Michael Colvin was born in London to Captain Ivan Beale Colvin and Joy Arbuthnot.[1][2] He had a brother, Alistair Colvin, four years his junior. He was privately educated, firstly at West Downs School in Winchester, and then at Eton College. He then attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Joining the Grenadier Guards at 18, he served in Berlin, Suez and Cyprus, and became a captain.[1]
Active in local government at first, he was an elected member of the Tangley parish council, Andover rural district council and Hampshire County Council. He had left Hampshire local government by the mid-1970s.[1]
Parliamentary career
Policy positions
He won his first parliamentary seat in 1979 in the Bristol North West constituency. He was considered to be one of the "wets", and thus under Margaret Thatcher likely to remain a backbencher.[3]
Colvin showed political ambivalence; he urged the creation of a new centre party, but also called for privatisation of NHS. In 1983, he moved to the newly created seat of Romsey and Waterside, near Southampton. Opposed to bans on foxhunting, Colvin was the chairman of the Council for Country Sports from 1988. Colvin rejected gun-control; he was a leading figure, following the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres in the "gun lobby".[1] In 1989 he sponsored a private member's bill which became the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Southern Africa
Colvin became the chairman of the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Committee. He supported the South-African-backed anti-SWAPO white forces in Africa and endorsed the Namibia regime in 1981. In his Guardian obituary of Colvin, Andrew Roth wrote that the MP "was also a somewhat secretive former propagandist for apartheid South Africa".[1] He defended the whites of southern Africa, accepting invitations to visit South Africa, then under apartheid, and Bophuthatswana, a Bantustan ('homeland') set up for blacks by the South African government. He urged that the 'homelands', which were not internationally recognised, should be accepted.[3][4] Although he supported reformist Denis Worrall's election campaign in 1987, the following year he criticised the BBC for broadcasting the concert tribute to Nelson Mandela.[1] Connected to the Strategic Network International (SNI), a lobbyist front set up in 1985 to campaign against the imposition of economic sanctions against South Africa, Colvin was involved in finding sympathetic Conservative MPs to visit the 'homelands' on expenses paid trips.[3][4] The Conservative activist Derek Laud was involved in SNI and was responsible for recommending Colvin to the group.[5]
In 1991, Colvin became a consultant to SNI (at £10,000 a year), in succession to Neil Hamilton. Colvin, with Conservative colleagues John Carlisle and David Atkinson were among members of SNI sent to watch the peace process in Angola during 1992. SNI dissolved the following year.[5] His consultancy with SNI was not declared, and when the connection became known in 1994, the media linked the issue to then on-going cash-for-questions affair: "It was not registered. It is an oversight which I regret", Colvin said.[2] At this time, among 11 Conservative MPs, he was found by the Commons Select Committee on Members' Interests to have failed to declare, as a Lloyd's 'Name', details of his syndicate's activities, specifically the areas of insurance underwritten.[6][7] He was a friend to lobbyists such as Ian Greer, more directly implicated in the cash for questions scandal, which led to Hamilton's disgrace. Later, Colvin became a director of the Laud Ludgate lobbying organisation.[1]
Personal life and death
He married Nichola Cayzer, the daughter of Nicholas Cayzer, Baron Cayzer. The couple had three children; two daughters and a son.[8]
Colvin and his wife died in a fire at their house, Tangley House, near Andover in February 2000.[1][8] The following by-election led to the Liberal Democrat gaining the seat with their candidate Sandra Gidley being elected.
