Sir John Alec Biggs-Davison was a Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for Chigwell from 1955 and then, after boundary changes in 1974, Epping Forest until his death.
19 Facts About John Biggs-Davison
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John Biggs-Davison was a leading figure in the Conservative Monday Club.
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John Biggs-Davison was the Conservative candidate for Coventry South in the 1951 general election.
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When some Labour Party members called for his old friend Enoch Powell to be prosecuted under the Race Relations Act, Biggs-Davison leapt to Powell's defence in an acrimonious House of Commons debate during which Harold Wilson was accused of being an enemy of free speech.
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That year, during a House of Commons debate on the Trades Union Congress invitation to Alexander Shelepin, the former Soviet KGB Chief, to visit Britain, John Biggs-Davison compared him to Heinrich Himmler.
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John Biggs-Davison was an active member of the Conservative Monday Club from 1962 until his death.
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John Biggs-Davison spoke on their behalf on many occasions both inside and out of the House of Commons, and wrote numerous papers for the Club, and forewords to others.
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John Biggs-Davison was one of the principal speakers at Duncan Sandys' "Peace with Rhodesia" rally in Trafalgar Square in January 1967, which was broadcast.
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The Club held a 'Law and Liberty' May Day Rally in 1970, again in Trafalgar Square, at which John Biggs-Davison was a main speaker.
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John Biggs-Davison likened the suspension and subsequent abolition of the Parliament of Northern Ireland to "someone sawing away the branch he bestraddles".
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John Biggs-Davison was re-elected a member of the Club's Executive Council on 5 June 1972.
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John Biggs-Davison said that the Provisional IRA was infiltrated by Communists and Trotskyists, and part of an international subversion and terrorist network.
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In May 1974, John Biggs-Davison was re-elected unopposed as Chairman of the Monday Club.
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That month, Robert Taylor, Patrick Wall and John Biggs-Davison tabled a motion in the House of Commons deploring the Labour government's decision to cancel the visit to Cape Town by the Royal Yacht Britannia.
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John Biggs-Davison subsequently spoke at Essex University, but had to have police protection, while a mob outside demonstrated singing "The Red Flag".
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John Biggs-Davison criticised an ITV interview with IRA leader Daithi O Conaill the same month.
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John Biggs-Davison called for reciprocity over extradition with the Republic.
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John Biggs-Davison was one of a number of prominent speakers at the Monday Club two-day Conference in Birmingham in March 1975, the title of which was The Conservative Party and the Crisis in Britain.
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John Biggs-Davison died at a hospital in Taunton, Somerset, on 17 September 1988, aged 70.