Paul Williams (politician)
Paul Glyn Williams (born
14 November 1922) was
Conservative Party (UK) Member of Parliament for
Sunderland South, and a leading member of the
Conservative Monday Club. He was also a prominent businessman.
The son of Samuel O. Williams and Esmée (née Cail), he was educated at
Marlborough College and
Trinity Hall,
Cambridge University (MA 1942). He married [1]1947, Joan Hardy (div.1964), having had two daughters. He remarried [2] Gillian, eldest daughter of A.G.Howland Jackson, from Elstead, Surrey, by whom he had one daughter. He lives near
Devizes, in
Wiltshire.
He was a Director of: First South African Cordage, 1947 - 1954; Transair, 1953-1962; Hodgkinson Partners Ltd., PR Consultants, 1956-1964; Minster Executive, 1977-1983; Chairman of Directors of the Backer Electric Company Limited, 1978-1987; Henry Sykes, 1980-1983. He was a Consultant to: P-E International plc, 1983 - 1991; Hogg Robinson Career Services, 1991-1995.
In
1953 he was elected Conservative M.P., for
Sunderland South, which he held until
1964. However, he resigned the Conservative Party Whip and sat as an Independent in 1957-58, because he disagreed with the government's decision to withdraw from
Suez.
An early member (1962) of the
Conservative Monday Club he was National Club chairman from 1964 - 1969, standing down in the latter year because of business pressures. In November 1965
Peterborough in the
Daily Telegraph stated that "the Club owed a good deal of its standing to its Chairman, Paul Williams", and commended his "political acumen". In 1966 he issued a press statement on behalf of the Club criticising the Conservative
Opposition in which he said "Mr.
Angus Maude is right in saying that 'to the electorate at large the opposition has become a meaningless irrelevance.' To some of us outside parliament it appears to be neither Conservative nor an opposition...we must oppose socialism, not condone it."
At the Club's AGM in April 1969, in his outgoing Chairman's address, he called for a more aggressive Opposition, appealing for "patriotism and moral rejuvenation, and a return for self-respect in the individual and the nation." (cf:Copping,(ii)pps:13,16). He was still on the Club's Executive Council in 1971, 1972, and 1973, and was still listed as a Vice-President in 1991. He and his wife attended
Alec Douglas-Home's Memorial Service at
Westminster Abbey in 1996.
* Copping, Robert,
The Story of the Monday Club - The First Decade, Current Affairs Information Service, London, April 1972, (P/B).
* Black, A & C.,
Who's Who, London. (Various editions).
