A believer in operating behind the scenes rather than on the stage - "good government flourishes in the dark", he once observed - Julian Ridsdale probably did more to further Anglo-Japanese relations in the postwar period than any of his contemporaries and his contribution was recognised when he was appointed to the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1967 and raised to the Grand Cordon of the Order in 1990. Ironically, when serving as the Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Tokyo in 1940, he had had to make a hurried exit from the country, narrowly escaping arrest for spying. He served his Harwich constituents well over 38 years as their MP before standing down in 1992, but he never made much impact in debate. Service as a junior minister in the Macmillan and Douglas Home governments could not mask the independence of mind that questioned the direction the Conservative government was taking and later made him an early supporter of Mrs Thatcher.
Although his aunt had married Stanley Baldwin, Julian Errington Ridsdale came of a Liberal family. His uncle Aurelian was the only Liberal to be elected for Brighton. He was educated at Brighton College preparatory school and Tonbridge, but instead of going on to university, chose to attend Sandhurst and become a regular soldier. He sensed that war was coming and that politics could wait. He was commissioned into the Royal Norfolk Regiment in 1935 and found himself posted to Gibraltar rather than taking part in the preventive war against Hitler that he believed was necessary. He allayed his boredom by studying Japanese and persuaded the War Office to let him study the language at SOAS. Two years at the Embassy in Tokyo were followed by service as GSO3 with the Far Easten section of the General Staff 1941-3 and he was then posted to the Joint Staff Mission in Washington, ending the war as a Major. He left the army in 1946 and refused an offer to become a Liberal MP since he belied that co-operation between the Conservative and Liberal parties was essential. Instead he contested the London County Council elections unsuccessfully, was adopted for Paddington North and failed to take the seat in October 1951.
He was the joint choice of the Conservatives and Liberals to contest the seat at Harwich and he won it at a by-election in 1954, holding it at ten General Election before indicating that he would not run in 1992. Representing a seat with a high proportion of the elderly and retired, he became a vehement critic of inflationary policies and a campaigner for rates reform. He also opposed Schedule A taxation on owner occupiers. In 1961 he threatened to resign the whip if the Government did not stabilise the economy and he was a strong supporter of Selwyn Lloyd's pay pause. Shrewdly Macmillan made him the junior minister at Aviation as part of the 1962 reshuffle in which Lloyd was sacked and when the Ministry of Defence was created in 1964 he became Under Secretary for the Air Force.
In general he stood on the right of the party, supporting capital punishment, opposing defence cuts and sanctions on Rhodesia. He was one of the first to rally to Enoch Powell's support after his "rivers of blood" speech and he remained sceptical about the EEC. He was essentially an economic liberal, opposed to subsidies for the nationalised coal industry, a believer in low tax and a staunch free trader. But he was also strongly in favour of employee share ownership and was delighted when elements of a bill he had introduced to that end were reintroduced in a Healey budget after being talked out in the Commons. In 1959 he persuaded the government to exempt invalid vehicles from road tax.
But he will be best remembered for his staunch support for the Anglo-American alliance and his fascination with Japanese culture. The two went hand-in-hand. Attacks on Japan were regarded as a facet of anti-Americanism and he believed that the British should have accepted the Japanese apology for the war which Yoshida had given in 1954. He was critical of the unsympathetic reaction of the British people when the Emperor Hirohito died in 1989. President 1962-4 and then Chairman of the Anglo-Japanese Parliamentary group, he led three parliamentary delegations to Japan in 1973, 1975 and 1977 and received the CBE in 1977. His advice was frequently sought by the Foreign Office, and he recalled with some pleasure that Margaret Thatcher had consulted him before undertaking her own visit to Japan in 1977 and he had then been in Tokyo to greet her on her arrival. He made annual visits to the country, was a strong supporter of Japanese investment in Britain and from 1986 advised the Japanese construction firm Shimizu (he also advised the British construction firm Mc Alpines). In 1990 he persuaded Mrs Thatcher to back British participation in the Osaka Expo with himself as Commissioner General.
Ridsdale's judgement was not always sound. He campaigned enthusiastically for Edward du Cann to be made Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1973 and one of his business consultancies subsequently proved an embarrassment. He had advised the Bank of Credit and Commerce International since 1984, helping set up its Tokyo branch, but when it was accused of laundering drug money in 1988, he considered resigning. Instead, unwisely, he hung on and was forced to leave when the Bank collapsed in 1991. But he was more perspicacious in spotting Mrs Thatcher as a future leader and she recognised his services to his constituents, his party, and the Atlantic Assembly with a wel-earned knighthood in 1981.