The Lord Cockfield, a vice-president of the European Communities, 1985-88, died 8 January, 2007, aged 90. The life peer was a Conservative minister who was dispatched to Brussels where he surprised the Government by embracing the European project .When, after a ministerial career at Westminister, Arthur Cockfield took up his post in Brussels as a vice-president at the European Commission in January 1985, neither those who sent him there nor those who were to be his new colleagues imagined what they were in for over the next four years. There was a tacit assumption - smugly relaxed on the British side of the Channel and resigned, almost offended, on the Continent - that the appointment was something of a coup by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. (The Times)
Francis Arthur Cockfield was born 28 September, 1916, the son of Lt-Col. C.F. Cockfield, and was educated at Dover Grammar School and the London School of Economics.
Career:->Was Called to the Bar at the Inner Temple, 1942; Director of Statistics and Intelligence, Board of Inland Revenue, 1951-52; Finance Director, Boots Pure Drug Co, 1953-61, and Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Managing Committee 1961-67; Member of the NEDC 1962-64 and 1982-83; President, Royal Statistical Society 1968-69; Adviser on Taxation Policy to the Chancellor of the Exchequer 1970-73; Chairman of the Price Commission 1973-77; Minister of State, HM Treasury 1979-82; Secretary of State for Trade 1982-83; Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1983-84; Vice-President, European Commission, 1985-88; received Grand Cross Order of Leopold II of Belgium; was knighted in 1973; sworn of the Privy Council in 1983; created Baron Cockfield, of Dover, county Kent (life Baron) in 1978.
Lord Cockfield married Aileen Monica Mudie, the choreographer, who predeceased him in 1992.
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