Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring

Who was Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring?

Walter Charles Marshall FRSCBE studied mathematical physics at Birmingham University and gained a PhD there under Rudolf Peierls. He joined the Theoretical Physics Division at AERE Harwell in 1954, succeeding Brian Flowers as Head of that Division in 1960 and becoming Director of AERE in 1968; he eventually was appointed Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in 1981. Appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1973, he was Knighted in 1982. As a champion of nuclear power, he was appointed, in 1983, to be chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board. For his success in keeping the country’s “lights on” during the protracted miners’ strike of 1984-5, Mrs Thatcher rewarded him with a life peerage and he became Baron Marshall of Goring, of South Stoke in the County of Oxfordshire on 22 July 1985.

In 1989, with the government’s plan to reorganise and privatise electricity generation, the position of Chairman of the CEGB disappeared. He was made Chairman of National Power which included a large number of the coal- and oil-fired power stations and all of the nuclear power stations. National Power was a division of the CEGB until it was privatised in 1990.