David Young, Baron Young of Graffham

David Ivor Young, Baron Young of Graffham, (27 February 1932 – 9 December 2022) was a British Conservative politician, cabinet minister and businessman.

David Young was born into an orthodox Jewish family in London.

His father was born in Yurevich, near Minsk, a village that is now in Belarus but was then largely populated by Lithuanian Jews, including Young's own family.

The family fled an antisemitic pogrom to England when David's father was 5.

In England, Young's father imported flour and later set up as a manufacturer of coats for children.

Young went to Christ's College in Finchley and then University College London, to take a law degree as an evening student during his time as an articled clerk to become a solicitor, being admitted to the roll of solicitors in 1955.

Having qualified as a solicitor, Young practised for only a year, after which he joined Great Universal Stores as an executive, working for part of that time as an assistant to the chairman, Sir Isaac Wolfson.

In 1961 he left GUS and set up his first business, Eldonwall Ltd. with funding from the Gestetner Family Settlements.

During the sixties he built up a group of companies in industrial property, construction and plant hire, selling out in June 1970 to Town & City Properties PLC (T&CP), where he joined the board.

After the property crash of 1973–1974, Young assisted Jeffrey Sterling to reverse his company into T&CP to form a group that later became P&O.

One month later, on 11 September it was announced that Young was to enter the cabinet as Minister without Portfolio (the first person to hold the role since Lord Aberdare in 1974) to advise the government on unemployment issues.

As Minister without Portfolio he was appointed to the Privy Council.

In 1975, Young he left the board and entered into a joint venture with Manufacturers Hanover, and became chairman of Manufacturers Hanover Property Services, lending on real estate in the United Kingdom and overseas.

He also had a number of other commercial interests.

Young became involved in voluntary organisations as chairman of the vocational training charity British ORT; he was made a director of the CPS in 1979 shortly after the general election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power.

On the first day of the new government, Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Industry, appointed him his advisor responsible for what later became known as privatisation.

He sold out all his commercial interests in 1980 upon entering the Department of Industry.

His younger brother, Stuart, served as chairman of the BBC.

Because of his involvement with vocational training through ORT, he was picked by Norman Tebbit when he was Secretary of State for Employment to be the chairman of the Manpower Services Commission in 1981, the Government Agency dealing with unemployment and training matters.

As such he became involved in government decisions and the Cabinet ministers who dealt with him regarded him very positively; he made his position as a 'dry' on economic policy.

He was created a life peer taking the title Baron Young of Graffham, of Graffham in the County of West Sussex on 10 October 1984.

On 2 September 1985 he became Secretary of State for Employment.

Thatcher regarded Young as personally loyal to her and decided in March 1987 to put him into a central role in planning the 1987 election campaign, in effect to keep an eye on Norman Tebbit whom she suspected to be more interested in advancing his claims on the leadership.

Young was in charge of organising Thatcher's tours and appearances on television.

One week before polling day on 4 June 1987, Young and Tebbit had a major disagreement about the campaign strategy, a day nicknamed 'Wobbly Thursday'.

According to The Independent, Young grabbed Tebbit by the lapels and said "Norman, listen to me, we are about to lose this fucking election".

Following the election Tebbit announced his retirement from the government, and Young was promoted to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

He served two years in the role and privatised the last of the state industries in the department.

In May 1989 he told the prime minister he would like to return to private life.

He resigned from the Cabinet in 1989 but received an appointment as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party to help Kenneth Baker reorganise Central Office.

Young stood down from his ministerial post on the resignation of Thatcher.

Young then went back to business as a director of Salomon Inc. and executive chairman of Cable & Wireless.

He was the first president of Jewish Care (1990–1997).

From 1993 he was president of the Institute of Directors, and from 1995 was chairman of Council of University College, London.

Young retired from Cable & Wireless in 1995 and in 1996 set up his own company, Young Associates Ltd, with partners Simon Alberga and Yoav Kurtzbard, which actively invests in technology companies.

Outside Young Associates he had a number of business interests.

He was chairman and controlling shareholder of the Camcon Federation of companies, a Cambridge-based federation of companies with innovative technology in the oil and gas, auto and medical fields.

He was controlling shareholder and on the board of TSSI Systems Ltd, a long-established company in security technology, and in both these companies he worked with Danny Chapchal.

He was a substantial shareholder and chairman of Deep Tek Ltd, a company with developed technology to enable operations in deep and ultra-deep waters in the oil and gas sectors and in scientific exploration.

He was a substantial shareholder and chairman of KashFlow Software Ltd, a leading provider of online accounting for SMEs.