On Friday, the funeral of former Conservative MP Derek Conway was held in his beloved Northumberland. In the end, I was unable to go, which was such a shame as Derek was one of those people who was a one-off, one of life’s most positive and generous people. He was great company, and although I wouldn’t pretend to be one of his closest personal friends, I remember some quite deep and meaningful conversations, and some hilarious Whatsapp exchanges in recent years.
The last time I saw him was at my Margaret Thatcher booklaunch last June. He told me afterwards that people he had known for years hadn’t recognised him as he’d been on Mounjaro. Given there were a couple of hundred people there, we didn’t have much time to talk, but I remember we promised to meet up soon and have a proper catch-up. It never happened. In February, he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given less than a year to live. He died on 5 May, at home with his darling wife Colette and their three children, Henry, Freddie and Claudia. He was only 73. I’ve just looked up his last message to me on Whatsapp. It came on 10 April and read:
“Fading rather quickly🤕 Around 9st now (not the 16 you’ll recall!) They gave me less than a year on mid-Feb so the clock is ticking down steadily. YOU ENJOY EVERY DAY💪Dx”.
At that point I had planned to go and see him when I was going to be in the North East in mid May. Despite that message I didn’t realise he thought the end was imminent. Andrew Mitchell and David Davis went to see him around that time for a final reunion of the band of brothers that became lifelong friends in the whips office during the Major government.
Pic At our civil partnership in 2008, speaking to Simon Walters and David Davis
I didn’t know Derek at that point. He had been elected as MP for Shrewsbury in 1983, but I didn’t come across him when I worked in Parliament in the mid 1980s, or subsequently when working as a lobbyist in the 1990s. I do remember, however, his colleague Patrick Nicholls asking me in 1997 if I knew of any jobs going, as he was keen to help Derek following the loss of his seat in the Blair landslide. Derek subsequently became chief executive of the Cats Protection League, transforming it and increasing its turnover from £5 million to £27 million in only five years.
I first got to know Derek in the early months of 2005 when I attended a weekend meeting at Andrew Mitchell’s home in Nottinghamshire, ostensibly to discuss a potential David Davis leadership campaign, followed in late March by a similar event over dinner at the Conway’s magnificent flat near Westminster Cathedral. Believe me, dinners at the Conways were always memorable.
Derek’s public reputation and his actual real character were at odds with one another. During the leadership campaign itself, Derek and Andrew were often described in the newspapers as bullies. They were accused of issuing threats to Tory MPs that if they didn’t get on board with the DD campaign, they wouldn’t be rewarded with shadow ministerial positions. If that side of Derek really existed, I never witnessed it. As DD’s chief of staff during that period. Indeed, quite the opposite. All I saw was a man full of the joys of life, often displaying a wicked sense of humour, and someone who was very comfortable in his own skin. It proved to be a difficult six months for me, as I was a square peg in a round hole. Given at that stage I didn’t know him well, he was incredibly kind to me and was full of wise and advice, especially in how to handle the more difficult personalities involved in the campaign.
Back in April 2023, I met Derek for dinner in Hexham. I was there for the literary festival and had had a nightmare journey up the M1 and A1. I had gone almost blind in one eye half way up the M1 and had no idea if it would be long lasting. Derek shared some of his own health concerns and we joked about we were becoming typical old people – obsessed with health issues. We reflected on the DD campaign, then 18 years in the past, but my abiding memory of the dinner is that it was full of laughter.
Andrew Mitchell gave the eulogy at Derek’s funeral, and I can think of no better way of ending this tribute by quoting from it.
“For reasons I cannot immediately recall, he ended up presenting on television a book review show. This, as the title suggests, involved reading the book or books that were the subject of the show each week - which Derek always did - and the guests he invited on his show to discuss the books were supposed to do likewise. On the occasion that Iain Dale and I were his guests, it quickly became apparent that neither I nor Iain had actually opened the book in question. However, with magnificent sang froid, Derek managed to deliver the half-hour programme.”
I had forgotten all about this, but when Andrew phoned me to confirm the details, it all came flooding back. Sadly, neither of us can recall the book that remained unread by two of the three of us!
Everyone who counted Derek as a friend can’t quite believe we’ll never hear his gentle north east accent again, or hear that wonderful chortle. He enriched our lives, and that isn’t a bad legacy.
The Times has done a full obituary of Derek, which you can read HERE.
And this is the full text of Andrew Mitchell's eulogy at Derek's funeral...
1
Derek Lesley Conway was born in February 1953. He grew up in Newcastle and then in Gateshead. From an early age, he showed true characteristics of leadership, decisiveness and steely courage - not least in being a Conservative by conviction in an area where Tories were more likely to be chased down the street than supported in the polls.
He became the youngest person ever to be elected to Gateshead Borough, and then to Tyne and Wear Metropolitan councils, where he was Chief Whip and later leader of the 44-strong Conservative group. Michael Heseltine appointed him to the Washington Development Corporation, one of the most successful such corporations in the country, as I found out when I fought - and lost - the general election in nearby Sunderland South in 1983.
Derek not only held these senior political positions, he was also on the board of Newcastle Airport, engaged in the management of the Tyne Tunnel, and a director of Newcastle Cinema. He 2
was a practitioner of civic conservatism long before various intellectual conservative show ponies thought they’d invented it.
But before all of that, Derek made what was to prove the most important decision of his life.
He married Colette.
They met in 1980, when she was applying makeup to his rugged features before a TV show, and again shortly afterwards at a classic Conservative Party function held at Wynyard Hall, the home of the Earl of Londonderry (those were the days.) It was love at first sight, and within nine weeks they were engaged, the most romantic of proposal having been delivered at the somewhat unromantic destination of Barcelona Airport.
