Personality and Private Life
He married Sybil Spencer (died 1996) in Washington, D.C. in 1942; she was from Wales. They had a son and a daughter. MacGregor split his time between his homes in New York, Bermuda and Loch Fyne, Scotland. MacGregor was chairman of Religion in American Life and, in the UK, the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training. He was an active campaigner against ageism in employment.
Outside the boardroom, some found him "a benign and rather avuncular man, whose Scottish burr was distinctly audible beneath the overlay of his American accent." Others saw him as "affable and stimulating: with his tongue partly in his cheek" and as "emotional and often unpredictable. He thought of himself as a creator; he returned to the UK out of a sense of patriotism as much Scots as British; and the large fees he earned were less for consumption - certainly not of any conspicuous kind - as to sustain his ceaseless world travels." Scottish miners' leader Mick McGahey described him as "viciously anti-trade union and anti-working class", claiming that he had worked "to destroy trade unionism not only in mining, but in Britain." He certainly achieved the objectives of the Thatcher government, but Thatcher herself felt that he had handled the public relations aspect of the miners' dispute poorly, failing to empathise with the British public's widespread sympathy for the miners and their communities, and the pair were on cool terms after his departure from the NCB. Although he left public affairs after his retirement, his opinions on the Government's handling of the dispute, expressed in his autobiography, were not well received by Thatcher.
Mr. MacGregor was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1979.
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