Sir William Benyon

"Sir William Benyon, who has died aged 84, was an innovative Berkshire landowner and for 22 years Conservative MP for what became the new town of Milton Keynes.


A grandson of Lord Salisbury, Bill Benyon chaired the “One Nation” group and joined Tory “wets” in opposing several of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, including the poll tax. But he respected her highly, and when his friend Michael Heseltine challenged her in 1990, he rallied behind the Prime Minister, declaring: “This is war.”


Despite their, at times, public disagreements — notably over parental contributions to student support — and the occasional “handbagging” when Mrs Thatcher met the executive of the 1922 Committee, the respect was mutual. After Benyon was mugged outside the gates of his estate, she wrote him a three-page letter of commiseration.


Bill Benyon’s surname at birth was Shelley; and he was 29, not long out of the Royal Navy and a manager at Courtaulds when, on the death of a second cousin, Sir Henry Benyon, his father inherited the Englefield Estate, west of Reading, and 400 properties in de Beauvoir Town, on the Hackney/Islington border. With his father in poor health, Bill took on the estate, which was run down and saddled with 80 per cent death duties. A condition of the bequest — which was completely unexpected — was that they change their name to Benyon.


Over the years Benyon cleared the debt, modernised the estate and added to it until it comprised 14,000 acres in Berkshire and Hampshire, always encouraging the concept of family farms and helping young entrants into farming . He put the estate into a trust from which he drew no benefits, and more recently it has been run by his elder son Richard, who followed him into the Commons as MP for Newbury.


Intelligent, reasonable and conscientious, the nearest Bill Benyon got to office was two years as PPS to Paul Channon and two more as a whip as Mrs Thatcher supplanted Edward Heath. He made his mark in the Commons with a series of Bills to tighten the law on abortion. His main contribution to British politics came, however, with his election for Buckingham in 1970 — for Benyon’s capture of the seat ended the parliamentary career of Robert Maxwell.


The future Daily Mirror proprietor had won Buckingham for Labour in 1964, and held it two years later with the slogan “Let Harold [Wilson] and Bob finish the job.” Benyon defeated Maxwell by 2,521 votes; then, at the two elections of 1974, he held off strong challenges from Maxwell despite a national swing to Labour.
No sooner had Benyon been elected than the Roskill Commission nominated Cublington, near Buckingham, as the third London airport, and Benyon led the successful campaign to kill off the project. The highlight was a protest cavalcade he organised. As it neared Cublington, the police found a “bomb” in the road and told them to stop. Realising that it was clearly a hoax, Benyon picked up the “device” and threw it over a hedge, where it landed at the feet of a policeman who had taken shelter.
Instead of an airport, his constituency played host to a new town, a project which Benyon embraced with enthusiasm. He welcomed the Open University’s choice of Milton Keynes as its base; he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1993, and played a major role in founding the town’s ecumenical church.
When, in 1983, his fast-growing constituency was split between the safe Tory Buckingham and the unpredictable Milton Keynes, Benyon unhesitatingly went for the latter. He took it comfortably, and four years later held off a strong challenge from Bill Rodgers, of the SDP’s “Gang of Four”.
By the time of Benyon’s retirement in 1992, Milton Keynes’ electorate was, at 130,000, the largest in Britain. The constituency was split in two without waiting for a national boundary review, each part initially returning a Conservative.
William Richard Shelley was born in London on January 17 1930, the son of Vice-Admiral Richard Shelley and the former Eve Gascoyne-Cecil, daughter of the Bishop of Exeter. Aged 13 he was sent to Dartmouth, where he passed out as Chief Cadet Captain, and in 1947 he was commissioned into the Royal Navy, his career culminating in a staff job under the Governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, during the Mau Mau emergency. Having also served in Korea and Malaya, he left in 1957 in the rank of lieutenant and joined Courtaulds."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10807661/Sir-William-Benyon-obituary.html