Frank Marshall, Baron Marshall of Leeds

Who is Frank Marshall, Baron Marshall of Leeds?

Frank Shaw Marshall, Baron Marshall of Leeds was a British lawyer and politician, and a member of the House of Lords.

He was born in Wakefield on 26 September 1915 and after attending Queen Elizabeth Grammar School there he studied law at Downing College, Cambridge. During the second world war he served in the Royal Tank Regiment, and after the war qualified as a solicitor. He was a member of Leeds City Council from 1960 and its leader 1967–72.

He was knighted in 1970 for "services to local government" and became a life peer in 1980, taking the title Baron Marshall of Leeds. He was considered to be "a grandee of the Conservative Party at the national level".

He was chairman of the Municipal Mutual Insurance Group of Companies from 1978, and of Dartford International Ferry Terminal Ltd from 1987; a director of the Leeds and Holbeck Building Society 1962–1968 and its president in 1967–69 and 1977–79; and a director of several other companies, including Barr & Wallace Arnold Trust PLC from 1953.

In 1978 he was commissioned to review the local government of London, in a climate where there was pressure to abolish the Greater London Council, and produced the Marshall Report. He was an honorary freeman of Leeds and a freeman of the City of London.