Lord Weatherill

Bruce Bernard Weatherill, tailor and politician: born Guildford, Surrey 25 November 1920; managing director, Bernard Weatherill Ltd 1957-70, president 1992-2007; MP (Conservative) for Croydon North-East 1964-83, MP for Croydon North-East and Speaker of the House of Commons 1983-92; Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury 1970-71; Vice-Chamberlain, HM Household 1971-72, Comptroller 1972-73, Treasurer and Deputy Government Chief Whip 1973-74; Chairman of Ways and Means and Deputy Speaker 1979-83; PC 1980; created 1992 Baron Weatherill; Convenor, Cross Bench Peers 1995-99; married 1949 Lyn Eatwell (two sons, one daughter); died Caterham, Surrey 6 May 2007.

Bernard Weatherill was an interesting man. But he was, from 1983 to 1992, an even more remarkable Speaker of the House of Commons. A Tory on bad terms with the Tory leadership (Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit), he was cavalryman and vegetarian, a proud, thimble-cherishing tailor and, latterly in the House of Lords, a sharp critic of the long-term drift of an off-democratic Commons.

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He was, it should be said first, an exceptionally nice man, quizzical, gentle, humorous, courtly but ungrand, somebody one would have thought it impossible to fall out with. However, Thatcher's leadership, like love, found a way.

A serious attempt was made by that leadership in 1988 to turn him out of the chair by way of a press campaign. He was attacked in articles ostensibly concerned that he could not control the House. To anyone working in the chamber or gallery that was nonsense. A good deal of noise is made by the British lower house, less than by the Australian (and politer), more than and not so polite as by the German - very much less than the norm before the First World War and nothing to compare with the fisticuffs of Suez. Weatherill was being got at because, to the rage of the Prime Minister, he took an independent view of the Private Notice Question.

PNQs are detested by all governments. They expose them to unwelcome preparation for a mini-debate on a contentious issue sweetly timed for the evening news. Facing an application on social security, Weatherill was told by Norman Tebbit that, if he allowed it, "we will set the dogs on". Genuinely distressed, he pressed on.

He met the larger campaign with the Weekend World television programme, making a categorical statement that he would stay in office, one which closed off any quiet consenting exit. His words were almost a doctrine for the chair: "My absolute intention is to is to ensure that everything that goes on in our nation is exposed in the House."

The dogs had barked in vain and the shabby, bullying move against an independent-minded Speaker played its part in Margaret Thatcher's descent. Anyway, the conspiracy lacked cohesion. A hostile piece appeared in the Daily Mail, but the present author was asked by a not fully briefed Daily Express executive to do a piece on Weatherill's supposed inadequacy at keeping order. When I replied, "No, he is an excellent Speaker keeping order perfectly well", I was told, "Well, do a piece saying that then."

The road to the chair and its hazards had never been quite orthodox. Weatherills, the family firm, is a handsome, prospering affair based in Windsor, and "Jack" Weatherill was the Queen's tailor. But his father had had a hard time as a young man, held Fabian views and was proud to have led a strike early in the century. Jack went to Malvern College and served in the Indian Army through the Second World War before becoming chairman of Guildford Young Conservatives in 1946. But he was the sort of officer who learns Urdu, and he witnessed and was profoundly influenced by the Bengal famine of 1942.

Married in 1949 to the good-natured Lyn Eatwell and with two sons and a daughter, for 20 years he was primarily in business, completing an apprenticeship at Weatherills after the war, becoming a working director thereafter and serving as managing director from 1957 to 1970. After entering Parliament for Croydon North-East in 1964, though he made small business and its problems his especial care, he was a natural for the Whips' Office, joining in 1967 and staying, in and out of office, until 1979.

He had ministerial ability but none of the egotistic assurance driving even amiable cabinet ministers. His well-known account of overhearing, in the Gents, a grander Tory saying, "Don't know what's become of the place. My tailor's become a Member!", though funny in retrospect, had depressed him at the time. He was notable in the Whips' Office as a gentle dissuader, his mild tact getting him the unofficial position, as he liked to describe it, of "the Shits' Whip", graceful handler of rebels, troublemakers and dissidents. He had risen to be deputy chief in 1973, but was sacked in 1979, having offended Thatcher by taking a free vote seriously and supporting PR in European elections.

