On March 28, 1979, James Callaghan’s Labour government lost a confidence vote tabled by Margaret Thatcher. A general election was duly triggered. That night two happy Nottinghamshire Conservative MPs adjourned to their favourite haunt, Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, to celebrate. Brian Redhead, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, had a hunch that the two old friends would be there so sent a reporter, which is how Kenneth Clarke and Jim Lester came to be interviewed at 2am, still very much in high spirits.
The 1979 election ushered in 18 years of Conservative government. Clarke went on to achieve high office but Lester was to have only 20 months as a junior minister, serving under Jim Prior in the Department of Employment. The department’s approach to trade union reform displeased the new prime minister, who regarded it as “too soft”.
Lester learnt of his dismissal by phone on the Davos ski slopes. He was there as a member of the parliamentary skiing team and at first was baffled by it, until he learnt that Thatcher had complained that he was “too close” to Prior and “too wet”. Norman Tebbit replaced Prior in September 1981, and a harsher climate for the unions followed.
James Theodore Lester was born in 1932 in Basford, a suburb of Nottingham, to Marjorie (née Phillips) and Arthur Lester, a Labour councillor and speedway racer who had inherited a leather and footwear importing business. Jim attended Nottingham High School where he was captain of the boxing team but he left at 16 to enter the family business, where he remained. He did his National Service with the Royal Engineers.
Interested in politics, he was elected as a Conservative councillor for Bingham RDC and then Nottinghamshire county council from 1967 until 1974, where his father sat on the opposite side. There was much comment when Lester served as chairman of the Nottinghamshire finance committee and his father as vice-chairman. At the time the council’s practice was to share the top two posts between the parties. Father and son shared many values and did not let party politics divide them. The family took the Tory Daily Mail, Labour Daily Herald and communist Daily Worker.
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Standing as the Tory candidate in a by-election in October 1968 at Bassetlaw, Lester reduced a Labour majority of over 10,000 to 740. He spurned the chance to try for a more winnable seat because he had promised the local party that he would contest Bassetlaw at the next general election. He lost it again but had made his mark and, as a local man, was selected for the marginal Beeston seat in Nottingham. In February 1974 he won narrowly and again in October 1974, but only by 121 votes. He was then made a whip. His Labour-supporting father said that his son being elected as an MP was one of the proudest days of his life. He held the seat until 1983 when part of it was redistributed into the safe Broxtowe seat, which he represented until 1997.
Lester was married twice. In 1953 he married Iris Whitby and they had two children: Simon who is a retired gamekeeper, and Tim who transitioned to Tina and runs the family business. The marriage ended in divorce and in 1989 he married Merrylyn Denis, who survives him with the children from his first marriage and his stepchildren, Richard and Caroline.
His “One Nation” Conservatism marked him out as a dissenter under Thatcher. He voted against the poll tax and defied the whips on issues such as keeping free eye and dental tests, reducing unemployment benefit and reforming the Official Secrets Act. Out of sympathy with the thrust of the government’s economic policy he was a founder and chairman of the Conservative Action to Revive Employment.
Perhaps inevitably he was one of 33 Conservative MPs to back Sir Anthony Meyer’s challenge to Thatcher in 1989 and Michael Heseltine’s in 1990.
Genial and well built, Lester had many Labour friends, one of whom said he was “almost one of us”. Ken Clarke said that “his personality is very natural and relaxed and I cannot believe that he has ever had a real enemy”.
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Over time he became more involved with international affairs and was a long-serving member of the foreign affairs select committee. He was much travelled, favoured an increase in overseas aid and was vice-chairman of the all-party group on overseas development. Having inspected the living conditions of many black South Africans and been convinced of the horrors of apartheid, he supported sanctions against the regime and urged a “Marshall Plan” of aid to the country. Like Clarke he was a strong pro-European. His maiden speech linked Nottingham’s economic fortunes to UK membership of the EEC. He backed John Major after 1992 but despaired of the party’s divisions on the issue. He anticipated the party’s defeat in the 1997 general election and lost his seat on a 10 per cent swing to Labour in Broxtowe, viewed as a bellwether seat.
In retirement he spent ten years in Norfolk and then moved to Eastbourne. He continued to keep a daily diary, attend Nottingham Forest matches and listen to Radio 4 compulsively. He also enjoyed his reputation as a countryman and an animal lover, even if hosts did not always appreciate the way he fed their dogs scraps under the table. A committed bon vivant, he used to make annual trips to collect Burgundy from his favourite vineyard in Givry. One of his proudest moments was when he sat next to Diana Ross on Concorde, though his favourite band, he liked to add in the Nottinghamshire accent he retained, was Boney M.
Sir James Lester, Conservative politician, was born on May 23, 1932. He died on October 30, 2021, aged 89