Leonard Robert Carr, Baron Carr of Hadley, (11 November 1916 – 17 February 2012) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Home Secretary from 1972 to 1974. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for 26 years, and later served in the House of Lords as a life peer. Early life Robert Carr was educated at Westminster School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences, graduating in 1938. After graduation he applied his knowledge of metallurgy at John Dale & Co, the family metal engineering firm. A collapsed lung kept him from war service but his firm specialised in the construction of airframes for Lancaster bombers. Political career He was elected Member of Parliament for Mitcham in 1950 and served there until 1974, when the seat was merged and he moved to Carshalton. In Edward Heath's government, he served as Secretary of State for Employment and was responsible for the modernising Industrial Relations Act 1971, which balanced the introduction of compensation for unfair dismissal with curbs on the freedom to strike and the virtual abolition of closed shop agreements. The Industrial Relations Act 1971 was deeply disliked by, trade unions, whose industrial action lead to the three-day week and ultimately to the defeat of the government. The victorious Labour Party promptly repealed the Industrial Relations Act and replaced it with the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974, which scrapped the "offensive" provisions but effectively re-enacted the remainder of Carr's 1971 Act. In 1971, Carr escaped injury when The Angry Brigade anarchist group exploded two bombs outside his house. More than thirty years later, a member of the group issued a public apology to Carr and sent him a Christmas card. In 1972, Carr served a brief period as Lord President of the Council and then was appointed Home Secretary following the resignation of Reginald Maudling. Following Heath's defeat in the first ballot of the 1975 Conservative leadership contest, he asked him to "take over the functions of leader" until a new leader was elected. The day after her election the new leader, Margaret Thatcher met with Carr, according to her at his request, before she formed shadow cabinet. According to her memoirs, Carr had been close to Heath and so she would have understood "if he did not relish the prospect of serving under" her. She stated that Carr made it clear