Rebellious Tory cabinet minister made a martyr by Thatcher

Lord Gilmour, who died on 21 September, 2007, at the age of 81, was a left-wing Conservative politician who was renowned as one of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s biggest critics.

Mrs Thatcher sacked him from her cabinet in 1981 because he disagreed with her on almost all the major issues of her administration – it was remarked that it was amazing he was ever offered the job in the first place.

He was also a journalist and wrote eloquently in support of "One Nation" Conservatism, a liberal strand of Conservatism, the diametric opposite to Thatcherism.

Ian Hedworth John Little Gilmour was born on 8 July, 1926, to John Little Gilmour, 2nd Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar (a suburb of Edinburgh).

He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and served with the Grenadier Guards between 1944 and 1947.

He first studied law and showed real intellectual calibre, but he decided to make his mark as a journalist instead. In 1954 he bought The Spectator magazine and edited it for five years (he would remain proprietor until 1967), a reign in which the political weekly was notably more liberal than its usual stance.

His political career began when he was elected as Member of Parliament for Central Norfolk in a 1962 by-election. This would be his seat until 1974 when boundary changes made it obsolete and he subsequently held the Tory safe seat of Chesham and Amersham until his retirement in 1992.

H e was briefly Defence Secretary under Edward Heath’s leadership in the early 1970s until the Tories lost power in 1974. New leader Margaret Thatcher made him part of her shadow cabinet even though he was a "wet" (an old public school derision adopted by Thatcherites to describe her opponents; her supporters were called "dries") and he was made Lord Privy Seal after the 1979 election.

Lord Gilmour was in favour of gay law reforms, pro-European Union, anti-capital punishment, opposed to the Poll Tax and against the monetarist economics policies that defined Thatcher’s government.

He was sacked in September 1981 and commented in typically-outspoken style: "It does no harm to throw the occasional man overboard, but it does not do much good if you are steering full speed ahead for the rocks."

Despite his dismissal, Lord Gilmour continued to be a thorn in the Prime Minister’s side. He wrote several books attacking her and her politics and was, naturally, involved in many backbench rebellions.

He was given a peerage in addition to his baronetcy upon his retirement from the House of Commons in 1992.

He was married to Lady Caroline Margaret Montagu-Douglas-Scott, the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Buccleuch, in 1951. She died in 2004. Lord Gilmour was survived by the couple’s five children. The eldest, Hon. David Robert Gilmour, takes over his father’s title.