Two years later, Henry arrived, followed by Freddie and, in 1989, Claudia. It was a marriage and a family much admired at Westminster: close, mutually supportive, and overflowing with love whatever the circumstances. An invitation to dine with the 3
Conway family at Carlisle Mansions in London, or to join them for the weekend in Shrewsbury, were very much coveted occasions.
Derek arrived in the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury in 1983. He is well remembered there as a fine constituency MP, as I know after hearing it from his old constituents - not least because of what followed him!
Derek would particularly fight for the underdog. During his time as Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household, he was entitled to receive haunches of venison from the Royal Estate, which he promptly distributed to local care homes in his constituency.
Derek served in the British Army with the Territorials and was commissioned from Sandhurst into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, later transferring to the 5th Battalion of the Light Infantry. Serving as a lieutenant and then a captain, he became 4
the battalion intelligence officer and soon after became the second-in-command of his infantry company. He was awarded the territorial decoration. In an unfashionable era, Derek was first and foremost a British patriot.
All his military experiences came in useful after he entered Parliament and became a government whip. This was the era of Maastricht, before social media and modernisation hobbled government whips’ offices. Derek served under Richard Ryder, the Government Chief Whip, regarded as having led the most effective Whips’ Office since the First World War. We Government Whips – many here today – were a band of brothers, doing things that Whips did in those days and which they certainly don't do anymore. Derek was in his element, not just militarily efficient; his style was characterised by decency and compassion. The media usually like to see whips as fierce, duplicitous and unbending. But there is a pastoral side of whipping and Derek was always the whip to whom the Chief 5
would turn if one of our colleagues was in trouble, and he would be dispatched to help and assist.
But he could also be steely when required. When he was the whip responsible for managing the Government’s voting strength, a senior Defence Minister flew to Hong Kong without Derek’s permission, thus endangering the Government’s majority. This minister was made to turn around at the airport and return home on the next flight once he had landed at Hong Kong Airport. On another occasion, in a very tight vote, Derek was observed encouraging Nicholas Winterton - a prominent but sometimes difficult Member of Parliament - to support the Government by physically lifting his somewhat oversized frame over the threshold and into the government lobby. The Government won that vote with a majority of two.
But for Derek, and to the delight of his many friends on both sides of the political divide, it was his time as a Royal Household officer that marked, what was for him, the most enjoyable part of his parliamentary career. 6
He sat on a body responsible for the Royal Parks in London - think Green Park and Regent’s Park. Before each meeting, a bewigged clerk passed round the snuff box, as tradition dictated had been done for nearly 300 years. As Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household, his job was to report to Her Late Majesty every day when the Commons was meeting on the proceedings of the House - a message which Derek would go off and craft each evening. As well as delivering this daily message, informing her majesty of who was doing well and who less so - Derek would visit Her Majesty the Queen about once a month for an audience in her study overlooking Buckingham Palace gardens. While never indiscreet, Derek did tell me at the time that Her Late Majesty was not averse to the odd piece of scurrilous political gossip and rumour.
It was a most welcome coincidence that in later years Derek was a senior advisor to members of the Moroccan royal family and was a decorated officer of the Moroccan royal household. 7
When the Conservative government came to an end in 1997, Derek and I, among others, were swept out in the Blair landslide. We both discovered that there is nothing so “ex” as an ex-MP.
But Derek, in the words of Norman Tebbit, got on his bike to find work. He became Chief Executive of the Cats Protection League and ran it with its 300 staff and 8,000 volunteers. Under Derek’s skilful management, it increased its income from £5 million to £27 million. He ran it with wisdom and confidence inducing leadership
Also, for reasons I cannot immediately recall, he ended up presenting on television a book review show. This, as the title suggests, involved reading the book or books that were the subject of the show each week - which Derek always did - and the guests he invited on his show to discuss the books were supposed to do likewise. 8
On the occasion that Iain Dale and I were his guests, it quickly became apparent that neither I nor Iain had actually opened the book in question. However, with magnificent sang froid, Derek managed to deliver the half-hour programme.
Shortly afterwards, in 2001, Derek, Greg Knight and I returned to the House of Commons - Derek representing Prime Minister Ted Heath’s former constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup. It would be fair to say that Derek and Ted Heath were not natural political soulmates. But, they got on well and respected and liked each other. And Derek was a fierce critic of the police over the absurd and profoundly offensive allegation that his predecessor could have had anything to do with child abuse.
Shortly before he died, Derek received a letter from Richard Ryder, the former Government Chief Whip under whom Derek, I, and others here today served. I would like to quote from this letter. In it, Lord Ryder said the following: 9
“You say, the blessing of your life has been Colette and the family. Here again you can take pride, mighty pride, because I know just how much the family has meant to you, and you have meant to them. Happy, successful families are hard to secure for politicians with distant constituencies, late nights, and weekend working. Yet you pulled off the feat by raising a glorious family with the aid of a special wife, Colette. The two of you shared this triumph and many other attainments across 46 years of marriage.”
In the last few days of his life, when I asked Derek how long he had been married to Colette his succinct response was: “Not long enough.”
Surrounded by frequent visits from his family, he found happiness at his last home here in Warkworth. And Eva, his granddaughter, now just six years old, upon whom he doted, was the light of his life. 10
In the weeks before he died, Derek approached the setting of his affairs in order with quite extraordinary bravery and military precision. His aim throughout was to make everything as easy and organised as possible for Colette and the family.
To Colette and the children, their friends and partners here today, we echo Richard Ryder’s words. We grieve with you for a husband, father, and friend who has gone far too soon, but whose life we honour and whose memory we will hold in our hearts forever.
