Dame Joan Varley
Former WAAF officer who became a Tory Party kingpin
DAME JOAN VARLEY, who has died aged 98, was a kingpin of Conservative Central Office, helping deliver victory at the polls for Edward Heath in 1970 and for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and 1983.
Appointed deputy director of organisation in 1966, she continued as director of local government organisation until 1984.
Her priority was to ensure the Tory machine on the ground got out every vote and, after her role changed in 1976, to build Conservative strength in the nation’s town halls. With Heath’s backing, she set up the Conservative Outside Organisations Women’s Committee which drafted the party’s response to Barbara Castle’s Equal Opportunities Bill, and prepared the party’s case for entry into the EEC.
Instantly recognisable for what one colleague called her “improbably red hair”, Joan Varley was no more a feminist in the conventional sense than Mrs Thatcher. But she promoted the adoption of more women candidates and was also secretary to the liaison committee of Conservative women MPS and peers.
Politics apart, her great interests were education – she chaired the governors of Thames Polytechnic – and her own family.
Joan Fleetwood Varley was born on February 22 1920, to Fleetwood Ireton Varley and his Irish wife Elizabeth. Her father was a descendant of General Charles Fleetwood, who married a daughter of General Henry Ireton, a fellow leader of the New Model Army. When her kinsman John Varley Jeffery published in 2007 Cromwell’s Deputy: The Life and Times of General Charles Fleetwood, she contributed the foreword.
From Ellery School for Girls, Clapham, Joan won a scholarship to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She then worked in a bank, taking an evening course in Economics at LSE. When the Blitz came, she survived two near misses on the journey home to Streatham.
In 1942 she joined the WAAF, becoming a radar operator with Fighter Command. Cycling back to quarters one evening, she was machine-gunned by an enemy aircraft. She threw herself into a ditch – then was reprimanded for her muddy uniform.
Commissioned in 1944, she moved into meteorology before D-day when, for the first time, the RAF opened the department to women. She rose to become its head.
Perturbed to hear at a demob party that many colleagues were moving to the Left, Joan Varley joined the Young Conservatives. Before long she was deputy constituency agent for Sir Anthony Eden in Warwick & Leamington, then agent in Shrewsbury.
In 1956 she was appointed Conservative Political Centre officer for the West Midlands, then in 1957 deputy Central Office agent for the North West. Appointed to Central Office in 1966, after the party’s double defeat of 1974 she was briefly director of central organisation, then in 1976 she was put in charge of local government.
Her role in Mrs Thatcher’s 1979 victory was acknowledged a year later when she was one of the first two women proposed for membership of the St Stephen’s Club.
In 1984 John Gummer, who had succeeded Cecil Parkinson as party chairman, made Joan Varley his special assistant. She was among the senior Tories evacuated from the Grand Hotel at Brighton when it was bombed during that October’s party conference, and who enabled the next day’s proceedings to go ahead as scheduled. She retired the following year.
Party luminaries including Lords Carrington, Heseltine and Howe gathered at the Carlton Club in 2010 to honour Dame Joan on her 90th birthday.
A long-standing resident of Notting Hill, she was instrumental in saving St James Norland Church from collapse and having it restored for use as a nursery school.
Joan Varley was appointed CBE in 1974, and DBE in 1984. She was unmarried.
Joan Varley, born February 22 1920, died July 23 2018