Formation:
Ravenswood School, near Tiverton, Devon
Sherborne School, Dorset
Exeter College, Oxford (where he won a Stapeldon Scholarship in Classics).
On leaving Oxford in 1963, Mr Johnson was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to the United States in 1963.
He was the first environment officer ever to be appointed in the Conservative Research Department (1969-70).
Carrière:
In April 1973 he was appointed Head of the Prevention of Pollution and Nuisances division of the newly-established Environment and Consumer Protection Service (ECPS) . In 1977 he became Adviser to Michel Carpentier, the head of the ECPS. In May 1979 he took leave on personal grounds to stand for the European Parliament in the first-ever direct elections to that body. In June 1979 he was elected as a Conservative MEP for the Euro-Constituency of Hants East and the Isle of Wight with a majority of 95,000 the second largest in the UK. He served as Vice Chairman of the Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection.
He returned to the European Commission in September 1984 in the double capacity as Head of the Prevention of Waste Division and as Adviser to the then (acting) Director of the ECPS, Mr A.J. Fairclough. With the appointmemt of Laurens Jan Brinkhorst as Director-General of the newly-established Directorate-General for the Environment, Stanley was appointed Adviser to the Director-General in what was then DG XVII. In September 1990, he again took leave of absence on personal grounds (CCP) to work in the field of international environmental policy. The CCP came to an end in 1994 and Mr Johnson took early retirement from the services of the Commission.