Sir Philip Carter Goodhart

"M.P. Beckenham" * (Minister of Parliament)

• As Noted in the Baker Genealogy - Compiled 1957/1958 by May Baker Morten and RP Baker

- Revised 1970 by HB Baker

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Obit in The Telegraph

Sir Philip Goodhart, who has died aged 89, was a Conservative MP with transatlantic roots who served briefly in Margaret Thatcher’s government and was a stalwart of the 1922 Committee; he was its joint secretary for 19 years, and published its history in 1973.

Goodhart was at the heart of the leadership contests of 1965 – when Edward Heath succeeded Sir Alec Douglas-Home – and 1975, when Mrs Thatcher ousted Heath. In both he was a scrutineer, but the second time he was also a participant in the decisive meeting at the City office of Sir Edward du Cann, chairman of the “22”. Accused of plotting to install Mrs Thatcher, Goodhart explained: “The election of Margaret Thatcher was not inevitable. The departure of Ted Heath was.”

The scion of an American banking family, Goodhart represented Beckenham for 35 years, having had to prove that he was born in Britain when selected to fight a by-election in 1957. He was on the strategic but not the economic Right – for the death penalty and immigration controls, wary of race relations legislation, for Europe, vehemently against the poll tax. He was a supporter of Israel and hawkish on Vietnam, reckoning the war winnable as late as 1972.

Goodhart was thoughtful in his anti-Communism; though incensed when the Soviet Union intervened in Czechoslovakia, he argued against expelling it from the Mexico Olympics. In 1973 he nominated the dissident Andrei Sakharov for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Either side of a brief spell as a junior defence minister, he campaigned to maintain the effectiveness of Britain’s armed forces. He also took an interest in Northern Ireland, recognised when Mrs Thatcher sent him to Stormont under Humphrey Atkins. With the Conservatives’ formal ties with the Ulster Unionists broken when Britain assumed direct rule, Goodhart, in 1974, formed with official blessing the Conservative Ulster group, so that their MPs could continue to meet; it survived until the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985. He pressed for Ulster’s anti-terrorist laws to be as tough as in the Republic, and after the 1996 Manchester bombings suggested the Irish government be asked to foot the bill.

Philip Goodhart electioneering with his wife Valerie in 1957 (Rex Features)
He was arguably the first MP to urge a referendum over Europe, holding one in his constituency in 1970 and voting against in the crucial division in 1972 because Heath would not. He went on to press for referenda on devolution, the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Maastricht Treaty.

Goodhart was a fount of ideas, not always appreciated by the Tory leadership but often ahead of their time. He called for a sex offenders’ register as early as 1957, automatic train control after the Lewisham disaster in which several constituents perished, non-lethal gases for use by troops and counter-terrorist technology linked to identity cards (in 1975).

For 20 years he was a council member of the Consumers’ Association. He promoted the 1971 Unsolicited Goods and Services Act which outlawed “inertia selling”; it proved largely effective, though bogus directory firms continued to find loopholes. He also helped end the maximum wage for footballers. Professional football, he declared in 1960, was “inefficiently organised, semi-bankrupt and often a thoroughly bad employer”. Years later, he bought at Sotheby’s a sheaf of players’ contracts from those days, among them Bobby Charlton’s. Before the advent of Sky he campaigned for pay television which, he foresaw, would inject wealth into professional sport. Goodhart’s interest in naval affairs led him to vote against Trident on grounds of cost and excessive firepower, and propose shifting cruise missiles from Greenham Common to submarines. He also founded the Warship Preservation Trust, and helped ensure the preservation of the Royal Yacht Britannia. He captained the parliamentary ski team three times for its annual race against Swiss legislators. Twice he required stitches in his head and back, and in 1985 he broke a leg. In 1964, he climbed Mont Blanc. Philip Carter Goodhart was born in London on November 3 1925, eldest son of the American-born Professor A L Goodhart, Master of University College, Oxford, and the former Cicely Carter. The middle son, William, became vice-chairman of the International Commission of Jurists and a Liberal Democrat life peer, and the youngest, Charles, Professor of Banking at LSE.

He was educated in America at Hotchkiss School, then at Trinity College, Cambridge; he would lament that in his time the Trinity contingent in the Commons declined from 42 to nine. War service followed as a lieutenant in the Rifle Corps and the Parachute Regiment. He gave up boxing after the Army featherweight champion chose him as a sparring partner.

In 1950 he joined the Telegraph. Writing for the leader page, he covered strategic issues and reported from colonial Africa, and from Russia after the death of Stalin with a parliamentary delegation. He covered Arsenal’s historic match with Moscow Dynamo, and in Minsk shared a palatial suite with Arsenal’s trainer while star players slept in a dormitory with peasants who kept their boots on. In 1955 he moved to Time and Tide as deputy editor, but soon left for the Sunday Times, covering the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya.

