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.
Read more about this topic: Ian Mac Gregor
Famous quotes containing the words private life, personality and, personality, private and/or life:
“I do not remember anything which Confucius has said directly respecting man’s “origin, purpose, and destiny.” He was more practical than that. He is full of wisdom applied to human relations,—to the private life,—the family,—government, etc. It is remarkable that, according to his own account, the sum and substance of his teaching is, as you know, to do as you would be done by.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Personality and mind, like moustaches, belong to a certain age. They are a deformity in a child.... Leave his sensibilities, his emotions, his spirit, and his mind severely alone. There is the devil in mothers, that they must provoke personal ... response from their infants.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Western man represents himself, on the political or psychological stage, in a spectacular world-theater. Our personality is innately cinematic, light-charged projections flickering on the screen of Western consciousness.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“I feel about exercise the same way that I feel about a few other things: that there is nothing wrong with it if it is done in private by consenting adults.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)