John Barnes, Historian

Burnaby Drayson (1913 – 1983)

Rather against the odds Burnaby Drayson won Skipton by 2,200 votes in the 1945 General Election. It had been won by the Common Wealth candidate, Hugh Lawson, in the by-election held in January 1944. It was one of only two Conservative gains in 1945. Drayson held the seat for the next 24 years, defeating his opponents in no fewer than nine more General Elections before deciding to stand down in 1979. The closest he came to defeat was in October 1974 when he held off a strong Liberal challenge by 590 votes. Not only as a director of textile companies, but as someone with a major interest in Lord Plurenden’s Dominions Export, Drayson was one of those MPs, drawn from all parties, who were closely engaged in the promotion of east-west trade in the 1950s and 1960s. On occasions he came under fire for these links. They cannot have been altogether to the taste of the Conservative front bench, although there is evidence that the East German Government wished to exploit them for other than trading purposes. Although his efforts to persuade the British Government to build on these private trade links were steadily rebuffed in the 1950s, a growing number of people within Whitehall came to share Drayson’s view that Britain had bent over backward to appease the West Germans even though the latter had their own links with the east, and by late 1958 Macmillan had come to accept that point of view.

George Burnaby Drayson was born on 9 March 1913, the son of Walter Francis Drayson of Danes Hill, Stevenage, and Dorothy Dyatt Burnaby. He was educated at Borlase School, Buckinghamshire and at the age of 16 went into the City. He became a member of the London Stock Exchange in 1935 and remained a member until 1954.

On 1 September 1939 he married Winifred Marie, daughter of the former Town Clerk of Manchester, Percy Heath and his wife, at Maidenhead. Their daughter, Celia, was born on 9 June 1940. The couple were divorced in October 1958 as a result of Drayson’s adultery. He subsequently married Mrs. Barbara Merker (born Barbara Maria Theresa Radonska-Chrzanowska in Warsaw), although she had to seek a declaration from the High Court that her earlier marriage had been annulled in 1947.

On 22 April 1931 he was gazetted a 2^nd Lieutenant in the 85^th (East Anglian) Field Brigade of the Territorial Army. He had actually been commissioned on 9 March. In November 1932 he was transferred to the 104^th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Brigade and on 9 March 1934 promoted Lieutenant. He attained his captaincy on 11 November 1938. During the Second World War Captain G. Burnaby Drayson served in the western desert with the 28^th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, and was taken prisoner in 1942. He subsequently escaped and spent a week wandering in the desert before being recaptured and transferred to Italy. After fifteen months he managed to escape from Campo 49 in Italy by walking 500 miles through Axis-occupied territory. He reached the Allied lines in December 1943. His younger brother Andrew, who had followed his Burnaby grandfather into the Royal Navy, was drowned trying to rescue one of his comrades off Crete on 13 April 1941.

As a member of the Junior Imperial League before the war, Drayson had developed parliamentary ambitions, which were gratified when he secured the Conservative nomination for Skipton and elected in 1945. Interested in foreign affairs and trade, he served on a parliamentary delegation to Turkey in October 1947. Another early interest was in Yugoslavia.

In April 1952 he took part in a world trade conference in Moscow and indicated that his group of textile companies were interested in trade with China. Subsequently he became a Council Member of the International Traders Association Ltd, a body formed to carry out any agreements reached at Moscow and the British Council for International Trade continued to be active throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. He made numerous attempts, largely unsuccessful to persuade the Government to enter into semi-official trade negotiations with East Germany and to open a GDR account with the Bank of England¹. In early September 1953 Drayson managed to conclude a deal on behalf of Dominions Export Ltd. by which the GDR purchased coffee and raw beans from the company to the value of $1.5 million while importing potash. As Larres and Meehan note, this was the first agreement by a company not serving East German interests and “proved to be the effective beginning of private British –East German trade relations”². Drayson had a substantial private interest in the company.

Drayson won £3,000 in damages from the Daily Express in January 1954 because they had wrongly alleged that he was part of a delegation travelling to Egypt at the expense of the Egyptian government at a time when Britain and Egypt were locked in dispute. Drayson had earlier in 1953 taken part in a parliamentary visit to the Middle East, and it was clear that he could well have been expected to go again. However, he had twice made clear to Derek Marks of the Daily Express that he was not going and had actually issued a statement to that effect. The Judge and jury clearly preferred his evidence to that of the journalist concerned.

Drayson’s continued interest in east-west trade led him to attend the spring and autumn trade fairs at Leipzig, where many British companies exhibited. As already indicated he was one of those lobbying continually for Britain to develop trade links with the GDR. In March 1959 he was one of a group of MPs present who were involved in exchanges with Khrushchev over the Berlin ultimatum which the latter had delivered the previous year.

When the Board of Trade remained inflexible in its approach to trade with East Germany, Drayson was one of number of MPs and peers who indicated publicly in 1961 that they were in favour of the de facto recognition of the GDR³. He was chosen as secretary of an all party east-west trade chaired by Lord Boothby on 28 October 1961 in the wake of the crisis over the building of the Berlin wall. He refused to allow that there was any connection between the need to promote trade with eastern Europe and the upholding of British rights in Berlin, insisting that they were wholly separate questions. However, there were criticisms voiced by some of the businessmen interested in extending their trade with eastern Europe that the MPs’ presence at Leipzig politicized the gathering. Drayson’s interests in extending British exports, it should be noted however, were not confined to eastern Europe. He was associated with the British Atlantic Committee and the European-Atlantic Group and chaired the Parliamentary All-Party East/West Trade Committee. He was also involved with the British parliamentary groups associated with most East European countries and several in Latin America.

Drayson was one of those who though sanctions the wrong response to Southern Rhodesia’s declaration of UDI and as late as December 1965 was still arguing for fresh negotiations. He was known to be a supporter of Enoch Powell on immigration and opposed the Race Relations Bill in the summer of 1968, alleging that the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and National Assistance Board had been given instructions not to prosecute in fraud cases without clearance from a senior official. If true, that must have been before 1966 since by 1968 the relevant department had changed.

Drayson was one of a handful of Conservative MPs voting in 1968 for 18 year olds to receive the vote and he also went into the Government lobby, this time along with his leader, in support of the White Paper on Lords Reform.

On 19 December 1973 an IRA bomb concealed in a calendar was delivered to his home, but Drayson became suspicious and did not open the package, instead handing it to the police.

Drayson saw off strong Liberal Party challenges to his position. He came closest to losing in the October 1974 general election to the ebullient local Liberal candidate Claire Brooks just holding on with the narrow majority of 590. In December 1974, he indicated that he did not intend to contest the next election

During his time in the Commons he also took an active interest in agricultural issues. He was a member of the Royal Agricultural Society and the Livestock Export Council of Great Britain.

Barnaby, as friends knew him, was a keen fisherman and long-distance walker. In 1939 he competed in the London to Brighton walk, completing the 52 miles in 10 ¾ hours.

He stood down in 1979 and died on 16 September 1983.