Goodhart fought Consett in 1950, served on the London County Council’s education committee and narrowly missed selection for Warwick and Leamington when Sir Anthony Eden resigned. Elected for Beckenham, he warned that Kenya was heading for tribal warfare if Jomo Kenyatta took power and pressed for a compensation scheme for British farmers forced to leave. Closer to home, Goodhart highlighted problems for the feet of Army recruits caused by wearing winklepickers, and noted that Home Office regulations barring men under 5ft 8 ins from the police ruled out Harold Wilson and George Brown.

After the defeat of 1964, Sir Alec added Goodhart to his defence team. He campaigned against Labour’s “destruction” of the Territorial Army and when the TSR2 aircraft was cancelled, predicted many of its skilled workers would end up making plastic birdbaths. When Sir Alec stood down, he joined Reginald Maudling’s campaign; the “22” felt it quite proper for him also to be a scrutineer. Heath dropped him as a defence spokesman after six months.

From the back benches he accused Labour of conducting “economic war on missionaries and crippled African children” by cutting off aid to Rhodesia after UDI. He returned from Aden rejecting claims by Amnesty International that British soldiers had killed 50 Arabs, and in 1967 tried to postpone the territory’s independence. But his prime concern was Vietnam. Goodhart formed an Anglo-Vietnamese Friendship Society, tried in vain to visit North Vietnam, and suggested sending surplus toys donated for the children of Aberfan to orphanages in Saigon. After Vietnam fell, he pressed for countries throughout Asia to take “boat people”, and voted against their forced repatriation from Hong Kong.

A flurry of speeches from Labour politicians in 1968 advocating limits on the size of families made Goodhart, a father of seven, nervous. He urged ministers to disown such talk, and the issue was dropped. When Mrs Thatcher came to power, she made Goodhart Under-Secretary for Northern Ireland; his main responsibility was housing. In January 1981 he moved to the MoD as Under-Secretary for the Army. It was a job he relished, but after just four months he was given a multi-service portfolio when Keith Speed was sacked as navy minister for resisting John Nott’s cuts.

Goodhart’s unhappiness with the new ministerial structure must have shown, for that September Mrs Thatcher sacked him with a knighthood. Goodhart reflected: “The same day, a cousin of mine was sacked by Salomon Brothers after a Wall Street takeover. He got $4 million.”

From the back benches he concentrated on Ulster, criticising James Prior’s programme of “rolling devolution” and urging a public inquiry into the De Lorean affair. In 1983 he was offered a police guard after an IRA bombing near his Kensington home. Soon after, he sparked fury in the Falklands by suggesting the less populous West Falkland be ceded to Argentina.

In 1984 Goodhart, in the eyes of some, moved into the camp of the “Wets” by proposing a £900 million programme to cut unemployment by a million – though he insisted none of Mrs Thatcher’s policies would be breached. He co-founded Conservative Action to Revive Employment to put a greater focus on education and training. When Sir Anthony Meyer staged his “stalking-horse” challenge to Mrs Thatcher in 1989, Goodhart balloted his own association, securing a 9-1 result in her favour. And when John Major – whom he had pressed to take on the Bosnian Serbs – stood down after his landslide defeat in 1997, Goodhart proposed Tom King as caretaker leader.

He left the Commons in 1992. But he remained an assiduous campaigner, notably for road humps. In 2005 he was a founder of Save Sloane Square, whose campaigning forced Kensington and Chelsea council to drop plans to replace the square with a crossroads.

He was a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1963, and for almost three decades to the North Atlantic Assembly. At various times Goodhart chaired the Conservative backbench Defence and Northern Ireland committees, the Anglo-Taiwan Parliamentary Group and the board of Sulgrave Manor, George Washington’s ancestral home.

His books included The Hunt for Kimathi (1958), In the Shadow of the Sword (1964), Fifty Ships that Saved the World (1965), War Without Weapons, with Christopher Chataway (1968), Referendum (1970), The 1922 (1973), and Full Hearted Consent (1975).

Philip Goodhart married Valerie Winant, niece of America’s wartime ambassador to Britain, in 1950; she died in 2014. He is survived by their three sons and four daughters.

Sir Philip Goodhart, born November 3 1925, died July 5 2015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Goodhart

Philip C Goodhardt

• England & Wales, Marriage Index, 1837-2005
• Marriage date: Apr-May-June 1950
• Marriage place: Westminster, England
• Spouse (implied): Valerie F Winant