David Penhaligon
David Charles Penhaligon (
June 6,
1944–
December 22,
1986) was a
British politician from
Cornwall who was a
Liberal Member of Parliament from
1974 until his death. He was a popular figure in all parties and would have been a front-runner for the party leadership had he not been killed in a tragic
car accident at the age of 42.
Penhaligon's father Robert ran a garage and caravan site in
Truro. He was born on
D-Day and brought up in Truro where he attended
Truro School and then Cornwall Technical College where he studied mechanical engineering. He worked for Holman Brothers in
Camborne as a research and development engineer working on rock
drilling. By
1973 he had qualified as a Chartered Mechanical Engineer; he also took over from his father a
sub-post office in
Chacewater from
1967 (after his marriage in
1968 to Annette Lidgey, she ran the business). His Liberal activities led to some work in local broadcasting.
Penhaligon's decision to join the
Liberal Party was inspired in
1963 when he was an important witness to a murder case. His evidence, which supported the case of the defendants, was not enough to prevent them from being convicted and hanged. Penhaligon was appalled by the practice of
Capital punishment. He led the Truro Young Liberals and built up the local party (which had been the weakest in Cornwall) into one of the strongest; he was the chair of the Cornish Young Liberals from
1966 to
1968. However he was not selected as Liberal candidate for Truro in the
1966 general election (nor for any other seat), and he was also rejected for
Falmouth and Camborne in
1968 apparently because his strong Cornish accent was thought unattractive.
In the
1970 general election he fought the
Devon constituency of
Totnes when the previous candidate
Paul Tyler transferred to North Cornwall. He polled poorly in the context of an election in which the party as a whole suffered. However, Penhaligon had acquired useful experience of fighting election campaigns and picked up additional tips from
Wallace Lawler's practices in inner-city
Birmingham.
In
1971 Penhaligon was easily selected as candidate for
Truro, a seat which did not look an easier prospect than Totnes. This gave him three years in which to get his name known and meet his prospective constituents (a practice known as 'nursing' a constituency) and when the election came in
February 1974 he won nearly 21,000 votes and cut the majority of the sitting
Conservative MP to 2,561. Truro became the fourth 'target' constituency for the Liberals for the next election — which would take place within months because of the inconclusive outcome in February.
Penhaligon was readopted and worked on trying to persuade the remaining
Labour voters in the seat to back him. In the
October 1974 election he was elected with a majority of 464 votes â€" the only Liberal gain of that election. Due to
House of Commons rules on 'offices of profit under the crown' he transferred his sub-postmastership to his wife. In Parliament he swiftly won a reputation for humorous speeches, urging a national
minimum wage and increased state pensions. He voted for fellow Cornish MP
John Pardoe over
David Steel in the Liberal leadership election of
1976. He was hard to place in conventional political terms: he changed his mind over
capital punishment, initially voting against in December
1974, but supporting it in December
1975.
Although frequently speaking on national issues, it was clear that Penhaligon's main concern was local. He became known in particular for defending the Cornish
tin mining industry and the local
Fishing fleets. He spoke with conviction and knowledge about the problems of rural areas in Cornwall with road fuel costs and inadequate infrastructure.
When the
Lib-Lab Pact was first mooted in March
1977, Penhaligon was initially opposed and spoke against it. He later came round and told the Liberal Assembly in September
1977 that it had achieved an 'economic revolution'. At a special Assembly in January
1978 he was a star speaker in persuading the delegates representing Liberal members to continue the pact. The pact allowed the Liberals to influence government legislation and Penhaligon objected to proposals from
Tony Benn for an Electricity Industry Bill which would centralise control, which single-handedly prevented any progress.
Part of Penhaligon's support for the Lib-Lab pact was his fear that an early general election would result in a poor performance for the Liberals, and his own seat may be vulnerable. In October
1978 after the pact had lapsed, he explained that "Turkeys don't volunteer for Christmas!". The scandal over former party leader
Jeremy Thorpe, who was charged with conspiracy to murder in August
1978, was a matter of particular concern and Penhaligon urged Thorpe to stand down and the Liberal Party not to endorse him. When Thorpe did seek re-election, Penhaligon refused to help his campaign.
Despite his narrow majority and the belief that he was the most vulnerable of the Liberal MPs, Penhaligon kept his seat with a much larger majority (8,708) in the
1979 general election. Against the Conservative government, he strongly opposed
nuclear power. Against the majority of Liberal Party members he strongly supported
NATO and
nuclear weapons, describing a separate European non-nuclear defence as 'akin to a behaving like a virgin in a brothel', although he supported demands for 'dual key control' of
United States cruise missiles based in Britain.
Penhaligon supported the
SDP-Liberal Alliance from the start, although he resented SDP attempts to take control of the Liberal Party's target seats. He was named in January
1982 as one of the 'firemen' who would sort out any disagreements between the parties (
John Horam was his SDP counterpart). He was particularly prominent and impressive in the
1983 election campaign in which he spoke for the Liberal Party on Transport, Industry and Energy;
Hugo Young described him as having "a closer grasp of national electoral politics ... than any other Liberal MP". After the election he became an early proponent of a merger between the
SDP and the Liberals under a single leader, largely to avoid disputes over allocations of Parliamentary seats.
From
1983 Penhaligon headed the Liberal byelection unit which planned the campaigns in individual seats. At the Liberal Assembly in September
1984 he was chosen as President-elect of the Liberal Party (the first sitting MP to be elected to the post), and served as Party President from
1985 to
1986. This carried with it the job of presiding over the Liberal Assembly at the end of his term, which saw a party split over defence policy and whether to support nuclear weapons; Penhaligon did not intervene, something he regretted afterwards.
He was appointed as Chief spokesman on the economy from
1985; though admitting he had no financial experience, he challenged the Conservative policy on
privatisation and
monetarism. He was a central figure in planning the Alliance general election campaign when he was killed in a car crash in his constituency. At 6:45 AM three days before Christmas in
1986, he was travelling to a constituency engagement visiting the Royal Mail workers on the Christmas post at
St Austell Post Office, when a van skidded on an icy road and hit his car near Truck Fork, Probus, Cornwall. The van driver, who was injured, was not prosecuted for the accident, which took place at a time when the road was normally quiet. Ironically, investigations showed that Penhaligon had not been wearing a seat belt, the recently-introduced safety measure for which he had voted in Parliament.
He had employed
Matthew Taylor, an
Oxford University graduate, as his research assistant on the economy; Taylor was selected to follow him as Liberal candidate for Truro and was duly returned in the
Truro by-election, 1987. Penhaligon's wife Annette wrote his
biography after his death; his son Matthew is an active member of the
Liberal Democrats who was the party's candidate for the Mayoralty of
Hackney in May
2006.
*Andrew Roth, 'David Penhaligon' in 'Parliamentary Profiles L-R' (Parliamentary Profiles Service, London, 1985), ISBN 0-90-058223-5
*Annette Penhaligon, 'Penhaligon' (Bloomsbury, London, 1989), ISBN 0-74-750501-2