Despite courtesy on his part and correctness on hers, they were wholly incompatible, not so much chalk and cheese as authoritarian and liberal; and, when Weatherill, soon after, took the job of Deputy Speaker (where he gave the casting vote for the entry of television cameras in 1980), conflicts would increase and antipathies deepen.

Thatcher enjoyed four years, 1979-83, of the Speakership of George Thomas, who subjected the Commons to dedicated henchmanship. His successor, Weatherill, whose model as Speaker was Selwyn Lloyd, gauged the job in terms of protecting backbenchers, encouraging debate and slipping out of the governmental embrace. Such a performance, he believed, could be measured by those government-disobliging PNQs. Lloyd's 60 a year had dwindled under Thomas to single figures. Under Weatherill, they shot up, and a leadership grown unhealthily triumphalist after the electoral success of 1983 took mortal offence.

Not that Thatcher had ever wanted him in the job; several Tories were floated in 1983 as "more suitable". His election, despite the great Tory majority, was a collegiate rebuff to the bosses.

The reign of Speaker Weatherill was full of events, containing the 11-month miners' strike, legislation on "the promotion of homosexuality", the Zircon affair and the Poll Tax, also the combustible conjunction in Parliament of Margaret Thatcher's increasingly assertive style and what was called "the Bench of Hooligans", a group of noisy, often entertaining, left-wingers sitting on the front opposition bench below the gangway. The Prime Minister made it clear privately in 1985 that she did not think she received the sort of protection from Weatherill which she and her office deserved and had had from Thomas. The Speaker, who had a large soft spot for non-respecters of authority, is said to have replied that she should not expect to be "cocooned".

Oddly enough, Weatherill was not a quarrelsome or combative man. But, for the principle of Commons freedom and put on his mettle by crude government pressure, he screwed himself up to resist. More than once he stopped dead in its tracks an out-of-order stooge question providing a free hit against some opposition policy, compelling Thatcher against nature to desist and sit down.

The Peter Wright case, an attempt by government to suppress the memoirs of an extreme right-wing member of the Secret Intelligent Service showing the service in a poor light, found Weatherill refusing to disallow debate on grounds of the Australian legal action's making it sub judice. In 1988 he compelled a minister to set out first to the Commons policies on the inner cities when his schedule had put a press conference first. The bitterest encounter with Thatcher came in her late years of indiscretion. Having already referred to the leader of the Opposition as "a Marxist, a crypto- Communist", she would speak of Neil Kinnock as "taking his orders" from the African National Congress. Weatherill made her withdraw the remark.

In the eyes of Tory loyalists, he became an enemy, someone clearly making a dead set against their leader. For example, when he authorised a debate on an ambulance strike in 1989, a backbencher shouted at him, "You grant that and you lose your job." And Peter Lilley, normally a fair and moderate man, accused him of being "less than even-handed", though the incident involved a damaging factual mistake made by Lilley about a Labour Member.

In fact, Weatherill's interventions against Labour MPs were quite as frequent, Dennis Skinner and Tam Dalyell fulfilling their quota of suspensions. And the official Labour leadership was riled by Weatherill's tendresse for the execrated far left. Weatherill's whole purpose in the chair was to encourage the free flow of debate and the expression of all opinions. Retiring in 1992, he went to the Lords, where, from 1995 to 1999, he was an active convenor of crossbench peers.

Jack Weatherill was the antithesis of the pro-executive George Thomas, instinctively making ministers answerable, obliging them to debate matters, denying them procedural cover. He would later develop the argument that MPs now too closely resembled local councillors in their enhanced constituency chores and were losing their voice on great issues.

Historically, he may now seem to have been fighting against the Zeitgeist. Large majorities and personal instincts have made New Labour parliaments, except on rare occasions like the Iraq war, flaccid beyond belief. But the principle is profoundly right and runs far beyond a particular government.

Weatherill occasionally confused a name or swore under his breath, but he had a better idea than most of what Parliament was for.

Edward Pearce

Jack Weatherill called me the platoon sergeant of the awkward squad, writes Tam Dalyell, but made sure that we were given a fair crack of the whip on the floor of the House of Commons.

One of the duties of a Speaker is to welcome guests from abroad. With his knowledge of Asian languages and Indian Army experience, Weatherill was a huge success with visitors from the Subcontinent. My abiding memory, however, is the way that he greeted my guests Kayapan Ruini and Megaron (who had a ring attached to his lip), chiefs of the Amazonian tribes.