Philip Goodhart

Summary

Sir Philip Carter Goodhart (3 November 1925 – 5 July 2015) was a British Conservative politician, the son of Arthur Lehman Goodhart.

Sir Philip Goodhart
Photographed in 1959
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
In office
4 May 1979 – 5 January 1981
Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher
Preceded byJames Dunn
Succeeded byDavid Mitchell
Member of Parliament
for Beckenham
In office
21 March 1957 – 16 March 1992
Preceded byPatrick Buchan-Hepburn
Succeeded byPiers Merchant
Personal details
Born
Philip Carter Goodhart

(1925-11-03)3 November 1925
London, England
Died5 July 2015(2015-07-05) (aged 89)
Political partyConservative
Spouse
Valerie Winant
(m. 1950; died 2014)
Children7 (including David)
Relatives
EducationHotchkiss School
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge

Biography edit

Goodhart attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. He contested Consett in 1950 whilst still a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was elected Member of Parliament for Beckenham at a 1957 by-election, and served until his retirement in 1992. One of the unsuccessful candidates for the nomination in 1957 was the young Margaret Thatcher.

In his book Referendum (1971), Goodhart argued that the EEC membership referendum, then under discussion in the context of the United Kingdom (UK) joining the European Economic Community (EEC), could in fact serve to entrench constitutional safeguards that the UK lacked, quoting Arthur Balfour's contribution to the debate on the Parliament Bill (later the Parliament Act 1911): "In the referendum lies our hope of getting the sort of constitutional security which every other country but our own enjoys ..." (Referendum, p. 205). He wrote the definitive account of the 1975 referendum campaign, Full-hearted Consent (1975), and also The 1922: The Story of the 1922 Committee (1973). He was a junior Northern Ireland minister (1979–1981) and a junior defence minister (1981). He was a member of the Founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.[1]

In 1950, he married Valerie Forbes Winant, niece of John Gilbert Winant;[2] they had seven children: Arthur, Sarah, David, Rachel, Harriet, Rebecca and Daniel.[3] The couple lived in Whitebarn, Youlbury Woods, Oxford. Goodhart died in 2015, aged 89.[2] One of his children is David Goodhart, director of the Demos thinktank and journalist for the Prospect magazine.

Works edit

  • —; Henderson, Ian (1958). The Hunt for Kimathi. Hamish Hamilton. ASIN B0000CJZHT.
  • — (1965). Fifty ships that saved the world : the foundation of the Anglo-American alliance. Heinemann. ASIN B001AGS7YE.
  • —; Chataway, Christopher J. (1968). War Without Weapons. W. H. Allen. ISBN 978-0-49100431-2.
  • — (1971). Referendum. Tom Stacey Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85468063-4.
  • —; Branston, Ursula (1973). The 1922: The Story of the 1922 Committee. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-33314386-5.
  • — (1976). Full-hearted Consent: Story of the Referendum Campaign and the Campaign for the Referendum. Davis-Poynter. ISBN 978-0-70670206-4.
  • — (2005). The Royal Americans. Wilton65. ISBN 978-1-90506001-6.

References edit

  1. ^ "Founding Council | The Rothermere American Institute". rai.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 20 February 2016.
  2. ^ a b "Sir Philip Goodhart, politician – obituary". The Telegraph. London. 6 July 2015. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  3. ^ "GOODHART". announcements.telegraph.co.uk. Archived from the original on 12 April 2014. Retrieved 30 September 2015.

Sources edit

  • Wood, Alan (June 1987). "The Times" Guide to the House of Commons. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-72300298-7.
  • Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
  • Flade, Roland (1999). The Lehmans: From Rimpar to the New World: A Family History (2nd Enlarged ed.). Konigshausen & Neumann. ISBN 978-3-8260-1844-2.

External links edit

  • Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Philip Goodhart
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Beckenham
19571992
Succeeded by