Michael Howard - Early Life

Early Life

Howard was born in Gorseinon, in the north west of Swansea, Wales. He is the son of Bernard Hecht, a Romanian-born shopkeeper of Jewish descent who came to Britain in 1939. His mother, Hilda Kershion, was Welsh-born. When Howard was six, the family name Hecht was anglicized to Howard.

Howard passed his Eleven-plus exam in 1952, and then attended Llanelli Boys' Grammar School. He joined the Young Conservatives at age 15. He obtained eight O-levels, and his subsequent A-levels earned him a place in Peterhouse at Cambridge University. He was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1962. After taking a 2:1 in the first part of the Economics tripos, he switched to Law and graduated with a 2:2 in 1962. He was one of a cluster of Conservative students at Cambridge University around this time, sometimes referred to as the "Cambridge Mafia", many of whom held high government office under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. (See: Cambridge University Conservative Association.)

Howard was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1964, and specialised in employment and planning law. Unlike his many Cambridge contemporaries, he continued his career at the Bar, becoming a practising Queen's Counsel in 1982 (unlike many barrister-MPs who are awarded the title as an honorific despite no longer practising at the Bar).

The late-1960s saw Howard's promotion within the Bow Group, where he became Chairman in April 1970. At the Conservative Party conference in October 1970, he made a notable speech commending the government for attempting to curb trade union power, and called for state aid to strikers' families to be reduced or stopped altogether, a policy which the Thatcher government pursued over a decade later.

In the 1970s, Howard was a leading advocate of British membership of the Common Market (EEC), and served on the board of the cross-party Britain in Europe group.

Howard was named as co-respondent in the high profile divorce case of 1960s model Sandra Paul, (now Sandra Howard). They subsequently married in 1975. Their son Nicholas was born in 1976, and daughter Larissa in 1977.