Sir Marcus Fox

John Marcus Fox, politician: born Batley, Yorkshire 11 June 1927; MBE 1963; MP (Conserviatve) for Shipley 1970-97; Assistant Government Whip 1972-73; a Lord Commissioner, HM Treasury 1973-74; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment 1979-81; Vice-Chairman, 1922 Committee 1983-92, Chairman 1992-97; Chairman, Committee of Selection 1984-92; Kt 1986; PC 1996; married 1954 Ann Tindall (one son, one daughter); died Shipley, West Yorkshire 16 March 2002.

"And thus," said Marcus Fox, leaning across a snooker table, "I pot the red." What sounded like a misquotation from Gaev in The Cherry Orchard was a genial crack in a 1979 television party-political broadcast. "Genial" is a good word for Fox, Conservative MP for Shipley from 1970 to 1997.

Born in Batley, educated in Dewsbury, representing Shipley, living in Bingley, though he scorned people "who get posh, seek a different circle and move out to Harrogate", Fox represented upward mobility, Yorkshire-style. The son of a transport manager, he went to grammar school, skipped university, served in the Green Howards during the Second World War, and married a local girl, Ann Tindall. He worked his way from bank clerking to senior positions in sales management, notably for Terry's the chocolate makers, to an extensive and very successful business career.

But he was very much a social being, endlessly clubbable, a sort of electric rotarian. The qualities which so fitted him for business made him a natural for the Conservative apparat. Joining the Young Conservatives in his teens, chairman of local and Yorkshire and vice- chairman of national YCs, borough councillor, two local unwinnable seats (Dewsbury, Huddersfield West) before the safe one, he was the sort of politician certified at birth for the Whips' Office. That he should reach his apotheosis as Chairman of the 1922 Committee should have surprised nobody, though the way he would do the job very much did.

The early part of his parliamentary career was organisational, not directed at policy, though he did hold opposition junior frontbench positions on environment, housing and transport after his election at Shipley in 1970. A happy supporter of early Thatcherism, Fox was Margaret Thatcher's choice as party vice-chairman in charge of candidates in the run-up to the 1979 election. Having, at his own estimate, interviewed 3,000 candidates, 16 a day, four days a week, the snooker player had placed quite a few balls on the table.

The necessity of rejection won him in disappointed quarters the epithet "the Shipley Strangler". But he would soon be scragged himself. Personal loyalty never being a Thatcher strength, Fox was not rewarded with a shining path up the ministerial slope. Two years as No 3 at the Department of the Environment ended in discard, a foolish waste of a rare, capable Tory politician without the tone of a chalk-striped alien. (At the end of the war, Lieutenant Fox had declined the offer of Sandhurst, remarking later that he had never met a general with a Yorkshire accent.)

Discounted at 54, Fox set about the creation of an alternative career. The 1922 Committee of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, created after the party's revolt from Lloyd George's coalition, comprises the whole parliamentary party; its officers, all elected, sometimes steady loyalists, sometimes, like Edward Du Cann, keen to pull threads. Theoretically it serves as liaison between government and backbenchers obliged to convey the displeasure of latter to former. Fox set about advancing within it. On the committee at once, he became vice-chairman in 1983, serving under the glum, grand and press-abominating Cranley Onslow, before reckoning, correctly, that a change would be a good thing and that he had the votes for it.

List Fox's recorded opinions, support for the death penalty, soft line on South Africa, grumbling about immigration, anti-abortion, a privatiser at sight, he sounded like a furious right-winger. But no sourness, no rage accompanied those opinions. His views were not lightly held, but they lacked animus. He was a populist, very much a West Riding populist. Not a professional Yorkshireman, but a genuine and undiluted one, who took his holidays near Filey, he was alive to opinion on the streets. And, an ingrained proper politician, he picked no quarrels with it. The good-humour made him a natural colleague of John Major, who did do loyalty, and, despite the difference of outlook between them, Fox gave that loyalty back in full.

The Major government suffered from three things apart from failure to devalue inside or out of the ERM: obsessional hostility to deeper European ties from its right wing; a campaign of limitless denigration from half a dozen newspapers, normally loyal to the Tories; and a dwindling majority. Fox reckoned that, in those circumstances, he should give a prime minister he liked and respected first and second bite of his loyalty. He became an object of bitter resentment to the Teresa Gorman, Bill Cash, Iain Duncan Smith crowd. Fox's instinct for loyalty was reinforced by a trade-union feeling towards another unsmart, unlacquered, regional-accented politician as human being.

Not that Fox failed to respond quickly to other complaints from the shop floor; he used a radio broadcast to tell Michael Heseltine that a cull of 31 pits and 30,000 jobs should be withdrawn. Short-term, at least, it was. He also conveyed to David Mellor privately by phone the loss of all party support and recommended his doing the customary, pearl-handled, decent thing.

That performance had to be run again after the rather different embarrassments of the Northern Ireland Security Minister Michael Mates. But the ultimate affront to the right came when Fox told them flatly and candidly that their rebellions were on the way to provoking a general election.

His style as chairman was very public, using especially radio interviews to pass his message. The approach stood halfway between the ever-spinning Blair people and the supposed word in the ear of the old and chuntering club style. It would provoke a revolt against Fox himself from Sir Nicholas Bonsor, but, though it was close-run, Fox was well enough liked to survive. In the general slaughter of the 1997 general election, which four years of steady backbench and tabloid self-indulgence had mightily increased, Fox finally lost Shipley to a Blair cadet of 24.

Fox held his office as chairman through six exceptionally difficult years, using his store of personal popularity in defence of a Conservative government out of fashion and under fire, though returning outstanding economic figures. His conduct was irregular, but honourable, leaving a good feeling behind it, and he had blocked the ultra-blue ball on the cushion.

Edward Pearce