Sir James Lester, the previous Tory MP for the Nottinghamshire constituencies of Beeston after which Broxtowe, who has died aged 89, was so out of step with lots of his colleagues within the Thatcherite Eighties that at instances he gave the impression to be “virtually one in every of us”, within the phrases of a Labour backbencher.
A detailed buddy of his neighbouring Nottinghamshire MP Ken Clarke, he belonged to the One Nation Conservative breed that has all however been extinguished on the present Tory Commons benches: he was pro-European, pro-foreign support, towards cuts in advantages or privatising the Put up Workplace and towards extending the Official Secrets and techniques Act. He was not afraid, both, to be an early opponent of the Thatcher authorities’s try and introduce the ballot tax.
Unsurprisingly, subsequently, he solely briefly held junior ministerial workplace on the Division of Employment underneath Jim Prior earlier than being culled in Margaret Thatcher’s first reshuffle in January 1981 as being insufficiently ardent in pursuing commerce union reform. A genial and convivial determine, at all times identified at Westminster as Jim, he subsequently devoted his energies to his membership of the Commons overseas affairs choose committee and the all celebration group on abroad growth.
Jim was the son of Marjorie (nee Phillips) and Arthur Lester. His father, who ran a leather-based and shoe import enterprise, was a Labour alderman on Nottinghamshire county council and in his spare time a speedway motorcyclist. In the end each father and son would serve on the county council, Jim as chair of the finance committee and Arthur as his vice-chairman.
When Jim was first elected as a Conservative MP his father stated it was the proudest day of his life. Maybe that household background was the place Lester’s distinctly non-factional strategy to politics got here from. At house the politically obsessed household had taken each the Day by day Mail and the Day by day Employee.
Lester was educated at Nottingham highschool – Clarke would comply with to the identical faculty eight years later and Ed Balls a lot later nonetheless – however as a substitute of occurring to college left at 16 to affix the household enterprise.
After he had accomplished nationwide service with the Military, his political profession started in native politics, on Bingham city council in 1964, adopted by his election to the county council in 1967. He contested and really practically received a parliamentary byelection for the then staunchly Labour coal-mining Bassetlaw constituency the next 12 months, dropping by solely 740 votes, then preventing it once more and dropping extra closely on the normal election in 1970.
He was then chosen for the extra suburban marginal seat of Beeston, successful it on the February 1974 election and clinging on by 120 votes on the following election that October. When the constituency was absorbed into the safer Broxtowe seat in 1983 he was elected there and held it till defeated within the Labour landslide of 1997.
Early in his Commons profession Lester, collectively together with his father, campaigned in favour of British membership of the Widespread Market within the 1975 referendum. At Westminster he was made a Tory whip, serving to to organise a marketing campaign to undermine the Labour authorities. After James Callaghan’s defeat by one vote in a confidence movement in March 1979, Lester and Clarke celebrated with an evening out at Ronnie Scott’s jazz membership in Soho.
The reward following the Tory victory that Could was the junior ministerial job at employment. The thought was to introduce laws curbing the powers of commerce unions, however the prime minister was quickly disillusioned by Prior and Lester’s strategy as too conciliatory and gradualist: “moist” in her well-known phrase. They have been quickly changed by extra strong figures, in Lester’s case Norman Tebbit.
With little probability of additional promotion, Lester turned a member of the Commons overseas affairs choose committee, a place he would maintain for the following 15 years, and he additionally turned vice chairman of the all-party abroad growth group. His was often ready to defy three-line whips, on the ballot tax and on freedom of data laws. Following the arrival of John Main’s extra congenial, typically pro-European administration he turned an enthusiastic supporter of the Maastricht treaty.
When Tory Eurosceptics launched an early assault on the European court docket of justice over limiting working hours, he stated: “I actually wouldn’t wish to attempt to persuade my voters that it was not a very good factor that they’d three weeks’ paid vacation a 12 months. You may’t have a court docket of legislation which you choose and select whether or not you settle for its outcomes.”
Having held Broxtowe comfortably at elections for 14 years, Lester – who obtained a knighthood in 1996 – was swept away in Tony Blair’s landslide. He launched a parliamentary consultancy as a substitute.
Lester was married twice, firstly to Iris Whitby in 1953. The couple had two youngsters earlier than the wedding was dissolved in 1989. He subsequently married Merrylyn Denis the identical 12 months. He’s survived by Merrylyn, his youngsters, Simon and Tina, and two stepchildren, Richard and Caroline.