Tim Fortescue (1916 - 2008)
Tim Fortescue was essentially an expert in marketing, who brought his skills and panache briefly to Westminster, but it was perhaps typical of our times that he attracted most attention years after he had left politics for his confirmation that the Conservative Whips Office – and no doubt the Labour Party's also – practised some of the black arts that had found their way into the light of day by way of Michael Dobbs' fiction. He had earlier made waves in his political career, when MP for Liverpool Garston, by revealing the “anarchy” caused in Ford's Halewood plant by the activities of the Shop Stewards, who had brought the men out on unofficial strike in 1971, encouraged the sabotage of machines, and countenanced drunkenness and theft. His allegations were rooted in complaints made by men who wanted to work, and he compiled a detailed dossier for Ford, urging them not to re-employ known agitators. As a senior Conservative whip from 1970 until he resigned in September 1973 to resume his business career, he helped steer the European Communities Bill through the Commons and stilled doubts about Heath's various policy U-turns.
Trevor Victor Norman was born on 28 August 1916 and was educated at Uppingham and Kings College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages. He joined the Colonial service in 1938 and while serving as a magistrate in Hong Kong, was interned by the Japanese when they occupied the colony in 1941. After his release in 1945, he worked with the newly formed United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation until 1947, returning to Government service as a magistrate in Kenya 1949-51. A further spell with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, this time in Rome, was followed by a highly successful spell as the Chief Marketing Officer for the Milk Marketing Board 1954-59. He joined the management of Nestle in 1959, working first in Switzerland and from 1963 in London. He was elected for Liverpool Garston in March 1966.
His maiden speech was an attack on the Selective Employment Tax , which he noted memorably put the Governor of the Bank of England and a strip tease artiste in the same category: both were non productive. Fortescue was no slavish follower of the party line, and was notably one of the few Conservatives to vote with Macleod against the Labour Government's legislation to block the immigration of Kenyan Asians. He also raised his personal profile by spending weeks behind a Social Security Counter, with further spells to follow with the police and with the staff in Walton jail. That gave him a thorough insight into the public sector and he regarded himself as a specialist on social security.
Although a loyal and effective member of the whips' office when the Conservatives returned to power, he chafed at the way in which this silence him from making any contribution to the debates on the Industrial Relations Bill and used the freedom given to speak in his constituency role to highlight the problems caused to British industry by the trade union movement.
In September 1973, he took up an appointment as Secretary General of the Food and Drink Industries Council, standing down from the Commons at the February 1974 General Election – his seat fell to Labour. He remained a decade in his new job, countering the increased worries about unhealthy eating with the insouciant assertion that “a little of what you fancy does you good”. He received a CBE in 1984, the year in which he took up the presidency of the British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association, a position that he held until 1992. Amongst his other activities were a spell as Trustee of Uppingham School 1957-63 and fourteen years as Patron and Trustee of the Quest Community in Birmingham 1971-85.
Fortescue was married twice. His first marriage to Margery Hunt produced two sons, one of them deceased, and a daughter, and ended in divorce in 1975. He married Anthea Higgins in the same year. Having moved to Winchester, he served with his wife as the Development Manager of the Cathedral 1989-90, and as a Director of Winchester Cathedral Enterprises Ltd helped restore its financial fortunes. Passionately interested in Napoleon, his principal recreation was golf, but towards the end he listed his only recreation as “marriage to Anthea”. He had written Lovelines in 1987 and nine years later published Lovelines from Winchester. He died on 29 September 2008. Obituaries can be found in The Times, Telegraph, Guardian and, by the present author, in the Independent.