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Strident and provocative Conservative MP who delighted in throwing out insults and outraging liberal opinion
Every generation of parliamentarians produces its range of eccentric individuals and the former Conservative MP Terry Dicks, who has died aged 83, was certainly in that bracket during his tenure at the House of Commons in the 1980s and 90s. Dicks made a speciality of daring to speak his mind, and the shudders of distaste that habitually resulted, particularly among the more pompous of his party colleagues, served only to reinforce his satisfaction that he had achieved precisely the reaction he had hoped to secure.
Dicks regarded it as his personal mission to speak with the voice of the man on the street in his west London constituency of Hayes and Harlington, and to articulate what he believed were that man’s prejudices. Among his multitude of targets was Home Office policy on immigration, football hooligans (whom he felt should be birched), anyone he deemed a terrorist – in which category he included Nelson Mandela – and anything with a whiff of establishment elitism such as opera or ballet. Continue reading...