Sir Rhodes Boyson (11 May 1925 – 28 August 2012) was an English educator, author and Conservative Party politician who served as Member of Parliament for Brent North.

He was awarded a PhD in 1967 by London University, his thesis being on Henry Ashworth, a Victorian Lancashire cotton manufacturer, brother-in-law of Richard Cobden, and a Radical campaigner who also had a reputation as a model employer.

[2] Called up towards the end of the Second World War, Boyson served with the Royal Navy, based in India at the time of Independence, and from his late 20s, he was a Methodist lay preacher.

He opposed what he perceived to be lax discipline, both in modern education and in the wider society, and at Highbury Grove he introduced an unfashionably traditional regime, with strictly enforced uniforms, caning for misbehaviour, and a house system.

[5] He later wrote: My own move to Conservative party membership arose from the effect of my research into the cotton industry and the Manchester school of liberal economic philosophy.

Boyson was a severe critic of what he regarded as the influence of "mindless sociologists" who produced "mush which has corrupted the national character", noting in 1978 that "it has not gone unnoticed that crime has increased parallel with the number of social workers".

Having stood unsuccessfully at Eccles in 1970, Boyson was first elected to the House of Commons in February 1974 for Brent North, and was Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department of Education and Science 1979–1983.

He also appeared on Brass Eye[12] and was an early interviewee of Ali G.[13] Boyson lost his Brent North seat in the Labour landslide of 1997, his 24% majority turning to a 10% majority for the opposition, partly because of his perceived lack of commitment to the campaign to retain Edgware General Hospital;[citation needed] in 2001, the seat, no longer contested by Boyson, swung a further 9% to Labour.

[1] He and his second wife lived in Pinner, northwest London,[citation needed] until he moved into Cedar House nursing home in Harefield, where he died aged 87.