Daniel Awdry: Conservative MP who helped stem the Liberals' advance in the 1960s

Daniel Awdry became the Conservative Member for Chippenham in November 1962 and retained the seat for the next 17 years. In taking Chippenham, he did a great service to his party in stemming the Liberal advance after their triumphant victory in the Orpington by-election earlier that year.

The Liberals had expected to take Chippenham, too, and the run-up to the by-election was scarcely propitious for the Tories. Rumour had it that Central Office was trying to place an alumnus of the Conservative Research Department in the seat instead of a local candidate. After a week of protests, Awdry was invited to a selection meeting and was picked on the first ballot to fight in what effectively became a mini-general election, with five seats at stake across the country. The local farmers were contemplating running an anti-Common Market candidate, but the thought of running against a local thoroughbred like Awdry was too much for them.

Awdry was a Chippenham councillor and the seventh generation of his family to serve as mayor as well as the second-youngest (from 1958 to 1959). Not only did Awdry take the seat with just under 37 per cent of the vote, but he continued to fend off the Liberal Christopher Layton's challenge at the next two general elections. No matter what local issues Layton tried to exploit, Awdry's hard work and local roots proved too strong a bulwark for the Conservative position; and he had his reward in the general elections of February and October 1974. Wherever else the Liberals were on the march, they could make no further headway in Chippenham.

Described as a Wykehamist of the more boisterous sort, Daniel Edmund Awdry was the son of Col Portland Awdry, who commanded the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry. After Winchester, he underwent training for the Royal Armoured Corps at Sandhurst and served as a lieutenant in the 10th Hussars during the last winter of the war in Italy. In 1945 he became ADC to the General Officer Commanding the 56th Division. He left the army in 1947, but from then until 1962 continued as a territorial with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and was promoted to major and to the command of a squadron in 1955.

Articled as a solicitor, he qualified in 1950 and made a name for himself defending high-profile names accused of driving offences. Among them were Lord Devlin and Harold Macmillan's daughter Sarah, but his most notable coup came in August 1973 when he secured the acquittal of Captain Mark Phillips on a charge of dangerous driving. Phillips was about to marry Princess Anne.

Although in general standing well to the left of his party, supporting membership of the European Community, calling on Heath to modify the Industrial Relations Bill rather than clash with the trade unions, and repeating his call for its modification at the height of the miners' dispute that led to the Government's downfall, Awdry was hard to pigeonhole. He had a considerable interest in transport policy, serving as secretary of the Conservative backbench transport committee 1962-64 and as its chairman in 1974. When the breathalyser was being introduced, he tested his own capacity by drinking half a bottle of British Rail claret before taking the test. He only narrowly failed. He was one of the first to call for allowances for local councillors, but was bitterly hostile to attempts to align parliamentary sittings with the working day.

As secretary of the Conservative backbench legal affairs committee in the 1966 Parliament, he supported divorce-law reform. He was also one of the 10 sponsors in 1967 of a programme to reflate the economy, advocating import quotas, private investment in nationalised industries, a management revolution in Whitehall, and incentives to the trade unions to co-operate in a new legal framework. Where he sensed injustice he would take on ministers of either party. In March 1970 he exposed attempts in Whitehall to evade the Crichel Down principles – that land taken for wartime purposes should be offered back to the original owner – revealing that a farmer had been denied permission to buy back land requisitioned in 1942 because it had since received permission for sand extraction and could be sold to the highest bidder.

In 1972 he protested vigorously at the way in which the mugging of the chairman of Boots (a personal friend) by two household cavalrymen had been rushed through the magistrates court on the following day without the victim being notified. The troopers received minimal fines and Awdry accused the Home Secretary of a "cover-up". That did not prevent him becoming Private Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General in 1973. He had earlier had a brief spell as PPS to Edward du Cann, in 1964.

He found his last years in Parliament something of a strain as the Conservative Party sought to bring about the fall of a minority Labour Government with frequent late-night sittings. Tempers were high and parliamentary manners a good deal less good than Awdry thought proper. He felt that Parliament had lost a great deal when politics became a profession in its own right. "When I entered the House, it was regarded by many as a part-time job", he recalled approvingly, and as far as he was concerned that remained the case. Throughout his parliamentary career he continued to run the family practice of solicitors as well as taking directorships on the Boards of BET Omnibus Services, Sheepbridge Engineering, Rediffusion Ltd and Colonial Mutual Life Assurance.

Awdry was also a considerable sportsman, playing cricket for the Lords and Commons team – he was a fine bowler – and tennis for the House of Commons against the French. But his recreations also took in chess. He was a keen student of the game.

John Barnes

An understandable bond is fashioned, often across party lines, between by-election winners elected in the same year, writes Tam Dalyell. Daniel Awdry and I were both elected in 1962. I got to know him well through playing chess in the small hours of the morning, waking to vote, as was often the case in those days, after midnight. He confided to me: "The only reason I came to the House of Commons was that I was a fixture as Mayor of Chippenham and was thought by the Tory Association to be the most likely standard bearer to resist the anti-Harold Macmillan Liberal surge at the time, post-Orpington."

Perhaps it was his priority as asolicitor first and MP second that helped give him the strength to defy his many Wiltshire agricultural constituents, most of whom were passionately against the Common Market. Awdry should be honoured as a doughty champion of the European cause, and a believer, in public, in the Common Agricultural Policy when it was very unfashionable in rural southern England.

Daniel Edmund Awdry, politician: born Chippenham, Wiltshire 10 September 1924; Mayor of Chippenham, 1958–59; MP (Conservative) Chippenham 1962–1979; PPS to Minister of State, Board of Trade 1964; PPS to Solicitor-General 1973–74; director: BET Omnibus Services 1966–80; Sheepbridge Engineering 1968–79; Rediffusion Ltd 1973–85; Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Ltd 1974–89; married 1950 Elizabeth Cattley (died 2007; three daughters); died 11 October 2008.