Maureen Hicks
No-nonsense Wolverhampton Tory MP, robust on law and order and fiercely loyal to Mrs Thatcher
MAUREEN HICKS, who has died aged 75, was a commonsensical promoter of tourism to Stratfordupon-avon who served as Conservative MP for Wolverhampton North East from 1987 to 1992.
During her single term in the Commons her loyalty to Margaret Thatcher earned her the accolade of “Backbench Creep of the Year” from The Guardian’s Andrew Rawnsley. She supported compulsory ID cards, capital punishment and corporal punishment (“in spite of myself ”), backed moves to tighten the abortion laws and opposed the televising of Parliament, to avoid “publicity-seeking”.
Vice was a problem in her constituency, and in 1988 she promoted a Bill to jail prostitutes if fines did not keep them off the streets; the Home Office minister Douglas Hogg persuaded her to withdraw it. The following year, she attacked “unprofessional and unscrupulous” doctors for “feeding patients a diet of misinformation” about Kenneth Clarke’s NHS reforms.
Bespectacled and with Irish roots, Maureen Hicks became involved with local tourism at Stratford after moving to the area with her airline pilot husband. Before entering Parliament she was a director of the Stratford Motor Museum, served on the Heart of England Tourist Board, and in 1978 helped to form Stratford-upon-avon and District Marketing, which brought together hotels, retailers and attractions with council support. Its aim was to secure the maximum benefit for the local economy, with a minimum of disruption for the townspeople.
She was born Maureen Patricia Cutler at Burton-on-sea, Hampshire, on February 23 1948 to Ronald Cutler, a builder, and the former Norah O’neill. She failed the 11-plus, but gained entry to Brockenhurst Grammar School at 13, going on to train at Furzedown College of Education.
After a year teaching English and drama in a secondary school, she joined Marks & Spencer in 1970 as an assistant staff manager. After two years as an assistant education officer with Surrey County Council she took up her post with the Stratford Motor Museum in 1976.
She joined the Young Conservatives in Tunbridge Wells in 1970, and was a Stratford councillor from 1979 to 1974.
Before the 1987 election, Maureen Hicks was selected to fight Wolverhampton North East. The seat had been Labour for 40 years, but in 1983 a Conservative had slashed the majority of the Labour veteran Renée Short to 214 and she had since decided to retire.
Nationally, the election produced a small swing to Labour, but on the night she defeated Labour’s Ken Purchase to take the seat by 204 votes – one of only nine Tory gains against 30 losses.
At Westminster she made her maiden speech in a debate on education reforms, served on the Education Select Committee and was secretary of the All Party group on tourism. From 1990 she was PPS to the Foreign Office ministers, the Earl of Caithness and Mark Lennox-boyd.
Her chances of re-election in 1992 were rated slim, given Labour’s hopes of ousting John Major’s government. But she fought the campaign with vigour, touring the constituency in a battle bus with her theme song, Tina Turner’s Simply the Best.
Maureen Hicks increased her vote, but Purchase took enough votes off the Liberal Democrats to capture Wolverhampton North East by 3,939 votes. He would hold it until his retirement in 2010. Back in Stratford, she became project director for the town’s Visitor Management National Pilot Project and a founder member of the Shakespeare Country Association of Tourist Attractions – which includes the Royal Shakespeare Company, Warwick Castle, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and other Shakespeare Birthplace Trust properties.
In November 1995, Stratford’s Conservative MP Alan Howarth defected to Labour; the local Conservative association quickly moved to select a candidate to replace him. Maureen Hicks, as a local contender, made the shortlist of six but lost out to John Maples, unseated at Lewisham West in 1992.
She went on to be fundraising director for the Myton Hamlet Hospice at Warwick, then from 2000 to 2004 was the council’s Stratford town centre project manager. From then until 2021 she was a tourism consultant and freelance tour director specialising in worldwide railway tours.
She was also at various times a nonexecutive director of South Warwickshire Combined Care NHS Trust; chairman of the governors of Kingsley Girls’ School, Leamington Spa; vice-chairman of the Earl Mountbatten hospice on the Isle of Wight; and a governor of the Warwick Independent Schools Foundation. Recently she had been a volunteer caseworker for Citizens’ Advice, a steward at Stratford Literary festival and a National Trust guide at Charlecote.
Maureen Cutler married Keith Hicks in 1973. He survives her with their daughter and son.