David Wilshire

David Wilshire.

David Wilshire (16 September, 1943 - 31 October 2023) was a controversial traditional real Tory who was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Spelthorne, Surrey, England, from 1987 to 2010 at which point the party persuaded him not to stand for re-election.

Politics

He had joined the Conservative Party in 1974 and was elected to Wansdyke Council in 1976 (of which he was Leader 1981-87) and Avon County Council the following year. He was selected to be the Parliamentary candidate at Spelthorne and was successfully elected in 1987 with a majority of 20,050.

David Wilshire was the originator in 1988 of the successful Section 28 Amendment in the United Kingdom Parliament which outlawed the promotion of homosexuality by local government authorities, particularly in schools. He opposed the Good Friday Agreement in Ulster and was one of the first Conservative Party MPs to say they would never support the UK entry into a single European currency (Euro), and was a last-ditch defender of the Community Charge (Poll Tax). He also supported caning in schools and was one of the MPs who objected to Diana Spencer, as Princess of Wales, being invited to address parliamentarians about landmines which then failed to proceed.

Section 28

In 1988 he came across the book Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin which was scandalously stocked in an Inner London Education Authority teachers’ resource centre. An angry Wilshire told the House of Commons: “The book portrays a child living with two men, and clearly shows that as an acceptable family relationship.” With his colleague, Conservative Monday Club MP Jill Knight, he introduced an amendment to the Local Government Bill which became known as Section 28, triggering a political storm from the universal Left. Demonstrations were held outside Parliament. Protesters invaded the studios of the BBC’s Six O’Clock News. Lesbians abseiled from the public gallery of the House of Lords. Ian McKellen, the homosexual actor, dubbed Wilshire and his co-sponsor, Jill Knight, the “ugly sisters” in a political pantomime. Despite all that, the amendment was approved with the support of Margaret Thatcher’s government. “I got a fair amount of hate mail and a fair amount of publicity, most of it unflattering” he recalled.

In the 1990s he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to another former Monday Club MP, Alan Clark.

He was one of the Eurosceptic plotters who met at the Carlton Club in London in May 1992. In April 1994 he claimed that some of his parliamentary colleagues were “close to breaking point” with John Major’s leadership of the Conservative Party and the following year he backed John Redwood’s challenge. He also opposed William Hague who later also stood for the party Leadership.

Wilshire was a member of the Anglo-Irish Parliamentary Body and from 1992 to 1997 served on the Northern Ireland Select Committee. After Tony Blair’s Good Friday Agreement, he opposed letting the Marxist Sinn Fein party into government without decommissioning their weapons, and in September 2000 backed the Democratic Unionist Party’s anti-Agreement Revd., William McCrea in the Antrim South by-election. In 1997 he was appointed to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, and was appointed leader of the Conservatives’ delegation to the Council of Europe, chairing its European Democratic Group in 2009-10.

Family

David was born in Bristol, the son of H. C. Wilson, a company director. He attended Kingswood School in the ancient Roman city of Bath in Gloucestershire and went on to FitzWilliam College at Cambridge University where he read geography. He married Margaret née Weeks in 1967; they separated in 2000. Tragically their 12 year-old daughter choked to death at school in 1980. They also had a son.

Sources

• The Daily Telegraph newspaper, London, 29 January 2024, Obituaries.