Sir George Jefferson - Telegraph Meanwhile, attempts by its new rival Mercury Communications to broaden consumer choice in telephone services provoked objections from BT to the industry regulator at every turn. Modest reductions in call tariffs were seen as little compensation by frustrated subscribers, who were further enraged both by BT's spectacular profits growth and by Jefferson's own (not wholly unreasonable) 55 per cent salary increase immediately after privatisation. Somewhat diffidently, he fielded a barrage of hostile questions at annual meetings in the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham attended by several thousand shareholders. Though Jefferson passed the chief executive role to Iain (now Lord) Vallance in 1986 and suffered bouts of ill health, he held the BT chair for longer than he had originally planned. But there were suggestions that his retirement in September 1987 had been encouraged by government ministers, who were concerned at BT's tarnished image and fearful that the public backlash threatened to jeopardise the forthcoming privatisations of electricity and water. George Rowland Jefferson was born on March 26 1921 and educated at Dartford Grammar School. His youthful ambition was to be a doctor, but he left school early to become an apprentice at the Woolwich Arsenal. He went on, through evening classes and day release, to achieve an honours degree in Engineering from Woolwich Polytechnic by the time he was 19. Jefferson was commissioned in the RAOC in 1942. Transferred to REME, he was engaged in anti-aircraft weapons research at Fort Halstead, where he remained for some years after the war as an official of the Ministry of Supply. In 1952 he joined the guided weapons division of English Electric as head of research. In due course English Electric Aviation became part of the British Aircraft Corporation, and Jefferson emerged as chief executive of BAC's missile activities. Jefferson's neat, low-key style made him an incongruous figure as one of Britain's top arms salesmen. At the time he likened the weapons trade to selling insurance: "It's a dangerous world and you need protection," he remarked, expressing satisfaction that few of his missile systems - Rapier, Bloodhound and Polaris, among others - were ever fired in anger. In 1977 BAC and other companies were merged and nationalised to form British Aerospace. Jefferson, as chairman of the dynamics division, won the admiration of colleagues and union officials for the tenacity with which he fought to save the Rapier and other projects at the company's Stevenage factory. He was thought to have been deeply disappointed not to become chairman of BAe in March 1980, on the retirement of Lord Beswick. But by then he had been appointed a member of the National Enterprise Board, and in September of that year he became deputy chairman of the Post Office and chairman-designate of British Telecom, at that date yet to be formed as a separate corporation. In retirement, Jefferson was chairman of the construction company Matthew Hall and later of City Centre Communications, and was able to devote more time to the quiet cultivation of the garden at his home in Ireland. He was appointed CBE in 1969 and knighted in 1981. He also received the gold medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, of which he was a fellow and vice-president. He married, first, in 1943, Irene Watson-Browne, who predeceased him in 1998; they had three sons. He married, secondly, in 1999, Bridget Riley, who survives him. Sir George Jefferson, born March 26 1921, died September 1 2012