Bill Yates remembered

Shirley Tart remembers one of Shropshire's political giants

It's the sort of phone message you dread hearing when you have friends overseas. And this morning, this one came: "Shirl, you are impossible to find but I just wanted to tell you that Bill died yesterday."

It was one of my oldest and much loved friends, Camilla Yates, registering the death of her husband. And while we use phrases like 'end of an era' lightly, this certainly is. In modern political history, William Yates was probably the most colourful and memorable Member of Parliament the Wrekin parliamentary constituency has known. Well I'll stick my neck out and say so, anyway.

And it's almost fitting that Domino Bill – a title he won because of the time he spent playing dominoes with the electorate in local pubs – until yesterday the only living person to have sat in both the House of Commons and in the Australian Parliament, should have died in the run up to a British general election.

Although he had now lived in Australia for many years, Bill's interest in both UK and international politics was undimmed.

He relished the debate, rattled off his views to local politicians and thought nothing of copying them to world leaders!

Elected as Conservative MP for the Wrekin in 1955, the big man with the big personality, outrageous humour and a leg permanently stiffened by a war injury, Bill Yates became a bit of a Pied Piper in the area and beyond.

It was not uncommon for those of other political persuasions to say when they met him on the hustings: 'Well I can't vote for you, Bill lad, but I'll not vote against you.'

As a result of the connection he forged with his electorate, both here and in the Australian House of Representatives, he unseated a sitting Labour member both times.

Bill would have been 89 this September and had struggled with ill health – much of it sparked by his long time leg injury for many years. In recent months, he had spent most of his time in a nursing home at Tallangatta where the couple had lived.

When he and Camilla moved to Australia from the family home in old Stirchley village, their four boys, Tom, Peter, Mark and Oliver were small. Bill also had three other children from his first marriage, Elizabeth who died recently, Angela and William who died from leukaemia while he was still at school.

Bill was granddad to 16 grandchildren and three great-grand children.

Tom is currently Austrade Consul General in Libya; Mark went into medicine, became a geriatric specialist and is now a university professor; Peter was once chief executive of the Kerry Packer dominated PBL board and is now chairman of the Royal Institution of Australia; Oliver is executive director of Macquarie Bank. While despite some odds, Bill Yates carved a spectacular second political career in Australia, a little bit of his heart was always back home in England.

And after his funeral and cremation on Thursday, his ashes will be brought to his childhood home at Appleby in the Lake District.

When I called Camilla back this morning, she said: "For him, it was a release. But he'd had a lovely day on Saturday, he came home for the day, Peter and Susan were here and Bill was full of beans.

Then on Sunday morning, I telephoned to say we'd be down to see him and literally had the car door open when the telephone rang and they said he had passed away. He'd had breakfast, been cheeky with the nurses and just died quietly."

He didn't do much else quietly, though. During the 1956 Suez Crisis he became one of his own government's strongest critics. He once interrupted on a point of order, saying: "I have come to the conclusion that Her Majesty's Government has been involved in an international conspiracy".

Whether that touched a nerve or not, later that day representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union at the United Nations joined forces and demanded a cease-fire as a secret alliance between Britain, France and Israel was revealed.. Indeed, that exposure led directly to the downfall of Prime Minister Anthony Eden.

Bill Yates lost his seat in the 1966 General Election and the following year, left the Conservative Party over an Arab-Israeli War dispute.

In Australia, he was elected Liberal Member of the House of Representatives, representing the Victoria seat of Holt until 1980.

But that was not all, he and Camilla then moved the remote but idyllic Australian territory of Christmas Island where he was appointed administrator.

Retirement? Well that didn't happen.

In 2003 aged 82, Bill became a Doctor of Political Science following publication of his thesis on British policy during the Suez crisis.

It has been such a pleasure over the years to welcome Bill and Camilla to our home and to visit them Down Under. And I can do no better than end with part of the notice for the local Australian paper.

"Bill died peacefully in Tallangatta after a lovely day at home watching his bees and discussing international politics. A man of strong conviction and great integrity."

And from so many more who knew and loved him, Amen to that.