and after the war became a businessman.
Local politics
In 1952 he first went into politics when he was elected as a Conservative member of Harrow Borough Council, where he became Leader of the Council in 1961. He was also elected to Middlesex County Council and was its last Leader, in 1963, before it was abolished to make way for the Greater London Council.
GLC membership
Cutler took one of the Harrow seats on the GLC and remained a member of it
throughout its existence, one of only eight people to do so. His prominence at Middlesex made him well-known and he served as
Deputy Leader under Sir Desmond Plummer when the Conservatives were in control from
1967. Plummer gave Cutler the Chairmanship of the Housing Committee which gave him responsibility
for the GLC's hundreds of thousands of units of
Leader of the GLC
When the Conservatives lost control of the GLC in 1973 and Sir Desmond Plummer resigned as their Leader in 1974, Cutler was chosen as his successor. He was a populist and a showman who delighted in stunts, and when he won the 1977 GLC elections he became a very flamboyant Leader. He was sceptical of the merits of the GLC, seeing it as "too big, too remote and too shadowy", and set up an inquiry under Sir Frank Marshall into its powers and existence; Marshall found enough to justify the continuation of the GLC.
Cutler wanted to extend the Jubilee Line into Docklands but was refused the money by the Labour Government. Investment on the London Underground was not substantial and decisions taken during his period of office have been much criticised subsequently for leading to poor infrastructure in the long term. Cutler was also noted for meddling in detailed Underground management, which London Transport Chairman Sir Peter Masefield had to persuade him to stop. He also made a failed bid to host the Olympic Games of 1988.
Loss of power
In the 1981 GLC elections, Cutler made a great deal of the fact that Andrew McIntosh was likely to be deposed by the much more left-wing Ken Livingstone if the Labour Party won. He concentrated on attacking Livingstone during the campaign, saying that he wished to establish a Marxist power-base in London. Nevertheless, Labour won, and McIntosh was duly voted out by Livingstone. Cutler gave up the Conservative Leadership in 1982, and left politics when the GLC was abolished in 1986. He died at age 84 in 1997.
| Preceded by Sir Reg Goodwin |
Leader of the Greater London
Council 1977-1981 |
Succeeded by Ken Livingstone |
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