Martin Brandon-bravo
Nottingham Conservative MP noted for his sense of fun who was also a leading figure in rowing
MARTIN BRANDON-BRAVO, who has died aged 86, was one of Nottingham’s leading political figures over four decades, as in turn a Conservative city councillor, MP for Nottingham South and deputy leader of the opposition on the county council.
An accomplished sculler and captain of the Nottingham club, he became an international rowing umpire for 28 years, the manager of several British international teams and from 1993 to 2001 president of the Amateur Rowing Association.
Crucially, he was the driving force behind siting the National Water Sports Centre at Holme Pierrepont, just outside the city, when the rowing establishment wanted it near London. “We told them: ‘Get knotted’, and won the vote by one,” he recalled.
Noted for his enthusiasm and sense of fun, Brandon-bravo made friends and allies across the Tory spectrum. Kenneth Clarke, on the Left of the party, was a long-standing friend, yet at Westminster he became a loyal PPS to David Waddington, who was firmly on the Right.
Elected in the Tory landslide of 1983 – at 51 the oldest of the new intake – Brandonbravo never saw himself as ministerial material. But he made the perfect PPS, and undertook missions overseas for the Government, notably to Russia.
On his own behalf, he toured the townships of apartheid South Africa and – in breach of Government policy – met leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Tunis (despite being Jewish himself ).
Shortly before losing his seat in 1992, Brandon-bravo accompanied three other MPS to the Yemen to persuade its government to allow the remaining Jewish community to leave. Eventually they relented, provided the operation was carried out in total secrecy and no flights went direct to Israel.
Martin Maurice Brandon-bravo was born to working-class parents in west London on March 25 1932. Passing the 11-plus in 1943, he attended Latymer Upper school.
After National Service, he moved to Nottingham in 1952 to go into the rag trade. Joining Richard Stump Ltd he became in turn a floor manager, factory manager, production director, assistant managing director and, in 1979, managing director. After his election to Parliament he became a non-executive director.
Brandon-bravo joined the Nottingham and Union Rowing Club in 1952, and five years later became its skipper. The club went on to win the Gold Medal at Henley in 1963 (and again in 2010); from 1983 until his death he was its active president.
Negotiations to create the country’s first 2,000-metre international rowing course on the disused Holme Pierrepont gravel pits began in 1967 between the county council, Hoveringham Gravels and Brandon-bravo, as secretary of the rowing club and the Midland Nautilus Scheme, and Midlands representative of the ARA.
Just two weeks later the Lea Valley Authority announced plans for a parallel £1million project in North London, but the council decided to press ahead with making Holme Pierrepont “the water equivalent of the Crystal Palace”. In the early spring of 1973 Holme Pierrepont hosted its first regatta. That July, the prime minister Edward Heath helicoptered in to declare the £1.5million centre open, describing it as a valuable asset for the nation created out of “a blot on the landscape”. Brandon-bravo served on its management committee from 1972 to 1983.
Meanwhile, he was a city councillor from 1968 to 1971, and from 1976 until 1987, and chaired Nottingham West Conservatives from 1970 to 1973.
He first stood for Parliament in 1979, cutting Labour’s majority at Nottingham East to 2,500 as Margaret Thatcher came to power. Four years later he contested the new seat of Nottingham South, defeating the Labour Left-winger Ken Coates by 5,715 votes.
At Westminster, Brandon-bravo became PPS to housing ministers, then after holding his seat with a reduced majority in 1987 was taken up by Waddington, then Minister of State at the Home Office. Waddington kept him on after becoming Home Secretary when John Major succeeded Mrs Thatcher, and again the following year when he was moved upstairs to be Leader of the Lords.
Though Brandon-bravo was not a voluble backbencher, he was determined to look his best when regular televising of the Commons began in 1989. Ann Martin, a Nottingham image consultant, gave him the once-over and declared herself “quite impressed”.
When he did rise to speak, it was to call for the police to crack down on the sale of pornography in shops not authorised to handle it. He also spent some time trying to ascertain how Gregg Sandall, a prize recruit with the Parachute Regiment, came to die in August 1989 aged 21 while in California for a joint training exercise with the 82nd Airborne, when a hired Ford Mustang in which he and three friends were travelling inexplicably swerved off the road and overturned, killing Gregg and a fellow Para. At the time it appeared that Gregg’s personal effects, including $700 in cash, had been misplaced or stolen.
His family launched a campaign which involved Brandon-bravo. But a Special Investigations Bureau inquiry unearthed few new facts.
At the 1992 election Brandon-bravo lost Nottingham South by 3,181 votes to another Left-winger, Alan Simpson. Two years later he tried for the European Parliament, finishing a poor second for Nottingham & Leicestershire North West.
He was elected a county councillor in 1993, becoming in time deputy leader of the Conservative group. Retiring from politics in 2009, he was appointed an honorary alderman of both the county and the city councils. The next year he came through three cancer operations.
As a vice-president of British Rowing, the sport’s overall governing body, Brandonbravo officiated at the 2012 London Olympics. Awarded Nottingham’s premier award for services to sport last year, he commented: “Whatever idiot nominated me wants their backside kicking.”
Brandon-bravo published his autobiography, Rowing Against the Tide, in 2013. He was appointed OBE in 2002.
Martin Brandon-bravo married Sally Wallwin in 1964; she and their two sons survive him.
Martin Brandon-bravo, born March 25 1932, died August 15 2018