[1][2][3] Vinson was educated at Brambletye preparatory school before going to Pangbourne College; he achieved sufficient success to qualify for a place at the University of London (his lack of classics qualification preventing him from attending Oxford or Cambridge), but he decided to focus on practical business experience over a degree.
[citation needed] At the time of the flotation, Vinson gave 10% of the shares to the company's employees before selling his own stake in the firm to Imperial Tobacco, resigning as executive chairman a year later.
Vinson's decision to give up a full-time business career was the result of his determination to find a role for himself in reversing economic and political trends which he believed would have left Britain poorer and less free and to champion the concept of a social market economy.
[7] After a failed attempt to be selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Aldershot in 1974, he sought instead to assist others directly engaged in seeking to challenge the prevailing economic orthodoxy.
Vinson, who found the Centre's first premises, underwrote the lease and employed its staff, served as honorary treasurer as well as contributed to the intellectual life of the think-tank.
Our task was to question the unquestioned, think the unthinkable, blaze new trails..."[8] Vinson was the co-author of the Centre's first publication, Why Britain Needs a Social Market Economy (1974).
[7] When he resigned as CPS treasurer in 1980, Thatcher acknowledged in a personal letter of thanks the part Vinson had played in changing the direction of British politics: "What has been achieved during the last six years by way of winning the intellectual argument in favour of free enterprise and against socialism and corporatism would never have been possible without your patient guidance and tireless ability to provide, and then maintain, the foundation stone on which we have built.
[10] He regularly attended House of Lords debates, and spoke in the 2007 and 2014 sessions in support of nuclear power,[11][12] against what he saw as the folly of policies based on costly British renewable generation solutions, increasing fuel poverty, while the growing world population issue remained unaddressed.
These included a change to planning laws that enabled redundant farm buildings to be turned into workshops leading to the creation of thousands of small rural firms.
In 2019, in an article in Standpoint magazine, Vinson criticised a number of major UK charities for spending their donors' money for purposes other than those for which it was raised, for overpaying senior staff and for straying into political activism.