Harry Greenway, teacher and Thatcherite Tory MP who championed traditional values – obituary
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Harry Greenway, who has died aged 89, was an inner-city deputy head with a passion for equestrianism; as Conservative MP for Ealing North for 18 years he pressed for a strong moral ethos in schools and condemned the Church of England’s “appalling dereliction of duty” toward the young.
Greenway nagged away from the back benches against Left-wing “brainwashing” in schools, for corporal punishment and the return of hanging, and for meaningful education in prisons. A founding member of the Education Select Committee, he advocated a core curriculum, more church schools, and staff and parents on governing bodies. He welcomed computers in schools as giving children “more time to solve real mathematical problems”.
He was fiercely supportive of school staff, securing justice in 1982 for a London teacher assaulted by a 12-stone woman parent with seven convictions for assault. The magistrate had dismissed the prosecution as a waste of public funds, saying the teacher should expect to be hit at least six times in her career and should find a “strong man” to defend her. After Greenway raised the matter with a scandalised Margaret Thatcher, a private prosecution succeeded.
Greenway the churchman told MPs who were not that they should keep out of Commons debates on the future of Anglicanism. He opposed Sunday trading and “backdoor” women priests, supporting the right of any parish not to have one.
He was a leading critic of David Jenkins, the ultra-liberal Bishop of Durham, and in 1990 demanded the resignation of Robert Runcie as Archbishop of Canterbury after the Church published a report on its attitude to homosexuality which he termed a “suicide note”.
Greenway was deeply affected by the Ealing Vicarage burglary and rape of March 1986, as he knew the victims well; the intruders tied up the Rev Michael Saward and beat him with a cricket bat, and raped his daughter.
When they were jailed for 10 and eight years respectively, Greenway branded the sentences “an utter disgrace”, accusing Mr Justice Leonard of “valuing property more than life”. He urged the Home Office to introduce a 20-year minimum sentence for rape, and for all rape trials to be held before a woman judge.
After the murder in 1995 of the headmaster Philip Lawrence outside his school while trying to defend a pupil against a knife-wielding 15-year-old, Greenway and the Abbot of Ealing launched a memorial fund. They raised more than £110,000, the Queen sending a personal contribution. Greenway led the protests when The Sunday Times carried an interview with the killer.
While Greenway was generally loyal to Mrs Thatcher, and to John Major after her, he did rebel against compulsory sex education in schools and abstained over the poll tax.
But his real passion – as befitted a man sharing a birthday with St Francis of Assisi – was animals, and above all the horse. Not all animals liked him, though; during the 1983 election an Alsatian bit his posterior.
A qualified riding instructor, Greenway made Sir William Collins comprehensive, St Pancras, the first state school to take up riding. Despite having to hire a riding school for competitive fixtures, his team took on Eton at show jumping in 1968 and beat them.
Greenway was founder-chairman of the London Schools’ Horse Society. It celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1974 with Princess Anne (a friend of Greenway’s) and Capt Mark Phillips meeting 300 London schoolchildren at an equestrian centre. For the 20th, Greenway welcomed the Princess to a reception at New Zealand House.
After the IRA’s bombing of the Blues and Royals in Hyde Park in 1982 he pressed in the Commons for gallantry awards for police and military horses. He complained of hundreds of horses being left by dealers in fields around London after the price of horse meat on the Continent slumped, and in 1991 he took the famed chaser Desert Orchid to Downing Street to highlight the trade.
In 1987 Greenway got through a Bill increasing the penalties for staging dog fights. Three years later, his Bill requiring riders under 14 to wear hard hats on public roads became law. In 1996 he pushed through a Bill increasing the penalties for playing loud music at night.
He raised £12,000 for mental health charities in his constituency by crossing Exmoor on a racehorse named Happy Snoopy. Greenway’s own mount was a pony called Winston, “a gentleman of strong character”. “Horse riding,” he explained, “is the ideal pastime for a politician. It gives you the opportunity to forget about politics completely, which is essential.”
Greenway also campaigned for better cycling facilities, sought a ban on junior motorcycle racing, founded the Lords & Commons Hockey Club and was vice-chairman of the all-party Friends of Boxing.
Just before Wimbledon in 1984 he crossed rackets with John McEnroe, accusing him of “loutish” behaviour at Queen’s Club and being a bad influence to children by abusing an umpire and an opponent. McEnroe countered: ”In 10 years’ time, people will thank me for raising the standard of umpiring.” Greenway’s comments, he said, were “a publicity-seeking joke”.
Greenway campaigned hard to save the Hoover building at Perivale from demolition. He twice held his seat against the young Hilary Benn, then leader of Ealing council, steep rate increases imposed by Labour playing into his hands.
Later in his career, he survived a bribery prosecution arising from his relationship with the Austrian-owned Plasser Railway Machinery, which had a depot in his constituency.
In December 1990 corruption charges were brought against three Plasser executives, British Rail’s head of civil engineering, and Greenway. It was alleged that, as part of a wider pattern of graft, he had accepted favours in return for trying to influence the choice of BR’s next chairman.
Greenway was sent for trial at the Old Bailey after failing to persuade Mr Justice Buckley that he should be tried by his fellow MPs under the 1698 Bill of Rights. However, in December 1992 the first of two trials – of two Plasser executives and the BR official – collapsed.
The Crown Prosecution Service decided to offer no evidence against Greenway, and he was formally acquitted. He said: “This has been an extraordinarily long ordeal, but I always knew I would be vindicated.”
Harry Greenway was born in Worcester on October 4 1934, the son of John Greenway and the former Violet Bell. From Warwick School he trained to teach at the College of St Mark & St John, Fulham, completing his studies at the University of Caen.
He began teaching at Millbank School in 1957, moving after three years to Sir William Collins, where he became head of English, senior house master and acting deputy head. In 1972 he was appointed deputy head at the 2,000-pupil Sedghill School in Catford, where he continued to teach horsemanship.
Greenway joined the Young Conservatives at 14. He fought his first seat, Stepney, in 1970, and Stepney & Poplar at both 1974 elections.
At the 1979 election that brought Mrs Thatcher to power, he won Ealing North from the Labour MP Bill Molloy by 1,480 votes. Benn first challenged Greenway at the 1983 election, and again in 1987; the Conservative majority rose to 6,291, then again to 15,153.
Re-elected in 1992 by 5,966 votes, Greenway was bounced from the Education Select Committee by a decision of the Tory whips to limit members to three terms. After three years on the parallel Employment panel, he returned.
During 1995, he was one of the leading critics of British Gas’s chief executive Cedric Brown after he was awarded a 75 per cent pay increase, to £475,000. Greenway asked Brown if he would do the job for £5,000 less – he said “probably” – or £10,000 less. This proved the sticking point for Brown.
Greenway lost his seat in the 1997 Labour landslide to Stephen Pound by a majority of 9,160. Out of Parliament, he worked as an adult education lecturer and as an examiner for the London Regional Examining Board.
At various times, he was president of the National Equine Welfare Council, the Association of British Riding Schools and the Conservative Trade Unionist Teachers; vice-president of the England Schoolboys’ Hockey Association; and chairman of the National Prayer Breakfast and the Open University Members’ Council. He was a trustee of the British Horse Society and the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Greenway was a Freeman of the City of London and the borough of Ealing, and a liveryman of the Farriers’ Company. He published Adventure in the Saddle (1971), and Electing to Bat: Tales of glory and disaster from the Palace of Westminster (1996).
Harry Greenway married Carol Hooper in 1969. She survives him with their two daughters and a son.
Harry Greenway, born October 4 1934, died January 18 2024
