Geoffrey Hirst
British politician (1904-1984)
Geoffrey Audus Nicholson Hirst TD (14 December 1904 – 18 June 1984) was a British industrialist and politician who was a maverick Conservative Member of Parliament.
Early career
Hirst, from a Yorkshire military family, was educated at Charterhouse School and St John's College, Cambridge. He went into industry, becoming President of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce; he was also Chairman of the East and West Ridings Yorkshire Regional Council of the Federation of British Industries.
Parliament
During the Second World War, Hirst served with the Royal Artillery (he had been a member of the Territorial Army before it). At the 1950 general election, Hirst was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Shipley. He remained on the backbenches, although he did become Chairman of the Conservative Parliamentary Trade and Industry Committee. He often raised the issue of the textiles industry.
Political activities
Hirst was a right-winger and supported an aggressive policy over the Suez Canal in 1956. When the Treasury Ministers Peter Thorneycroft, Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch resigned in 1958 after failing to win backing for spending cuts, Hirst said he was considering resigning the Conservative whip in sympathy with them. He did not go through with this idea, but his constituency association gave backing to him.
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This entry incorporates text from “Geoffrey Hirst” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.