Colin Berkeley Moynihan, 4th Baronet, 4th Baron Moynihan (born 13 September 1955), is a British Olympic silver medalist, politician, businessman and sports administrator. Lord Moynihan served as the Chairman of the British Olympic Association (BOA) from 2005 to 2012. A member of the Conservative Party, he was as a Member of Parliament (MP) representing the constituency of Lewisham East from 1983 to 1992, and was the Minister for Sport from 1987 to 1990. He became a member of the House of Lords in 1997.
Biography
Early life
Moynihan is the son of Patrick Moynihan, 2nd Baron Moynihan, by his second wife June Elizabeth Hopkins, daughter of Arthur Stanley Covacic Hopkins. He was educated in the state system, including at secondary level, but studied at Monmouth School with a Music Scholarship from 1968 to 1973.
In 1974 he went up to University College, Oxford, graduating in 1977 with a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (proceeding MA in 1982). He was a "double blue" coxing the victorious Oxford University crew in the 1977 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race and boxing against Cambridge in the Bantamweight division. He beat Benazir Bhutto in the election for the Presidency of the Oxford Union in 1976 and won the Trans-Atlantic Universities Debating Competition the same year. In 1977, he was awarded the Fiddian Post-Graduate Research Scholarship in Politics at Brasenose College, Oxford, which he did not take up in favour of working at the Westburn sugar refinery in Greenock for Tate & Lyle.
In 2007, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy by the London Metropolitan University.
Sport and the Olympics
In 1968 he won a gold medal in the Home Countries International Regatta, coxing the Welsh Senior Rowing IV. He was selected to tour the United States in 1973 as a member of the British Swifts Golf Team.
In 1978 Moynihan won a gold medal coxing the British Lightweight VIII at the 1978 FISA Lightweight Championships held in Copenhagen. In the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, he ignored pressure to boycott for political reasons. He was cox for the Great Britain men's rowing VIII winning a silver medal; during the race, the steering cables to the rudder broke and Moynihan had to reach behind him to grasp the rudder bar. In this unorthodox manner, he steered the boat for most of the race. Most of the crew did not realise what had happened until after the race was over. In the 1981 Munich World Championships he coxed the British VIII to silver medal success.
Since 1978 he has, at different times, been a trustee of the Sports Aid Foundation, governor of the Sports Aid Trust, member of the Sports Council, member of the Central Council for Physical Recreation's Enquiry into Sponsorship of Sport, a trustee of the Oxford University Boat Club, member of the Major Spectator Sports Committee of the Central Council for Physical Recreation, a Steward of the British Boxing Board of Control, patron of the Bath University Amateur Boxing Club, patron of the Uphill Ski Club, president of the British Biathlon Union, president of the Welsh Amateur Rowing Association and chairman of the Paralympic World Cup in 2005. As a celebrated former University College Boat Club (Oxford) cox, he was invited to open the new University College Boathouse in Oxford in 2007.
Political career
Following his appointment in 1981 as one of Whitehall's earliest Political Advisers (working in the Foreign Office for Francis Pym, then Foreign Secretary), Moynihan was elected in 1983 as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Lewisham East. After chairing the World Youth Summit in Hiroshima and being an Official Commonwealth Observer at the Kenyan elections he became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Kenneth Clarke in a number of Departments. From 1987 to 1990 he served as Minister for Sport in Margaret Thatcher's government. He was in this post at the time of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in which 96 football fans were killed, and visited the scene with Margaret Thatcher to meet with senior South Yorkshire police officers on the day of the tragedy.
Moynihan was at the centre of a government proposal to bring in an ID Card scheme for supporters of English Football League teams in the wake of repeated outbreaks of hooliganism in the late 1980s. However, these plans had to be abandoned following the Hillsborough disaster and the subsequent Taylor Report, but he eventually piloted the Football Spectators Bill through Parliament to address football hooliganism which included the introduction of CCTV cameras in all 92 League Grounds and a range of other measures to tackle hooliganism.