Former Conservative MP Bill Walker, 88

Late politician awarded OBE in 1998

The Scottish Conservatives have long been portrayed by their political opponents as a party of toffs, yet no one could have been less of a toff than Bill Walker, who died last Tuesday aged 88.

The MP for Perth and East Perthshire – later Tayside North – from 1979 to 1997 was born William Connell Walker in a tenement in Blackness Road, Dundee, the third of eight children, on February 20 1929. After minimal schooling at Blackness and Logie schools, he started work at 14 as a message boy at GL Wilson’s department store in Commercial Street, Dundee.

At 15 he joined the Air Training Corps as a cadet, flying gliders at Scone and went solo at 16, just as the war ended. He joined the RAF at 18 for two years, then was moved to the RAF’s Volunteer Reserve, where he was retained virtually until the end of his life. Flying, and teaching youngsters to fly, remained a dominant passion. He taught more than 1,000 cadets to fly a glider and sent them solo. Some rose to be Air Marshals.

On leaving the RAF he worked on Dundee Corporation buses, then joined Malcolm’s, Dundee house furnishers, as a trainee and by the mid-1950s had risen to be general manager.

He remained closely involved with the RAF Reserve and Air Cadets, and one year took a group from 1232 Dundee ATC Squadron to the RAF Experimental Station near Nottingham. Some were invited to a nurses’ ball and there he met a trainee nurse, Mavis Lambert, though his request for a dance was turned down. Back in Nottingham a year later, he went to the city’s main dance hall and by chance met the same nurse. After a longdistance romance, they were married on March 31 1956.

They lived initially in a Dundee flat provided by Malcolm’s, while Mr Walker also worked as a glider flying instructor every weekend at No 5 Gliding School, based at then RAF Edzell. He was then approached to be a senior instructor at the new No 2 Gliding Centre based at Kirton-on-Lindsey in Lincolnshire. Their eldest daughter, Clova, was born at nearby Caistor Hospital in 1963.

By then, Mr Walker wanted to become an MP and joined the Conservative candidates’ list. In 1968, the Association of Retail Furnishers recruited him to set up a training department. He was then headhunted by the Birmingham familyrun furnishing company Lee Longlands as a director. The family having moved to Birmingham, their youngest daughter, Justine, was born there.

At one point he submitted a paper noting the Conservative Party’s shortcomings in Scotland and suggesting ways to improve matters. He was chosen to contest Dundee East, held by then SNP leader Gordon Wilson. He stood unsuccessfully in the second 1974 election, then was asked to apply for the candidature in Perth and East Perthshire, later Tayside North. In the 1979 election, he won the seat from the Nationalists.

Throughout his Commons years he chose to remain a backbencher, though he managed to get five Private Member’s Bills passed – many MPs are lucky if they achieve one – and was deputy chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party from 2000-2002.

Mr Walker leaves a widow, Mavis, three daughters, Clova, Fiona and Justine, and six grandchildren.

Mr Walker was awarded an OBE in 1998.