in 1980. After the department was abolished in 1981, he became Minister of the Arts. The call from 10 Downing Street came while he was swimming in the sea near his villa on the island of Mustique. He became Minister of State for Trade at the Department of Trade and Industry following the 1983 general election. He took charge of the department for two short periods, after Cecil Parkinson resigned following the Sara Keays affair in 1983, and while his successor, Norman Tebbit, recovered from his injuries sustained in the Brighton bombing in 1984. Channon became President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on 24 January 1986, after Leon Brittan resigned following the Westland affair. Channon's time as Trade and Industry Secretary was marred in several ways. A major issue of the day was a takeover by the Guinness group using an inflated stock value via third parties – the Guinness share-trading fraud during its takeover of Distillers. As a member of the Guinness family, Channon had to stand aside from any investigation into the affair as he would have been accused of a conflict of interest. In addition, proposed sales of troubled nationalised carmarkers British Leyland to General Motors and of Austin Rover to Ford also fell through. Leyland Trucks was later sold to DAF. He blocked a proposed merger of Tate and Lyle with British Sugar and a takeover bid for Plessey by GEC. Channon was later alleged to have been involved in the government's secret supply of weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. Transport Secretary Channon was appointed Secretary of State for Transport on 13 June 1987. His tenure as Transport Secretary was blighted by several major transport disasters: 31 died in the King's Cross fire on 18 November 1987; 35 were killed when three trains crashed near Britain's busiest railway station in the Clapham Junction rail crash on 12 December 1988; 270 died when Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down by a bomb over Scottish town of Lockerbie in the Lockerbie Disaster on 21 December 1988; and 44 died when a British Midland plane crashed beside the M1 motorway in the Kegworth air disaster on 8 January 1989. He was roughly treated in the House of Commons by Labour's transport spokesman, John Prescott, who pilloried him for underinvestment in the rail network, and for taking a family holiday