Sir Jack Hayward obituary

Businessman and philanthropist devoted to ‘all things British’ and especially Wolverhampton Wanderers

Not for nothing was Sir Jack Hayward, who has died aged 91, known as “union Jack”. The idiosyncratic Bahamas-based millionaire and philanthropist declared in his Who’s Who entry that his recreations were “keeping all things bright, beautiful and British”. His money brought the Great Britain steamship back to Britain and helped to restore her, bought Lundy Island for the nation and, for 17 years, kept his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers football team afloat.

But his generosity to the Liberal party in the 1970s, a quixotic gesture from a man whose views were so rightwing that he insisted on calling the BBC World Service “the Empire Service”, ended in tears when he was dragged into the Jeremy Thorpe affair. Some of the money donated by him to the party appeared to have been creamed off for the attempts to silence Thorpe’s former lover, Norman Scott, and Hayward appeared as a witness at Thorpe’s trial.

Born in Wolverhampton, he was the only son of Sir Charles Hayward, an industrialist, and his wife Hilda (nee Arnold). His father, also born in Wolverhampton, had set up as a tool and pattern maker, and then diversified into making motorcycle sidecars and car bodies for manufacturers including Morris and Rootes. He later became a business financier and, after the war, built up an engineering and steel conglomerate called Firth Cleveland.

As a young man, Hayward was captivated by the noise and excitement of Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Molineux football ground a few hundred yards away from his home. At the age of six, he would wriggle under the turnstiles to watch matches.

He attended Stowe school, in Buckinghamshire, before volunteering for the RAF at 18. After training in Florida he flew Dakota transports on the dangerous mission to supply the 14th army in Burma. He said later: “We were more afraid of the monsoons than the Japanese.” He ended the war as a flight lieutenant and soon joined his father’s company selling agricultural equipment in South Africa for a subsidiary, Rotary Hoes. He married Jean Forder in 1948.

He was sent to the US in 1951 to oversee the expansion of Firth Cleveland, and in 1956 he moved the company’s administration to Nassau, in the Bahamas. There he met an American industrialist, Wallace Groves, who had a plan to turn swampland on Great Bahama Island into an industrial centre and deep-water port. Hayward persuaded his father to invest in the Freeport project. He was appointed vice president of the Grand Bahama Port Authority, living on the site and supervising clearance and construction, in primitive conditions.

Firth Cleveland was sold to GKN in 1974, and in 1976 Hayward bought Groves out in partnership with Edward St George, a former colonial officer. His fortune grew as Freeport’s tax advantages sucked in business and the tourist trade took off. A recent estimate of his net wealth put it at about £130m.

Hayward’s blimpish mannerisms often seemed like something out of a comedy sketch. He introduced black taxi cabs, double deckers and red telephone boxes into Grand Bahama, insisted on eating Colman’s mustard with almost everything and drank his tea from a union jack teapot. He even bought Del Boy Trotter’s yellow three-wheeler from the television series Only Fools and Horses. He had Kipling’s Rolls-Royce restored and presented to the family, declaring: “I was born British and I intend to keep saying that. To hell with people who think otherwise.”

He cultivated a rumpled appearance, with straggling white hair, scuffed suede shoes, a crumpled suit and an old car. “Money is important,” he said, “but I don’t spend much on myself. I like giving it away.”

He was knighted in 1986 for his charitable activities. They included gifts of £1m to restore the fire-damaged Falklands Islands hospital and a further £1m to dependants of those who had died in the fighting. He provided £100,000 to help raise the Mary Rose and £3m to the shortlived British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol.

His entanglement in the Thorpe affair began with his donation for the purchase of the Bristol Channel island of Lundy in 1969. It had been a project backed by Liberal MPs and at the celebration he met the charming Thorpe, then a Devon MP. Thorpe seized the opportunity and persuaded Hayward to pay off his party’s overdraft and contribute another £150,000. He and his wife stayed with Hayward in the Bahamas, and in 1974 he approached him again asking for a further £50,000.

But while £40,000 went to the Liberal election fund, £10,000 was to be paid to the Jersey account of a Thorpe friend, Nadir Dinshaw. Thorpe’s explanation was that this was to settle some of his personal election expenses, which fell into an “ambiguous category”. But the money, plus a subsequent £10,000, became an issue in Thorpe’s trial for conspiracy to murder in 1978 when it appeared that it had been used to buy potentially blackmailing letters from Scott and to pay a hitman for a “professional frightening job”.

Fortunately Hayward had kept Thorpe’s begging letters and at the trial he testified that in spite of repeated requests he had never had an explanation of how his money had been used. He had written to Thorpe, “It seems to me that I am being dragged into this sordid affair and I do not like it one bit. I have always been proud of my good name and integrity.” The judge described Hayward as “a nice, respectable witness”.

Hayward’s extensive UK interests included a 350-acre estate at Lydhurst in West Sussex, and a Scottish shooting estate. But his biggest investment was in his hometown football club.

In 1990 he fulfilled his childhood dream and bought the struggling Wolverhampton Wanderers for £2.1m. Over the next 17 years he spent more than £70m on the team and a new stadium. But he had only limited success in restoring the club to its former glories. Wolves won promotion to the Premier Division in 2003, but were relegated the following season.

Hayward’s ownership also laid bare family tensions. He sued his son Jonathan, who had chaired the club, for financial irregularities, later settling, and his sale of the club in 2007 to Steve Morgan for £10 – on the promise that Morgan would invest a further £30m – brought lawsuits from his other son, Richard, and daughter, Susan, as the club had been owned through a family trust.

His other great sporting enthusiasm was cricket, and he promoted and financed the first World Cup for female cricketers in 1973.

Hayward is survived by his wife, from whom he was separated, by Jonathan, Richard and Susan, and, the companion of his later years, Patti Bloom.

Sir Jack Hayward, businessman, born 14 June 1923; died 13 January 2015

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