Julian Critchley

Sir Julian Michael Gordon Critchley (born December 9, 1930 in Islington , London , † September 9, 2000 ) was a British Conservative Party politician . He was a member of the House of Commons from 1959 to 1964 and from 1970 to 1997 .

Family and education

Critchley was born as one of two sons of the neurologist Macdonald Critchley and his first wife Edna Morris. He grew up in the London borough of Swiss Cottage and in Shropshire . He attended Church Stretton Elementary School and later moved to Shrewsbury School . He graduated from high school in London. After completing his schooling, he was not used for military service because of a polio illness that he contracted as a teenager . Critchley first spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris before 1951 to study at Pembroke College of Oxford University took up. Because of his political views, he was initially denied membership in the Oxford University Conservative Association , so he founded his own student union together with Michael Heseltine , with whom he had been friends since school. In 1953 Critchley was accepted by the Conservative Association. From 1955 he was married to Paula Baron, with whom he had two daughters. The marriage ended in divorce in 1965. In the same year he married Heather Goodrick. The marriage produced a son. After the couple separated, Critchley lived with his childhood sweetheart Prue Bellak from 1992.

Professional background

After graduating, Critchley worked for a marketing company before gaining a seat in the House of Commons in 1959 . Between 1964 and 1970, when he was not a member of parliament, he was mainly active as a journalist. During this time he worked, among other things, as a television critic for the newspaper The Times . He also wrote regular restaurant reviews for the Daily Telegraph .

Political career

From the mid-1950s, Critchley became involved with the Young Conservatives , the youth organization of the Conservative Party . In the general election of 1959 , he ran in the constituency of Rochester and Chatham as a candidate for the Conservative Party. He prevailed against the incumbent Arthur Bottomley by a narrow margin of only 1,023 votes or just under 2% . In his first term of office, he soon stood out for his independence from the line of his party and his work across party lines. So he worked with Fenner Brockway for a law against racial discrimination. He also fought for the rights of gays and lesbians and was against the death penalty . Even within the party, he repeatedly distanced himself from the party leadership. In the general election of 1964, he was narrowly defeated by Anne Kerr of the Labor Party . Although he also ran in the general election in 1966 , but could not prevail against Kerr again. In the 1970 general election , his party put him up as a candidate for the Aldershot constituency at relatively short notice . There he was able to prevail clearly against his fellow candidates as the successor to his party friend Eric Errington . He was able to defend his seat until his retirement in 1997, even though his mobility was considerably restricted from the beginning of the 1990s due to his polio illness. In addition, Critchley was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in 1992 .

Life after politics

After retiring from political life in 1997, Critchley settled in Ludlow . In the European elections in 1999 , he campaigned for the pro-Euro Conservative Party , a breakaway from the Conservative Party. He was then expelled from the Conservative Party. After Critchley was diagnosed with a bone tumor and a brain tumor in early 2000 , he died on September 9, 2000 and was buried in the Wistanstow cemetery.

Publications (selection)

• Westminster Blues , London 1981
• The Palace of Varieties , London 1983
• Heseltine - The Unauthorized Biography , London 1987, ISBN 0-233-98001-6
• A Bag of Boiled Sweets , London 1994, ISBN 0-571-17496-5 (autobiography)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Results of the 1959 lower house election on politicsresources.net ( memento of the original from January 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Results of the 1964 lower house election on politicsresources.net ( memento of the original from July 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Results of the 1964 lower house election on politicsresources.net ( memento of the original from August 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Results of the 1970 lower house election on politicsresources.net ( memento of the original from August 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• Obituary on the Telegraph homepage
• Julian Critchley at Hansard (English)