Teddy Taylor played into the trope of the “hang ’em and flog ’em” Tory with ease. A man of strident views, he campaigned for the restoration of the death penalty, opposed the relaxation of Sunday trading laws, described industrial action as an “exercise in anarchy” and demanded that strikers be flogged. Bernard Levin suggested that this Glasgow-born MP would regard Ivan the Terrible as soft on law and order were the Russian tsar to be home secretary.
Yet the main target of Taylor’s venom was Europe, something he campaigned against with almost religious fervour. From the outset he opposed Britain’s membership of the EEC, an organisation he regarded as a hotbed of socialism, itself something to be despised. He watched with abject horror as it