At the time of writing Colin Turner and his Conservative colleague in the 1959 Parliament, John Hollingworth are the longest surviving former Members of Parliament. Although a highly successful practitioner of marketing and public relations, Turner did not manage his relationship with his constituency association with much success. He was perhaps unlucky that his predecessor as MP for West Woolwich had remained as Association President and had fully regained his health. But it is more than a little unusual for an MP in his first term to face deselection within little more than three years after securing election. While he survived to fight the 1964 General Election, the divisions within the Association cannot but have made his defeat by Labour’s William Hamling likely. In the event he went down by 1,781 votes, six per cent down on his share of the vote in 1959. While he continued to be active in the Conservative party, he did not again contest a Parliamentary seat.
Colin William Carstairs Turner was born on 4 January 1922, the son of Colin C.W. Turner of Enfield. He was educated at Highgate School and joined the RAF in 1940. He served as an Air Observer with 223 Squadron in South and East Africa, before joining the Desert Air Force in North Africa in 1942. He was commissioned in July 1943. He took part in the campaigns in Sicily and Italy flying in Baltimores as navigator/bomb aimer and was awarded the DFC in 1944. Badly injured in an air crash on a training flight, he was invalided out as a Flying Officer in 1945.
He developed the family business into the highly successful Colin Turner Group, International Media Representatives and Marketing Consultants. Subsequently it became linked with the W.Ager Group of companies, Turner acting as joint managing director. However his interest in politics was already manifest. It took him to membership of the founding National Committee of the Young Conservatives and to membership of the Party’s National Executive Committee as early as 1946. He remained a member of the National Executive until 1953. In 1949 he married Evelyn Mary, daughter of Claude Buckard of Enfield. They had three sons and a daughter.
In 1956 he was elected to the Enfield Borough Council, but he stood down in 1958 to contest Woolwich west in place of Sir William Steward. He had already contested Enfield East unsuccessfully in 1950 and 1951. His maiden speech on 17 March 1960 was devoted to the shortage of sites for housing in London and the need to give housing priority over other uses. He was elected secretary of the Air Sub Committee of the Conservative Backbench Defence Committee and took part in the representations made by that Committee to the Minister of Defence on the Nassau Agreement in January 1963.
His right to reselection was challenged in July 1962 by the Chairman and officers of the West Woolwich Conservative Association, who let it be known that they had found him impossible to work with; they set in train a new selection process and asked Sir William Steward, who had been Turner’s predecessor and had remained President of the Association, to let his name go forward. There were thirty three applicants and the Selection Committee whittled this down to four. Steward and Turner were the leading contenders and when the Executive Committee met in December 1952, it voted in Steward’s favour by 52 votes to 31. However, Turner’s supporters in the Association were outraged. They mobilised the Young Conservatives in the division and obtained a testimonial to Turner from 36 of his Conservative colleagues in the House of Commons. When the issue came to a general meeting of the Association on 12 January 1963, the Executive’s recommendation was rejected by 274 votes to 184.1 Steward withdrew his name rather than split the Association, but he resigned as President. Roger Fyson, the Chairman, and Eric Goodman, the Treasurer, also stood down. The National Executive had to be brought in to compose the differences that had arisen. In December 1963 he was successful in the ballot for private members’ bills and brought forward a bill to make union mergers easier. This had the backing of both the TUC and the Government.
The closure of the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich provided a difficult background to the run up to the 1964 General Election, but Turner contended that housing some 50,000 people on the arsenal land would be of greater benefit to the local economy. Although he refused to admit it, Turner fought the 1964 General Election as something of a rearguard action against a strong local candidate who had fought the seat three times before and was confident of victory. As a new candidate he had doubled the Conservative majority. Even with the cry of time for a change, he believed he could hold on. It was not to be and once he had lost the seat, he chose not to put his name forward to fight it again. Instead he returned to the Enfield Conservative Association, moving a resolution on its behalf at the 1966 Party Conference, which demanded the wholesale reconstruction of the social services. In 1969 he made the final three in the Aldershot selection in September 1969, but was beaten to the seat by Julian Critchley.
Turner became President of the Overseas Media and Press Association 1965-7, then taking on the Secretaryship in 1967 and the Treasurership 1974 – 82. He edited the Overseas Media Guide from 1968 until 1974. He was Chairman of the Public Relations Committee of the Commonwealth Press Union 1970-87.
From 1985 until 1988 he chaired the Colin Turner Media group and he then became its President 1988-97.
He had also secured re-election to the Conservative National Executive Committee 1968-73 and was successively deputy chairman 1975 and Chairman of the Conservative Commonwealth and Overseas Council 1976-82. He served as Vice President of the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council 1985-2008. He also chaired the Enfield North Conservative Association 1979-84 and the London North European Constituency Council 1984 – 89. He served as President of the Enfield North Conservative Association 1984-93 and after his move from Enfield to Norfolk the North Norfolk Conservative Association 1996-99.
He was awarded the CBE in 1985 and knighted for political and public service in June 1993.
1 The Times 14 January 1963 p.4