Lennox-Boyd was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for
Mid Bedfordshire in
1931 (at the age of 26), and was admitted to
Inner Temple, as a barrister in 1941. In 1954, he became
Secretary of State for the Colonies, where he oversaw early stages of
decolonisation, with the granting of independence to
Cyprus,
Ghana,
Malaya and
Sudan. He was in office during the
Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and was persuaded to stay in office by
Harold Macmillan after being censured for the
Hola massacre. He talked openly about independence for the
Federation of Malaya, and invited the then Chief Minister of Malaya,
Tunku Abdul Rahman and his colleagues to
Lancaster House to discuss the possibility of independence. In 1955, Lennox-Boyd threatened to resign from his post when some Tory cabinet members wanted to apply immigration controls to
New Commonwealth countries. This was in the early period of the post-
Windrush era of immigration to Britain, which had seen an unexpectedly large inflow to Britain from non-white races as a result of the
British Nationality Act 1948. This act, implemented by the previous
Labour government, granted British citizenship to the entire
Commonwealth; in 1955, Lennox-Boyd would either accept controls on the whole Commonwealth or none at all. As the Conservatives were committed to the rights of
Old Commonwealth citizens to come to Britain, they chose to have no controls. Following the
Suez Crisis of 1956, Lennox-Boyd appears to have made the initial approach to writer
Ian Fleming about the possibility of Prime Minister
Sir Anthony Eden's using Fleming's Jamaican house,
Goldeneye, for a rest cure, given the precarious state of Eden's health. Because of security considerations, he initially intimated to Fleming that he wanted Goldeneye for a holiday of his own and, when he resisted Fleming's suggestion that his and Fleming's wife (a close friend of
Lady Eden) liaise over the arrangements, Fleming at first assumed that he was planning an extra-marital assignation. After the
1959 general election, Lennox-Boyd was replaced as Colonial Secretary by
Iain Macleod. In September 1960, Lennox-Boyd was raised to the peerage as
Viscount Boyd of Merton of Merton-in-Penninghame in the County of
Wigtown. This caused a by-election for his Mid Bedfordshire constituency, which was won by
Stephen Hastings. He was further honoured the same year when he was appointed a
Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. Being opposed to the line taken in
Harold Macmillan's
Wind of Change speech, Lennox-Boyd subsequently became an early patron of the right-wing
Conservative Monday Club. Whilst this may appear to contrast with his earlier objection to racialised immigration controls, according to
David Goodhart, this was explained by him being "a believer in the imperial idea rather than racial equality". ==Other public positions and business career==