Sir Julian Errington Ridsdale (8 June 1915 – 21 July 2004) was a British National Liberal and later Conservative politician and long-serving Member of Parliament (MP) for

Harwich Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-west and Clacton-on- ...

. He took a particular interest in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The son of a stockbroker and nephew both of former Conservative Prime Minister

Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a British Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, ...

and Liberal MP Sir

Aurelian Ridsdale Sir Edward Aurelian Ridsdale GBE (23 February 1864 – 6 September 1923) was a British Liberal politician and leading member of the British Red Cross Society. Life He was the eldest son of Edward Lucas Ridsdale of Rottingdean, Sussex and the b ...

, he was educated at Tonbridge School and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After being commissioned as an officer into the Royal Norfolk Regiment, he studied Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies and during the war was a military intelligence officer specialising in Japan, rising to the rank of

Major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

. After the war, he ran a fruit farm in

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

. His wife Victoire Evelyn Patricia "Paddy" Bennett, whom he married in 1942, was then secretary to the writer

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...

. She is reported to have been a model for the character "

Miss Moneypenny Miss Moneypenny, later assigned the first names of Eve or Jane, is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. She is secretary to M (James Bond), M, who is Bond's superior officer and head of the British Secret Intelligence Serv ...

", secretary to James Bond. She was her husband's secretary and chairman of the Conservative MPs' Wives, and was awarded the DBE in 1991.

Electoral history

At the 1951 snap general election, Ridsdale stood as the Conservative Party candidate in the London seat of

Paddington North Paddington North was a borough constituency in the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington in London which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post vot ...

, but lost to the sitting

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

MP William Field. In 1954, the National Liberal MP for

, Sir Stanley Holmes was elevated to the peerage as Baron Dovercourt, and Ridsdale was selected as 'Conservative and Liberal' candidate to contest the consequent by-election. He was elected on 11 February 1954, defeating Labour's Miss Shirley Catlin (later Shirley Williams, fighting her first election), and he served for nearly forty years, being re-elected at nine subsequent general elections:

1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch ...

1966 Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo i ...

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of X (''Extrem ...

February 1974 The following events occurred in February 1974: February 1, 1974 (Friday) * A fire killed 177 people and injured 293 others in the 23-story Joelma Building at São Paulo in Brazil. Another 11 later died of their injuries. The blaze began on ...

, October 1974,

1979 Events January * January 1 ** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

and

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...

. Ridsdale stood down at the 1992 general election, and was succeeded by the Conservative Iain Sproat.

Parliamentary career

After supporting Prime Minister

Anthony Eden Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957. Achieving rapid promo ...

during the 1956 invasion of Suez, Ridsdale served from 1957 to 1958 as the

Parliamentary Private Secretary A Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) is a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom who acts as an unpaid assistant to a minister or shadow minister. They are selected from backbench MPs as the 'eyes and ears' of the minister in the H ...

(PPS) to John Profumo, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. From 1958 to 1960 he was PPS to the Minister of State for

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...

. His ministerial career was brief, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Air from 1962 to 1964. Returning to the backbenches, he continued to mark himself as traditional rightwing Conservative, opposing tax increases and supporting capital punishment. In 1968, he supported Enoch Powell after Powell's controversial anti- immigration " Rivers of Blood speech", calling him ''"the Winston Churchill of today"''. Retaining his wartime interest in Japan, Ridsdale concentrated on improving Anglo-Japanese relations and developing trade links. He was Chairman of the British Japanese Parliamentary Group from 1964 to 1992 and the leader of successive Parliamentary delegations to Japan. He was also Member of the North Atlantic Assembly from 1979 to 1992. He received the CBE in 1977 and was knighted in 1981.

References

Obituary: Sir Julian Ridsdale
(The Daily Telegraph)
The Papers of Sir Julian Ridsdale
at the Churchill Archives Centre, University of Cambridge
Harwich: Top Tories pay respects to former MP

telegraph.co.uk; retrieved 20 March 2016.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ridsdale, Julian 1915 births 2004 deaths People educated at Tonbridge School Alumni of SOAS University of London Royal Norfolk Regiment officers Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst British Army personnel of World War II Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Knights Bachelor Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies National Liberal Party (UK, 1931) politicians UK MPs 1951–1955 UK MPs 1955–1959 UK MPs 1959–1964 UK MPs 1964–1966 UK MPs 1966–1970 UK MPs 1970–1974 UK MPs 1974 UK MPs 1974–1979 UK MPs 1979–1983 UK MPs 1983–1987 UK MPs 1987–1992 Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure Politicians awarded knighthoods Ministers in the Macmillan and Douglas-Home governments, 1957–1964