On February 7, 1994, the body of Stephen Milligan, the Conservative MP for the Hampshire constituency of Eastleigh, was discovered in his home in Hammersmith. Naked but for a pair of stockings and suspenders, with electrical flex tied round his neck and an orange in his mouth, he had been indulging in auto-erotic asphyxiation.
That was dramatic enough, but the by-election that followed was scarcely less sensational. David Chidgey, the Liberal Democrat candidate, overturned Milligan’s 17,702 majority to win by 9,239 votes, with the Conservatives coming third after Labour.
The result was another grievous blow to the beleaguered Tory prime minister, John Major, who was struggling to hold his fractious party together. “Change your policies or change your job,” the elated Chidgey declared in his victory speech. Major limped on for three more years before being roundly defeated by Tony Blair’s resurgent New Labour.
The by-election was also notable for being the first contest fought by the fledgling UK Independence Party. Its candidate, a political newcomer named Nigel Farage, came fourth, beating David Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party by a mere 169 votes.
Chidgey, an engineer by profession, proved an assiduous constituency MP and well-respected parliamentarian who managed to hold Eastleigh in two subsequent general elections before bequeathing it to Chris Huhne in 2005. At that point he moved to the House of Lords as Lord Chidgey of Hamble-le-Rice.
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A kindly, courteous man with a well-developed sense of humour and wicked grin, he was also a workaholic whose only real relaxation came from watching cricket; he was a member of Hampshire County Cricket Club. Politically active until his death, he earned the affection of peers from across the political spectrum.
David William George Chidgey was born in Basingstoke in 1942, one of two children of Major Cyril Chidgey, a civil servant, and his wife, Hilda (née Weston). He was raised in Gosport and was educated at Brune Park County High School (now Brune Park Community School) before becoming the first male member of his family in 100 years not to join the army. He instead trained first as a mechanical engineer at the Admiralty college in Portsmouth, and then as a civil engineer at Portsmouth polytechnic (now Portsmouth University).
At about that time he met April Idris-Jones in a jazz club in Gosport. They married in 1965 and had three children: David, a psychotherapist, Joanna, who teaches product design at Westminster School, and Caitlin, an events manager.
From 1964 to 1973 he worked for Hampshire county council, where he was involved in the construction of the M3 motorway. He then joined Brian Colquhoun and Partners, an engineering consultancy, for whom he managed numerous transport, electricity and water projects in Africa, the Middle East, Bangladesh and Brazil over the next two decades.
Despite his constant travel, he also became politically involved at a distinctly parochial level. He joined the parish council in the picturesque village of Alresford, where he lived, in the 1970s. He was elected to the city council in nearby Winchester in 1987. He stood for the European parliament in a 1988 by-election in the Hampshire Central constituency, and again in 1989, but lost both times. “You have to lose a couple, but you just stick at it. It makes you more determined,” he said.
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In the 1992 general election he fought Eastleigh and came second to Milligan. He took a risk by standing, because he had to resign from his engineering consultancy without any guarantee that he would retain the seat in the next general election. In the event he held it with a majority of just 757 over the Conservatives in 1997, and with a majority of 3,058 in 2001.
During his 11 years in the House of Commons, Chidgey served at different times as the Lib Dem spokesman on employment and training, on transport during rail privatisation in the mid-1990s, and on trade and industry. He pursued his deep interest in Africa and international development on the foreign affairs select committee. He also became a member of the Speaker’s panel, occasionally deputising for Michael Martin. In the Lords he served as defence spokesman and later as spokesman on African development.
His more notable achievements included beating back an attempt by the high-street banks in 2005 to increase charges for using their ATM machines. He argued that the move would discriminate against the poor.
Drawing on his experience in developing countries, he also played a significant role in a protracted campaign to enact some of the world’s toughest anti-corruption legislation. In 2007 he tabled a private member’s bribery bill on behalf of the pressure group Transparency International. It failed to gain government support, but laid the groundwork for the Bribery Act of 2010.
“When officials and ministers syphon off funds meant for the development of health, education or road building, everyone suffers,” he said. “It leads to loss of investment, discourages private sector development and slows economic growth.”
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His final campaign was to prevent water companies polluting rivers and, in particular, Southern Water’s “scandalous” pollution of the Test, Itchen, Hamble and other chalk streams of his beloved Hampshire. “The River Arle, where I live near by, is slowly and progressively dying,” he lamented. “It is not barren, but it is almost there. Where all the fish and all the wildlife that anyone in the countryside would expect to see, it is now missing.”
Lord Chidgey, Liberal Democrat MP and peer, was born on July 9, 1942. He died of complications arising from Covid-19 on February 15, 2022, aged 79