Nicholas Freeman

Who was Nicholas Freeman?

Nicholas Freeman, OBE was the Conservative Party leader of the London Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council in the United Kingdom from 1977 until 1989; he was also its Mayor in 1988.

He was educated at Stoneygate School, Leicester, and King's School, Canterbury, and admitted a solicitor in 1962. In 1968 he was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple, and practised thereafter at the Criminal Bar. He was appointed a Recorder in 1985.

Living in Harrington Gardens, South Kensington, he became Chairman of the Courtfield Ward Committee of the Chelsea Conservative Association, which gave him a position on the association's Executive Committee. A fine speaker with a powerful personality and strong political ambitions, Freeman was elected to Chelsea Borough Council in 1968. He became Chairman of the Borough Planning Committee shortly after being elected to the council, and made a particular effort to clear up what he called "the sore thumb in the Royal Borough", the sometimes seedy area around Earls Court Underground Station.

He stood as the Conservative Party candidate for Hartlepool in both the February 1974 and October 1974 general elections, and when Sir Brandon Rhys Williams, Conservative Member of Parliament for Kensington, died suddenly in 1988, Freeman had high hopes of succeeding him. He failed to secure a nomination, which was no doubt partly explained by a number of previous controversies: the Old Town Hall crisis, his virulent opposition to the Community Charge, and by dubious rumours of his involvement in a plot to unseat the late incumbent.