Where are they now: Walter Sweeney

 

Paul Linford

 

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Also in this section:

• Dress to the Right, Sir? Alex Singleton
• Political Clemency Clemency Burton-Hill
• There’s nothing as ex as an ex-MP Gavin Ellwood
• They were also MPs: Sir Francis Drake J B Seatrobe
• Political Memoirs – a Second Pension? Keith Simpson
• Total Blag
• Bringing to Book Richard Watts

Had just ten voters in the South Wales seat of Vale of Glamorgan supported Labour instead of the Tories at the 1992 general election, Walter Sweeney would never have become an MP.

 

As it was, he was to spend five eventful years in the Commons during which he became famous primarily for one thing - having the slimmest majority in the country.

 

There was always something rather heroic about Sweeney.  Rather than nurse his fragile majority of 19 by appealing to the "centre ground," he immediately headed off in the direction of his party's eurosceptic hard right.

 

No doubt he knew what electoral fate awaited him and decided to make the most of his unexpected spell in the political limelight.

 

Despite his euroscepticism, Sweeney was not in fact one of the original Maastricht rebels, and therein lies a possibly apocryphal tale that subsequently lost nothing in the telling up and down the bars of Westminster.

 

Some say he was prevented from rebelling after locking himself in the loo during the division, others that burly whip David Lightbown held his 18st frame against the toilet door to prevent him leaving.

 

As the general election loomed, Sweeney became more outspoken, calling for Chancellor Ken Clarke to be sacked and replaced by John Redwood, who had stood against John Major for the party leadership in 1995.

And in a final flourish, he introduced a Private Members’ Bill which would have given an absolute legal defence to any householder who found themselves having to shoot a burglar.

 

So what did Sweeney do when the curtain finally fell?   Rather than attempt a comeback as Derek Conway, Andrew Mitchell and others eventually did, he lowered his expectations and downsized.

 

A lawyer by profession, he established a small country solicitors’ practice, Yorkshire Law, which operates out of an office in the picturesque main street of North Cave, near Hull.

 

Now 58, his political involvement these days is limited to serving as a parent governor of North Cave Church of England Primary School, and his membership of the Freedom Association, which continues to champion his 1996 Private Members' Bill.

Sweeney’s last legacy to the Conservative Party was to “discover” Tracey Crouch.  A former Hull university student who became his researcher from 1996-97, she is now the party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Chatham and Aylesford.