Ex-Actors Of Parliament

Shed no tears - it’s yer Squall political graveyard

Squall 15, Summer 1997, pg. 20.

Michael Portillo
ex-Con MP Enfield and Southgate

Crimes too numerous to fit into one magazine, he was “sneaky, too right-wing and arrogant” according to a focus group survey of floating voters conducted by the Financial Times and advertising agency FCB.

Barry Legg
ex-Con MP Milton Keynes

Although escaping full responsibility in district auditor John Magill’s report, he was nevertheless deemed to have been “particularly” involved in the Westminster gerrymandering scandal. In an attempt to rehabilitate his political career he authored the Public Entertainments Licences (Drug Misuse) Act, 1997 allowing local authorities to close dance clubs if police think drug taking is occurring on the premises (See New Law To Close Clubs in this issue).

Olga Maitland
ex-Con MP Sutton and Cheam

Along with Margaret Thatcher and Damn Shirley Porter, Maitland formed a Beelzebub triumvirate and was often used by the media as a right wing dial-a-quote. As one of the sixteen Tory MPs on the Standing Committee, she was blurting advocate of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. If she’d had her way during the passage of the 1996 Noise Act, criminal sanctions against private parties would have been even worse: “Noise at night from other sources should be included in the Bill. For example cockerels crow at night and with the early dawn they make a dreadful piercing sound.”

Neil Hamilton
ex-Con MP Tatton
and secretary/wife Christine Hamilton

Consistently claimed that Neil was not a “liar and a cheat” after receiving backhanders for tabling parliamentary questions, when overwhelming evidence suggested this was putting it mildly. Deserve credit for keeping the whole sleaze affair ‘alive and kicking’ right up until election day (For more see book review of Sleaze: The Corruption Of Parliament in this issue).

Sir Graham Bright
ex-Con MP Luton South

As parliamentary private secretary to John Major, he was revealed as a major conduit of political influence for parliamentary lobbyists Ian Greer Associates. He also authored the Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Act 1990 which put criminal sanctions of up to £20,000 fines and/or six months imprisonment for organisers of unlicensed raves. He was also a public critic of Luton’s Exodus Collective (See Actors Of Parliament in Squall 10, Summer 1995).

Walter Sweeney
ex-Con MP Vale of Glamorgan
Dame Jill Knight
ex-Con MP Birmingham Edgbaston
Warren Hawksley
ex-Con MP Halesowen and Stourbridge

As members of the Home Affairs Select Committee report on freemasonry, they consistently voted in vain against the committee’s recommendation that all members of secret societies in the police and criminal justice system should declare their membership and that the register should be publicly available.