Nicholas Ridley (politician)

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Nicholas Ridley, Baron Ridley of Liddesdale, PC ( February 17, 1929 - March 4, 1993 ) was a British politician. He was a member of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet as a minister in various positions.

Life

He was the second son of Matthew Ridley, 3rd Viscount Ridley , from his marriage to Ursula Lutyens. On his mother's side he was a grandson of Sir Edwin Lutyens . He was at Eton College educated and studied at Balliol College of Oxford University . In 1955 he failed as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the Labor stronghold of Blyth. In the general election in 1959 , he won the constituency of Cirencester and Tewkesbury and moved into the House of Commons . There he quickly rose to become a front bencher. In 1973 he formed the Selsdon Group , an influential political interest group that represented ideas that were highlighted from 1975 under the new chairman Margaret Thatcher.

In 1979 he was appointed by the new Conservative government as the new negotiator for the Falkland Islands . After a trip to the islands, he made the proposal to hand over sovereignty to Argentina, but to lease the islands to the residents for an indefinite period according to the Hong Kong model. His proposal was not approved by either the islanders or parliament. In September 1981 Ridley was replaced by Richard Luce ; on April 1, 1982 the Falklands War began . From 1981 he was Undersecretary of State in the Treasury; in 1983, following the general election in 1983, Thatcher appointed him Minister of Transport to her cabinet . Here he played a crucial role in the government's preparations for an expected strike by the miners' unions . He also undertook the deregulation of the bus service in public transport, which was a prelude to the privatization of the bus service. Although he was an advocate of privatization in the Thatcher era, he always spoke out against the privatization of the railways, which did not take place until the reign of Thatcher's successor in office, John Major . Ridley was Secretary of the Environment from 1986 to 1989. In 1989, Thatcher said he was toying with the idea of ​​appointing Ridley to the treasury to replace the resigned Nigel Lawson , but eventually decided to appoint him as Minister of Commerce and Industry, as she knew Ridley's undiplomatic approach to the press.

Always frank, Ridley was forced to resign in 1990 by the backbenchers of the 1922 committee after an interview in the British magazine The Spectator . In this interview, he said that the European Economic and Monetary Union was a German scam with the aim of gaining control over Europe ( a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe ), which is why the Transfer of sovereign rights to the European Community is just as bad as transferring these rights to Adolf Hitler .

He did not run for the 1992 general election and was raised to Life Peer on July 28, 1992 as Baron Ridley of Liddesdale , of Willimontswick in the County of Northumberland, and thereby became a member of the House of Lords . Ridley, known to be an avid chain smoker who was pictured with a cigarette every time he appeared on the satirical Spitting Image television show, died of lung cancer on March 4, 1993.

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personal data
SURNAME Ridley, Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ridley, Nicholas, Baron Ridley of Liddesdale
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1929
DATE OF DEATH March 4th 1993