Henry Plumb's family were from Cheshire and had been in farming for several generations. His father farmed at Coleshill in Warwickshire, on which his son joined him in 1940. He took over running the farm in 1952 when his father died. The farm ran to and consisted primarily of a dairy herd with 70 breeding sows and of grain.
After rising through the county branch, in 1965 Plumb was elected Vice-President of the National Farmers Union. Although only 40 years old he was considered for the Presidency, but had to settle for promotion to Deputy President in 1966. In the late 1960s Plumb was a member of the Northumberland Committee inquiring into the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, being the only working farmer on the committee. Towards the end of the committee's deliberations, a report from political correspondent J.W. Murray in Farmer and Stockbreeder claimed that Plumb had single-handedly persuaded the committee to recommend prohibiting the import of carcass meat from countries where foot-and-mouth was endemic.
President of the NFU
In January 1970 the incumbent President of the NFU Gwilym Williams failed to get the 80% support necessary to be re-elected, and Plumb was elected President of the NFU in his place. Plumb's term of office included British accession to the European Economic Community and its Common Agricultural Policy and Plumb negotiated for greater support for British agriculture; he stressed that Britain no longer had the economic power to bring cheap food prices. Plumb was, however, a strong supporter of British membership of the European Economic Community; he was considered as a possible director for the pro-market campaign in the 1975 referendum campaign and was described as one of its most indefatigable spokesmen. Plumb was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 1973.
Having joined the Conservative Party, Plumb was elected Member of the European Parliament for the Cotswolds seat in 1979 and remained in the European Parliament until 1999, being President of the European Parliament 1987–1989. He was made a Life peer as Baron Plumb, of Coleshill in the County of Warwickshire on 6 April 1987. He retired from the House of Lords on 3 November 2017. He was also Chancellor of Coventry University between 1995 and 2007 and a founder of leading EU lobbyinglaw firmAlber & Geiger.
In June 2012 the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Independent newspaper revealed how senior members of the House of Lords failed to disclose their business interests in a public inquiry. As of July 2012, Plumb's entry in the register of interests listed his only remunerated employment/profession as 'farming', despite his involvement with the Brussels-based lobbying firm Alber and Geiger since 2007. According to The Independent, Plumb insisted "he did not need to register his involvement because he had never been in employment, paid or unpaid by the firm".
