John Biffen

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William John Biffen, Baron Biffen, PC (born 3 November 1930), is a Conservative member of the House of Lords, who previously spent 36 years in the House of Commons.

He represented the constituency of Oswestry, later renamed Shropshire North, from the time of his election at a by-election in 1961 until his retirement immediately prior to the 1997 General Election. In the same year he was made a life peer, sitting as Baron Biffen, of Tanat in the County of Shropshire.

In his early political career he was a disciple of Enoch Powell, voting for him in the Conservative leadership election of 1965. Biffen was a Eurosceptic and voted against Britain's entry into the EEC in 1972. Biffen championed tight fiscal policy and opposed state intervention in economic management. This stance barred his way to advancement under Edward Heath, but contributed to his promotion under Margaret Thatcher. He served in Mrs Thatcher's government in the successive positions of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Trade, and as Leader of the House of Commons. In the 1960s Biffen joined the Mont Pelerin Society.

In 1981 Biffen allowed Rupert Murdoch to buy The Times and The Sunday Times without reference to the Monopolies Commission.^[1] According to Woodrow Wyatt, who helped persuade Mrs. Thatcher to ensure this, the Commission "almost certainly would have blocked it."^[2]

As Leader of the House Biffen used the guillotine to cut short debate on the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1986. Edward Pearce has written that Biffen "was widely thought the best post-war floor leader".^[3]

Biffen's image as an economic dry mellowed during his time in government and he made blunt public calls for greater moderation in government policy. In 1980 he warned the country to prepare for "three years of unparalleled austerity". In 1981 Biffen gave a speech to a fringe meeting at that years Conservative Party Conference in which he claimed the party was "within touching distance of the débâcles of 1906 and 1945." He further claimed that far from cutting public spending, the government had increased it by two per cent since 1979 and that the government was part of an all-party consensus in favour of the welfare state and public spending: "We are all social democrats now", Biffen concluded in his speech.^[4]

On February 9 1986 he claimed that Toryism was "not a raucous political faction" and after the Conservative Party's losses in the local government elections and in two by-elections in 1986 Biffen was interviewed on Weekend World by Brian Walden on May 11 as the government's spokesman. He called the results "Black Thursday", said the Conservatives needed to fight the next general election on a "balanced ticket" and that "no one seriously supposes that the Prime Minister would be Prime Minister throughout the entire period of the next Parliament".^[5] This alienated him from Mrs Thatcher and resulted in his being dropped from the Cabinet after the 1987 General Election. His axeing was no surprise, in that Mrs Thatcher's press secretary Bernard Ingham had already famously called him a "semi-detached" member of the Cabinet. Thatcher in her memoirs described Biffen's desire for a balanced ticket as "foolish" and "a recipe for paralysis."^[6]

In the month after his sacking Biffen criticised Thatcher's government as a "Stalinist regime".^[7] On the backbenches Biffen voted against the Local Government Finance Act 1988 which introduced the Community Charge. He voted against the Maastricht Treaty and was in favour of a referendum on the EU Constitution so he could vote 'No'.^[8]

Despite his right-wing views on economic policy, he was very much to the left of Margaret Thatcher on social policy: he completely opposes capital punishment, and has been very supportive of equal gay rights whilst, conversely, agreeing with Powell on immigration.

Brian Walden has noted that Biffen was the "most honest" politician he had interviewed.^[9]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady (Jonathan Cape, 2003), p. 572.
2. ^ Woodrow Wyatt, The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt: Volume 3 (Pan, 2001), p. 582.
3. ^ John Ramsden (ed.), The Oxford Companion to 20th-Century British Politics (OUP, 2002), p. 55.
4. ^ Hugo Young, One of Us (Pan, 1990), p. 240.
5. ^ John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady (Jonathan Cape, 2003), p. 448.
6. ^ Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (HarperCollins, 1993), p. 422.
7. ^ The Sunday Telegraph 5 July, 1987
8. ^ John Biffen, Vindication for De Gaulle, The Guardian, 15 June 2005.
9. ^ Sean Coughlan, 'Walden's secret ingredient for power' (7 March, 2005), BBC News Magazine

[edit] Bibliography

• John Biffen, Nation in Doubt (Conservative Political Centre, 1976).
• John Biffen, Political Office, or Political Power?: Six Speeches on National and International Affairs (Centre for Policy Studies, 1977).
• John Biffen, 'The Conservatism of Labour', in Maurice Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays (Cassell, 1978), pp. 155-167.
• John Biffen, Inside Westminster (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1996).

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by David Ormsby-Gore	Member of Parliament for Oswestry 1961–1983	Succeeded by (constituency abolished)
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Shropshire North 1983–1997	Succeeded by Owen Paterson
Political offices
Preceded by Joel Barnett	Chief Secretary to the Treasury 1979–1981	Succeeded by Leon Brittan
Preceded by John Nott	Secretary of State for Trade 1981–1982	Succeeded by The Lord Cockfield
Preceded by Francis Pym	Lord President of the Council 1982–1983	Succeeded by The Viscount Whitelaw
	Leader of the House of Commons 1982–1987	Succeeded by John Wakeham
Preceded by The Baroness Young	Lord Privy Seal 1983–1987