Warren Hawksley
Eurosceptic Tory MP who supported corporal punishment
WARREN HAWKSLEY, who has died aged 74, was a genial supporter of Enoch Powell who was Conservative MP for the Wrekin during Margaret Thatcher’s first two terms in office, and after losing his seat came back representing Halesowen & Stourbridge.
A keen shooter with forthright views on law and order, Hawksley campaigned for the return of the cane and the birch for mugging and football hooliganism. He opposed a ban on handguns in the wake of the Dunblane massacre, and pressed for a five-year ban on all immigration “while the country sorts itself out”.
Hawskley was a passionate Eurosceptic. Returning to the Commons just after John Major negotiated the Maastricht treaty, he was one of only a handful of Tories not to vote for any part of it.
An assiduous constituency MP, he played an important role in securing the Princess Royal Hospital for Telford and getting the M54 link constructed.
Philip Warren Hawksley was born at Oswestry on March 10 1943, the son of Bradshaw and Monica Hawksley, and educated at Denstone College. After leaving school, he worked for Lloyds Bank in Shrewsbury until his election to Parliament.
He was an active Young Conservative and from 1975 to 1977 deputy chairman of Oswestry Conservatives.
Elected to Shropshire County Council in 1970, he became a governor of Wolverhampton Polytechnic and served on the West Mercia Police Authority.
In the February and October 1974 elections, Hawksley took on Labour’s Renée Short at Wolverhampton North East, losing each time by a five-figure margin. He was not helped by Powell vacating his own seat at Wolverhampton after falling out with Edward Heath over Europe and urging the electorate to vote Labour.
At the 1979 election Hawksley captured the Wrekin from Labour’s Gerry Fowler by 965 votes. Re-elected in 1983 by 1,331 votes, he tried with two colleagues to amend the government’s Criminal Justice Bill to provide for the reintroduction of corporal punishment. From 1986 he served on the Employment Select Committee.
At the 1987 election he lost the Wrekin to Labour’s Bruce Grocott by 1,456 votes. Out of Parliament, Hawksley and his second wife bought the derelict Edderton Hall near Welshpool, and turned it into a two AA rosette hotel and restaurant – though incurring embarrassing coverage as it struggled to pay its bills.
Co-owner of the hotel from 1989 to 1997, Hawksley – who hosted shooting weekends there – became president of the Catering Industries Liaison Council.
In 1992 he took over from the equally Right-wing John Stokes as MP for Halesowen & Stourbridge, holding the seat with a majority of 9,582. He became secretary of the West Midlands Conservative MPS, returned to the Employment Select Committee in 1994 and later also served on the Home Affairs Committee.
Boundary changes in 1997 left him with the much tougher to win Stourbridge constituency, and with a heavy national swing against the Conservatives he lost to Labour’s Debra Shipley by 5,645 votes.
From 1998 Hawksley was director of the Staffordshirebased charity Re-solv, concerning solvent abuse. Campaigning for a crackdown on shopkeepers selling lighter fuel to children, he sought a change in the law to allow trading standards in Scotland as well as England to send youngsters in to make test purchases.
In 2008 he retired to Brittany.
Warren Hawksley was three times married, first to Cynthia, secondly to Evelyn and thirdly in 1999 to Kathie Lloyd, then chairman of Aberystwyth Conservatives. She survives him, with two daughters from his first marriage.