Francis Pym(1922-2008)
Francis Pym was born in 1922. He attended Magdalene College at
Cambridge and served in World War II. He entered Parliament in 1961 as
a Conservative MP from Cambridgeshire. He served in the cabinet of
Edward Heath as Chief Whip, 1970-73 and
Minister of Northern Ireland, 1973-74. After the Tories lost the first
General Election in 1974, Pym served in the Shadow Cabinet as Spokesman
for Agriculture. However, in 1976, an illness forced him to leave the
Shadow Cabinet for a time. But he was well enough to rejoin the Cabinet
when Margaret Thatcher led the Tories
to victory in 1979. Pym served as Minister of Defense from 1979 to
early 1981, when he was moved over to the position of Leader of the
House of Commons, a position he held until after the outbreak of the
Falklands War in April 1982. The Argentine Invasion of the Falkland
Islands forced the resignation of Foreign Secretary
Peter Carrington. Francis Pym was chosen
to succeed him. Throughout the Falklands War, Francis Pym urged
diplomacy instead of using military force to resolve the crisis, a
position that did not endear him to Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. Britain's military
victory in the Falklands undermined Pym's political standing. In the
1983 election, he got himself into trouble by saying that landslide
victories don't produce successful governments. That got him fired from
the cabinet after Margaret Thatcher's
landslide reelection in 1983. Francis Pym returned to the back benches
and tried unsuccessfully to rally moderate Tories to oppose
Margaret Thatcher with a group known
as "Centre Forward." He retired from Parliament in 1987.
