1. Sir Frederic Mackarness Bennett was a British journalist, author, barrister and Conservative politician who served as a Member of Parliament for 35 years.
21 Facts About Frederic Bennett
1. 2.
Frederic Bennett was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1985, and a Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London in 1990.
3.
Frederic Bennett was Lord of the manor of Mawddwy in Wales.
4.
The second son of Sir Ernest Nathaniel Bennett, of Cwmllecoediog, Aberangell, Wales, by his wife Marguerite, Bennett was educated at Westminster School, and Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the English Bar in November 1946.
5.
Frederic Bennett subsequently practised as an Advocate in the High Court of Southern Rhodesia from March 1947, and in 1947 he made the first overland car journey from South Africa to England.
6.
At the 1945 general election, Frederic Bennett was an unsuccessful candidate in the Burslem constituency, in Staffordshire.
7.
When that constituency was abolished for the general election in May 1955, Frederic Bennett stood for in election in the new Reading seat, but lost by 238 votes to Labour's Ian Mikardo, the outgoing MP for the abolished Reading South constituency.
8.
Frederic Bennett was selected as Conservative candidate for the resulting by-election, which he won with a majority of over 10,000 votes.
9.
Frederic Bennett represented Torquay until the constituency was abolished for the February 1974 general election, when he was returned to Parliament for the new Torbay constituency.
10.
Frederic Bennett held that seat until he retired from the Commons at the 1987 general election.
11.
Frederic Bennett was sometime chairman of the European Democrats political group in the Council of Europe.
12.
Frederic Bennett headed the list of the Secretariat for the European Freedom Campaign, an anti-communist group established in London at an Inaugural Rally at Westminster Central Hall on 10 December 1988.
13.
In 1997, Frederic Bennett announced he would vote for the Labour Party in that year's general election, saying that because of the reforms of New Labour, the party were "no longer Marxist socialists".
14.
Frederic Bennett had wide-ranging interests: he was a member of The Primrose League, and their guest of honour at a dinner held on 5 March 1979 in the Cholmondely Room, House of Lords, hosted by The Lord Mowbray and Stourton.
15.
Frederic Bennett was sometime President of the Anglo-Turkish Society - he had an Honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Istanbul, 1984, and was granted the Freedom of the City of Ankara in 1992.
16.
Frederic Bennett was a member of the Anglo-Polish Society, the Council of the Baltic Sea States, the Estonian Association, the Anglo-Jordanian Society, the Pakistan Society, and was a Vice-President of the European-Atlantic Group.
17.
Frederic Bennett was a member of the group's Steering Committee.
18.
Frederic Bennett was the recipient of a small catalogue of foreign honours and awards of merit.
19.
In 1976, Frederic Bennett assisted George Kennedy Young in creating the private army 'Unison'.
20.
Frederic Bennett married in 1945, Marion Patricia, daughter of Major Cecil Burnham, OBE, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.
21.
Frederic Bennett died there on 14 September 2002, aged 83.