Bill Pitt

William Henry Pitt, commonly known as Bill Pitt, (born 17 July 1937) is a British politician. He was a Liberal Member of Parliament between 1981 and 1983, and was the first candidate elected to Parliament under the banner of the SDP-Liberal Alliance.

Early life

Pitt was born in Croydon and attended Heath Clark School there, followed by the London Nautical School and South Bank Polytechnic. After National Service in the Royal Army Service Corps, he became a lighting engineer. His initial alliance in politics was with the Conservatives and he was Chairman of South Norwood Young Conservatives in 1959–60. However he joined the Liberal Party in the 1960s.

Liberal politics

In the 1970s, Pitt worked as a local government officer for the London Borough of Lambeth. He stood as Liberal candidate for Croydon North West in February obtaining a creditable 25% of the vote. He stood again in October 1974 but in this election his vote, like that of most Liberal Candidates, fell. In the 1979 general election he, like 60% of candidates in London and 50% overall, lost his deposit.^[1] He was, however, popular within the party and served as Chairman of the London Liberal Party and as a member of the Liberal Party National Executive Committee and the Party Council from 1977 till 1981.

By-election

When the sitting Conservative MP for his seat died, Pitt was quickly chosen as the prospective Liberal candidate for the seat.^[2] As a bearded local government officer,^[1] he looked more representative of the old Liberal Party rather than the new Social Democratic Party which was in alliance with it. The choice of Pitt as by-election candidate was resisted by some senior members of the party who were keen to give the SDP a chance to win its first Parliamentary election (probably with Shirley Williams as the candidate),^[3] but Pitt and the local Liberal Association were insistent and there was no way to force them to cede the candidature. He had "nursed" the seat since 1974 and was the approved Candidate at National, Regional and Local level. Considerable pressure was put on the CNW Committee, especially on Alan Mead—Chairman at the time—who was also at the time Chair of Croydon CHE (which prompted a Guardian Newspaper item entitled "the queering of Croydon"), as well as the Regional Party. The Liberal Party Council of 17 July 1981 further endorsed Pitt and thus put an end to any speculation or manipulation.

Pitt won the Croydon North West by-election on 22 October 1981 with a majority of 3,254^[2] (standing as "Liberal with SDP support"). During the campaign, posters summed up the relationship between the two parties as "The Alliance" and the term stuck as the official name thereafter,^[3] although it had originally been intended as a stopgap slogan. His was one of a series of famous by-election triumphs during the unpopular start of Margaret Thatcher's government and the point of greatest unpopularity of the Labour Party.

Parliament

He served in the House of Commons as Liberal Home Affairs Spokesman and led for the Alliance throughout the first Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, which fell when Margaret Thatcher called a General Election. Pitt lost his seat to the Conservative, Humfrey Malins, in the 1983 General Election. He fought two further elections for the Liberals in South Thanet in 1987 and 1992.

Later career

In 1996 Pitt joined the Labour Party, disillusoned with the Liberal Democrats and concerned to prevent Jonathan Aitken holding his seat in Thanet South. He campaigned for Labour in Thanet and for Malcolm Wicks in Croydon North in the 1997 general election. He retired from full-time employment in August 2003 having been Head of Training for the Canary Wharf Group and is now the Managing Director of Epec Management Services Limited, a Management and Environmental Advice Consultancy. In 2005 he became editor of the Norwood Review, the newsletter of the Norwood Society.

References

• Dod's Parliamentary Companion for 1983

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Bill Pitt