Teddy Taylor
At the time he was the Baby of the House, as at 27 he was the youngest MP, although not for long as Liberal David Steel entered Parliament five months later at the age of 26.He resigned from this position in July 1971 in protest at the UK joining the European Economic Community, which Heath enthusiastically supported.[1] As Opposition Front Bench Spokesman on Scottish Affairs, Taylor said in November 1974 that a general directive to the National Coal Board should follow the guidelines of the Social Contract in any wage settlement.Whilst he was Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, the Conservatives stood on a policy staunchly against Scottish devolution.Although Taylor strongly agreed with this, he knew and warned Thatcher that by standing on a platform against devolution, which Labour were promising at the next election, that moderate SNP voters who favoured devolution but not necessarily independence would switch to Labour, hence endangering Taylor's marginal seat, which he had held by 1,757 votes in October 1974.The following January, referring to the murder of a London policeman by a Provisional Irish Republican Army gunman, he said that "the answer was return of capital punishment" and added that "if the police want arms, no government could now refuse".He was on the editorial board that prepared the Club's October 1985 Conservative Party Conference issue of their newspaper, Right Ahead, to which he contributed a lengthy article entitled "How Tories Are Subsidising the Soviet War Machine."