Ian MacArthur

Published on Thursday 20 December 2007 19:04

Former Scottish Conservative MP for Perth.

Born: 17 May, 1925.

Died: 30 November, 2007, in Nottingham, aged 82.

FROM 1959-74, Ian MacArthur OBE was the industrious Tory member of parliament for Perth and East Perthshire. He never rose to great heights in the Commons but had the distinction of piloting through the House no fewer than four private member's bills. He was a leading Scottish Conservative for more than two decades and, in opposition in the 1960s, was a whip and the spokesman on Scottish affairs. He also acted as vice-chairman of the Conservative Party in Scotland. MacArthur was a man of many interests away from politics – he was a fine musician and a great lover of France and its language – but his enlightened attitude to society was reflected in one of the most far-reaching private member's bills. The Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act (1973) he got passed in his last years in the Commons. It freed separated – but not divorced – women from being legally domiciled wherever their husbands were. When the bill was debated in the Lords, the redoubtable Lord Denning said it would abolish "the last barbarous relic of a wife's servitude".

Ian MacArthur came of a military family and was educated at Cheltenham College. He immediately joined the Royal Navy and saw service throughout the war on destroyers in the Mediterranean, being demobbed suffering partial deafness from the gunfire during the Italian campaign. He finished the war as flag-lieutenant c-in-c Portsmouth, where he became a friend of a fellow officer – Prince Philip of Greece.

MacArthur returned to his studies as a modern languages scholar at Queen's College, Oxford, then spent some years working in advertising before he was picked to fight the 1955 general election at Greenock. He was unsuccessful in the general election and the subsequent by-election. But MacArthur's canvassing skills were noticed by the Tory hierarchy: the seat had been a Labour stronghold for many years and he cut the majority considerably.

He was rewarded by being selected to contest the safe rural seat of Perth and East Perthshire, where he first stood, and won, in 1959. It had been held by the Tories since 1935 and was a typical country constituency and a bastion of Toryism. From the late 1960s, however, MacArthur's seat came under constant and effective siege from the Scottish National Party.

As an MP, MacArthur was a good back-bencher. The posts he held he carried out with distinction and charm, but the front bench of the Tory party in the 1960s had Harold MacMillan as prime minister and a host of established contenders, not to mention young, up-and-coming MPs such as Edward Heath and Reginald Maudling.

MacArthur was an effective Conservative Party chairman in Scotland (1972-75) and chairman of the Scottish Conservatives' members' committee (1972-73). Other private members' bills MacArthur introduced included the Law Reform (Scotland) Act 1962 and Social Work (Scotland) Act 1972.

He demonstrated his loyalty to the party when, in 1963, following the Profumo crisis and Mr MacMillan's resignation, the Tories, in some turmoil, elected the 13th Earl of Home as their leader. This necessitated Lord Home renouncing his title and finding a safe Tory seat to fight immediately as Sir Alec Douglas Home. The next-door constituency to MacArthur's was made available and MacArthur was appointed "personal assistant to the prime minister" throughout the by-election.

MacArthur also did much to soothe many rather fractured nerves among the party workers. Sir Alec fought a typically good-natured by-election and much of his success was attributed to MacArthur's knowledge of the area. The candidate who stood down in Kinross and West Perthshire to allow Sir Alec's election was George, later Lord, Younger.

MacArthur had enjoyed healthy majorities of around 10,000 throughout his time as an MP, but the general election of 1974 saw one of the most radical swings in Scottish politics. His majority was overturned and MacArthur lost his seat to the SNP candidate, Douglas Crawford. The margin was only 793 votes but it caused one of the biggest surprises of the election.

MacArthur never tried for another seat and until his retirement in 1989 was a director of the British Textile Confederation. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal College of Arts in 1984 and an OBE in 1989. In 1957 he married Judith Miller. She and their seven children survive him.