Bespectacled, rotund, wearing a pocket watch with a dangling chain, Patrick Cormack could resemble a character out of one of Trollope’s novels. He spoke deliberately, and in manner and speech was more of an establishment figure than many of his higher-born Conservative colleagues. When first elected to the House of Commons in 1970, he was a One Nation Tory and a strong supporter of Ted Heath. He remained true to those views for the next 40 years as a Conservative MP, albeit one of independent spirit.
His views, however, commanded diminishing support in a changing party. And though he was well-liked, his tendency to make elaborate speeches on favourite subjects, such as bats in church lofts, sometimes tested the goodwill of colleagues in the Palace of Westminster.
He cherished parliament (pronounced “parleeament”) and its traditions, and wrote a history of it as well as of British castles and English cathedrals. He loved the dignified more than the efficient institutions of British history. Denied ministerial office, he gradually became a “senior” backbencher, serving on the education committee and chairing the select committee on Northern Ireland (2005-10). An abiding ambition to be elected Speaker of the House of Commons was not fulfilled.
Patrick Thomas Cormack was born in 1939 in Grimsby, where his father, Thomas, was a local government officer and a master mariner. He was educated at St James’ Choir School (he later taught there) and graduated in history at Hull University (in later years he was a visiting lecturer at the university). While seeking a seat he taught history at Wrekin College and Brewood Grammar School.
His first attempt to be elected as a Conservative MP was in 1964 in the mining constituency of Bolsover, a safe Labour seat, and unsurprisingly he lost. He did better in Grimsby in 1966 but still lost. His election for Cannock in 1970, ousting Aneurin Bevan’s widow Jennie Lee, was one of the more spectacular results of that general election; he overturned a Labour majority of 11,000. Few commentators had allowed for a gentrification of parts of the seat and Lee’s aloofness from her constituents.
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After boundary revisions, Cormack sought a new constituency for the 1974 general election. He had his eye on the new and potentially safer seat of Staffordshire South West. He fought a bitter battle with Fergus Montgomery, another MP seeking the nomination. He won but left much bad blood behind. Given Montgomery’s closeness to the new party leader the enmity did not help his cause. The seat was reorganised as South Staffordshire in 1983.
Cormack served as parliamentary private secretary to junior ministers in the Department of Health and Social Security between 1970 and 1973. But in the 18 years of Conservative government between 1979 and 1997 nothing came his way, although he was knighted in 1995. He was, according to the Thatcherites, “wet” and certainly “not one of us”. He opposed the rise in unemployment, which he attributed to Thatcher’s monetarist economic policies. His only frontbench position came in 1997 when the Conservative leader, William Hague, made him shadow deputy leader of the House of Commons. He resigned from the post to run for the Speakership in 2000, but was unsuccessful.
Cormack was a serial rebel under Thatcher. He defied the whips over child benefit, the poll tax, abolition of the GLC, imposition of charges for eye and dental checks and cuts in unemployment benefits. He opposed Sunday trading and was an important voice in defeating the Shops Bill in 1986. The last action may have been motivated in part because he was a committed Christian, a member of the Church of England Synod, on which he was a traditionalist and opponent of the ordination of women. Few doubted his conviction — a self-declared recreation was “avoiding sitting on the fence” (along with “fighting philistines”) — but some critical colleagues considered him sanctimonious.
On social issues he was conservative, opposing any easing of the law on abortion and lowering the age of consent for homosexuals. He regularly opposed privatisation proposals and helped to ditch John Major’s plans to privatise the Royal Mail in 1994.
Cormack was sceptical of constitutional changes, particularly of his beloved parliament and he opposed any direct election of the House of Lords, both as an MP and peer, regarding such a proposal as “playing ducks and drakes with the constitution”. In one House of Commons speech he remarked “there are many old-fashioned Tories, of whom I am proud to be one” and likened change to “the replacement of an old regiment by Group 4 at Buckingham Palace”. Yet he supported proposals to modernise the House of Lords to make it more effective, wanting a smaller body, appointments lasting for ten years to be made on a statutory basis and no election of hereditary peers.
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Cormack was also a prolific author, writing books on parliament and historical subjects, including Heritage in Danger (1976) and Wilberforce: The Nation’s Conscience (1983). He was a member of the Historic Buildings Commission, the Historic Churches Preservation Trust and the Society of Antiquaries; edited The House magazine; and chaired the House of Commons work of arts committee, a body responsible for all works of art in the House of Commons — he was particularly proud of tracking down in South Africa one of the few panoramic views of the Palace of Westminster after the great fire of 1834.
He is survived by his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1967 and who worked as his secretary, and two sons. One of them, Charles, a hotel manager, contested West Renfrewshire in 1997 as a Conservative.
His last years in the Commons did not go smoothly. During the 2005 general election campaign his Lib Dem opponent died a fortnight before polling day. The contest had to be held after the general election and Cormack won the election easily. Yet within 18 months, his constituency association decided against re-adopting him for the next general election, a rebuff for a long-serving MP. Some felt that it was simply a time for change and some wanted a more constituency-orientated member. Conservative headquarters ruled that the vote was invalid and when, eventually, a poll of all party members was held, Cormack won easily.
That was not the end of his troubles. During 2009 he was embarrassed by revelations over his claims for parliamentary expenses for his main and second homes. At the end of the year he announced his intention to stand down at the next election, citing ill health. That declared reason surprised observers because a few months earlier he had again stood, again unsuccessfully, for election as Speaker of the House of Commons. He finished ninth out of ten candidates. He stepped down in 2010, having served 40 years as an MP. He was created a life peer in the same year.
Cormack perhaps did not help his hopes of being elected as Lord Speaker by speaking so often: on occasion when he rose, some peers would emit a groan. He regularly complained about poor railway links to Lincoln, to where he had retired, not least because he wanted more people to appreciate the beauty of its cathedral. Friends jokingly called him “the Bishop”. In 2019 when the Bishop of Lincoln, the good-humoured Reverend Robert Hardy (obituary, May 22, 2021), visited the Lords he introduced himself by saying: “I am the other Bishop of Lincoln.”
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Lord Cormack, Conservative politician, was born on May 18, 1939. He died on February 25, 2024, aged 84