Douglas Dodds-Parker

Sir Arthur Douglas Dodds-Parker (5 July 1909 – 13 September 2006) was a member of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, and later a British Conservative Party politician.

He was a Member of Parliament (MP) twice. He was MP for Banbury from 1945 to 1959, holding three junior ministerial positions from 1953 to 1957. In particular, he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs through the Suez Crisis in 1956. Unlike Sir Anthony Nutting, who resigned as Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Dodds-Parker considered it his duty to remain in office even though he did not support the plan for Britain and France to invade Egypt under the pretext of separating the Egyptians from a prearranged invasion by Israel; he was, however, sacked from government in the following year. He stood down from his seat in the House of Commons in 1959, but returned to Parliament as MP for Cheltenham from 1964 to 1974.

Early life and wartime service

Dodds-Parker was born in Oxford, the eldest son of a surgeon. His maternal uncle, Fredric Wise, was MP for Ilford; another relation, John Parker, was Joint Secretary to the Treasury from 1846 to 1849; and the Parkers had been iron founders since the 15th century. He was educated at Winchester College and then read modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford.

He joined the Sudan Political Service in 1930, spending three years in Kordofan and then two years in Khartoum as private secretary to the Governor-General, Sir Stewart Symes. He was on hand to observe the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

He left Sudan to join the Grenadier Guards after the Second World War broke out in 1939, but was seconded to the Special Operations Executive when it was formed in July 1940. He was originally an intelligence officer in Sudan, under Orde Wingate, organising "ungentlemanly warfare" against Italy in Ethiopia. He helped to return Emperor Haile Selassie to Addis Ababa in May 1941. He returned to London soon afterwards, to become a mission planner under Colin Gubbins, in charge of transporting agents into and out of occupied Europe. He was finally was sent to Algiers in late 1942, where he assisted with the negotiations for the armistice with Italy, and then in Apulia to command SOE operations in the western and central Mediterranean, in charge of guerrilla warfare from Spain to Poland and Greece to the Netherlands. After a spell in Athens, he ended the war at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Paris, with the rank of Colonel. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur and Croix de Guerre for his efforts, and mentioned in dispatches.

He married Aileen Coster in 1946, the American widow of his second cousin. They had one son.

Political career

He left the Army to pursue a political career as soon as the war in Europe was over, and was elected MP for Banbury in the 1945 general election. He continued as MP for Banbury until he stood down at the 1959 general election.

He declined an invitation to become Winston Churchill's Parliamentary Private Secretary, or to become a Conservative whip, preferring to serve on Parliamentary committees, but served on the executive of the 1922 Committee from 1951 to 1953. He was a junior Foreign Office minister from November 1953 to 1954, as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, then a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Commonwealth Relations Office from 1954 to 1955, before resuming his junior ministerial position at the Foreign Office in December 1955. He was one of the hosts of Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev when they visited the UK in April 1956, and was in office during the Suez Crisis in October 1956. He opposed the plan for Britain and France to invade Egypt, under the pretext of separating the Egyptians from a prearranged invasion by Israel, but felt it his duty to remain in office, unlike Sir Anthony Nutting, who resigned as Minister of State at the Foreign Office. The Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd was often absent from the House of Commons, and Dodds-Parker was forced to answer questions, unconvincingly, in his stead. After Anthony Eden was replaced as Prime Minister by Harold Macmillan, Dodds-Parker was sacked in January 1957. He did not contest his seat in the 1959 general election.

After a period in business, as a director of Head Wrightson and of British Empire Steel Products, he returned to Parliament as MP for Cheltenham in the 1964 general election. Edward Heath took up the leadership of the Conservative Party after its 1964 election defeat, and Dodds-Parker returned to a degree of favour with the party leadership. He was a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party from 1964 to 1970. He was a delegate to the Council of Europe in 1965, and also to the North Atlantic Assembly and the Western European Union Assembly. He led a delegarion of MPs to China in 1972, the first visit organised since the Communist Revolution.

He was knighted in 1973, after Edward Heath sent him to Strasbourg as part of the first British delegation in the European Parliament. He left the House of Commons at the October 1974 general election, but remained a Member of the European Parliament until 1975.

In retirement

He published two memoirs in his retirement. Setting Europe Ablaze, an account of his exploits with SOE in the Second World War, was published in 1983, taking its title from a Churchill quotation on the role of SOE. It was followed by Political Eunuch, an account of his political career, in 1986. He gave his political and personal papers to Magdalen College, Oxford in 1997.

He died in London aged 97, and is survived by his wife, a son, and a stepson.

References

• Obituary, The Times, 15 September 2006
• Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 15 September 2006
• Obituary, The Independent, 21 September 2006
• Obituary, The Guardian, 26 October 2006
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Douglas Dodds-Parker

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Sir James Edmondson	Member of Parliament for Banbury 1945–1959	Succeeded by Neil Marten
Preceded by Hicks Beach	Member of Parliament for Cheltenham 1964–October 1974	Succeeded by Charles Irving

Persondata
Name	Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	5 July 1909
Place of birth
Date of death	13 September 2006
Place of death