Cecil Parkinson is still punishing his lovechild from beyond the grave
Two years after the former Tory Party chairman’s death, his disabled daughter Flora Keays – whom the politician tried to conceal – is living in ‘serious financial hardship’
FROM the age of 10 until she turned 18, Flora Keays did not officially exist. Suffering from physical and learning difficulties she was subjected to a draconian court order almost unprecedented in British law, which forbade anyone from doing anything that could lead to her identity being revealed.
It meant she could not appear in school photographs and was banned from class theatrical productions, and that even her mother – and Flora herself – could not talk about her life.
Why? For no other reason than that she was the illegitimate child of a Tory peer.
Flora’s father is the late Cecil Parkinson, one-time right-hand man of Margaret Thatcher and rising star of the Conservative Party. But after his 12-year affair with Flora’s mother Sara – at the time his personal secretary – was exposed in 1983, he was forced to resign from government and his political career never fully recovered.
It seems he did not forgive Sara for continuing with the pregnancy – or his illegitimate daughter for being born. And now, aged 34 and reportedly in “serious financial hardship”, Flora is once again the subject of an almighty snub from her late father, even from beyond his grave.
The high court has heard this week how Flora has been cut off financially from Lord Parkinson’s estate since shortly after his death in 2016. Prior to that she received £5,000 four times a year from the former Conservative Party chairman but was notably absent from his £1.14million will. Mother Sara, 70, whom the court heard has devoted her life to her daughter’s care, welfare and education, has now taken legal action in an effort to secure some financial provision for her daughter.
The court heard how in March 2016 there had been one last payment of £5,000 to Flora, and apart from occasional payments made in arrears on an ad hoc basis, nothing since.
“Ms Keays’ evidence is that this has placed her, and indirectly the claimant [Flora], in severe financial difficulties,” said the judge, “resulting in her being unable to meet the mortgage payments or to meet other essential and pressing needs, including repairing the central heating boiler.”
For their part, Lord Parkinson’s estate is contesting that Sara Keays’ role as “litigation friend” (a legal name for a court representative to someone unable to represent themselves) for her daughter was tainted by her “bizarre perception” that his family, the executors and their solicitors were involved in a conspiracy against her.
THE judge has dismissed this, saying she was satisfied that Sara was a suitable litigation friend for her daughter. If it makes for a sad and unseemly spectacle, it is also tragically typical of Flora’s relationship with her father. From the moment she was born it seems that, for Parkinson at least, it would have been better if Flora had never existed. So much so that he spent most of her life effectively trying to make it appear as if she never did.
Sara says that after Flora’s birth it was made clear to her that he intended never to have anything to do with his daughter. He didn’t meet or even speak to Flora once, even after she had surgery to remove a brain tumour aged just four. Sara says that when she was pregnant Parkinson had tried to persuade her to abort her baby.
After Flora’s physical and mental health issues, including Asperger’s, became an increasing burden, Sara sued him for maintenance but it was granted only on condition of his draconian injunction, which made Flora effectively invisible until she turned 18 in 2002.
“The restrictions were so severe that when Flora participated in an ice show, the school couldn’t put her name in the programme,” Sara later said. “It was as if she didn’t exist.”
Speaking after her 18th birthday when the restrictions were finally lifted, Flora herself revealed her heartbreak at being cut off from her own father, simply, it seems, because she was a political inconvenience. “I would like to see him,” she said. “If he loved me, he would want to see me and be in my everyday life. I would like to go to the cinema with him and have some fun.”
She also revealed she never received so much as a birthday card from Parkinson. “Mum told me not to expect a card but I do feel a bit sad about it,” she said.
“I think my father has behaved very badly. I feel jealous that my mother has known him but I haven’t, and jealous of other people who go on holiday with their fathers when I don’t.”
After Parkinson’s death in 2016, Flora’s name was not included in the death notice his family placed in the press, despite it mentioning his other children, grandchildren and even his two step-grandsons.
Now it seems the animosity the one-time Tory grandee bore to the little girl he felt had ruined his political career continues even after his death.
Whatever the result of Sara Keays’ latest attempt to gain recognition for her daughter from Lord Parkinson’s estate, for Flora herself it may all be just another sad reminder of a father who never wanted her to be born – and who did everything he could to pretend she hadn’t been.