Dudley Smith

Dudley Smith was eventually successful in winning the Brentford & Chiswick by 2,919 votes in the 1959 general election.

Despite only being in the House for 4 years, in 1963 Smith played the leading role in opposing deportation of Anthony Enahoro to Nigeria where he would face charges of treason. The fact that he took on this challenge was largely due to Enahoro's arrest taking place in his constituency. For 2 months, he used all parliamentary means to persuade the Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, to not deport the Chief. Smith claimed that Enahoro could not be deported as he would potentially face execution. Despite this, his efforts failed, and Anthony Enahoro was deported and subsequently jailed for 15 years.[3]

Other areas that Smith took an interest in during his first parliament included sanitary concerns over the River Thames, and more radically local tax reform. Sixty Conservative MPs called for education to be funded directly by the Treasury instead of by local rates.[3]

As troubles grew for the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Smith was part of a group of relatively young Tory MPs in early 1963 who called for a change in leadership.[3] Their preference was Edward Heath, the Lord Privy Seal who would subsequently become leader and Prime Minister, or Reginald Maudling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer over that of then favourite Rab Butler, or Iain Macleod.[5] Ultimately Lord Home was chosen as the successor.[6]

1963 also saw Smith became PPS to Robert Carr, Minister for Technical Cooperation, then as an opposition whip in 1964.[3] However, his climb in power was cut short by the Labour victory in the 1964 general election, and then Smith losing his seat in 1966 to Labour's Michael Barnes by 607 votes.[7]

After a brief 2 years as director for public relations for the Beecham Group, Dudley Smith yet again found himself in the Commons as MP for Warwick & Leamington which he won with a majority of 21,922 in the 1968 Warwick and Leamington by-election.[4] It was triggered by the death of the former Attorney General, Sir John Hobson.[8]

As the opposition spokesman on employment and productivity, and with his former boss Robert Carr who was now Shadow Minister of Labour, Smith argued in 1969 that the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, Barbara Castle, should hold to her ‘In Place of Strife’ white paper which proposed to restrict the powers of the trade unions.[3] She did adhere to their advice. As a result of the Conservative Party returning to power as a result of the 1970 general election, the new Prime Minister, Edward Heath, put Smith under Carr as Under-Secretary for Employment.[2] He played a key role in the passage of the controversial Industrial Relations Bill.[3] 1974 saw him moved to the Ministry of Defence as Under-Secretary of State for the Army, a post he held for a mere nine weeks due to Heath's failed re-election bid in the February 1974 snap general election which saw the Prime Minister's rival, Harold Wilson, returned to power. It was not, however, an uneventful time at the MoD since Smith did visit the survivors of the 1974 IRA's M62 coach bombing in hospital.[3]

Dudley Smith never returned to government, spending his time as vice-chairman of the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration between 1978 and 1979.[2] With the Conservative victory in the 1979 general election, the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, sent him to Europe as part of the British delegation to the Council of Europe and the Western European Union (WEU). During his eighteen years in Europe, Smith served from 1983 to 1986 as secretary-general of the European Democratic Group, from 1989 to 1993 as chairman of the WEU Defence Committee and finally as president of the WEU Assembly until 1997.[4]

Dudley Smith had been an early admirer of Mrs Thatcher, evidenced by his verbal support of the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, which she had drawn up and introduced her maiden speech. During the Thatcher years, Smith showed signs of being an ardent Thatcherite, indeed often being to the right of his Prime Minister on many social issues. Despite this, he demonstrated clear dissatisfaction with her leadership, which had been damaged by the resignation of Nigel Lawson and the Poll Tax, by using a football analogy in May 1990: “Do you sack the manager or don’t you? You may have a good manager but what if the team isn’t scoring goals?”.[4] This sentiment was felt by many Tory MPs which ultimately led to her downfall.

He was knighted in 1983.[3]

Smith found himself in controversy in 1995 when a Greek Cypriot claimed that a holiday home in Northern Cyprus, which Smith has leased for twelve years, had in fact been his property prior to the 1974 Turkish invasion. Smith denied the man had ever owned the property.[4]

Although previously Warwick and Leamington had been considered a safe seat, the 1997 general election saw Tony Blair’s New Labour win a landslide leading the 70-year-old Smith to losing his seat after over 35 years in parliament.[9]