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Terence Patrick " Phil" Dicks (17 March 1937 – 17 June 2020) was a British Conservative Party politician. He was MP for the constituency of Hayes and Harlington from the 1983 general election until his retirement at the 1997 general election, having unsuccessfully contested Bristol South in 1979. He obtained the nickname Phil for, according to The Telegraph, "elevating Philistinism to an art form"., at archive.ph
Dicks was selected as the Conservative Party's candidate for the seat of Bristol South in the 1979 general election, but he lost to Labour's Michael Cocks.
In another arts funding debate in July that year, his remarks were controversial enough for fellow Conservative MP Patrick Cormack, in a heated House of Commons, to say, "This man is a disgrace to the House of Commons." Dicks replied, "My hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South reminds me of Henry VIII not with all the doublet and hose, but at least well fed."
Regarding Derrick Gregory, a man with learning disabilities who had been sentenced to death in Malaysia for drug smuggling, Dicks said he would be writing to the Malaysian government congratulating it on its approach. On Farzad Bazoft, an The Observer journalist hanged by Saddam Hussein in 1990, Dicks said he "deserved to be hanged" on the eve of his execution. Leader, The Observer, 18 March 1990.
In 1990, when Nelson Mandela declined to meet the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a trip to London, a greatly offended Dicks asked, rhetorically, "How much longer will the Prime Minister allow herself to be kicked in the face by this black terrorist?"
As an MP and a member of the Conservative Family Campaign, Dicks left a legacy as a critic of high-profile HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns at the time of the emergence of the disease in the 1980s. Frequent controversial jokes furthering these opinions and others – such as suggesting "tell 'em that if you shove your willy British up someone's bum you're going to catch more than a cold" as a central message of the government's HIV/AIDS campaign (instead of encouraging gay men to use condoms), descriptions of immigrants to Britain as "the flotsam and jetsam from all over the world," and ridiculing a Somalis refugee family buying water in a London supermarket, saying "where they come from they're happy to drink out of puddles" – fuelled protests, according to the Socialist Worker.
Dicks did not stand again at the 1997 United Kingdom general election. His Labour successor, left-winger John McDonnell, described him as a "stain," a "malignant creature," and an espouser of racism in his maiden speech in 1997.
In 2020, Dicks called for the BBC soap opera EastEnders to be cancelled or screened after 11pm, following a storyline involving a gay kiss between two men. He was supportive of measures to decrease periods for abortion.
He had four children – three daughters and a son – across two marriages. He died on 17 June 2020, aged 83, Remembrance of departed colleagues, politicshome.com; accessed 17 June 2020. reported to be from complications of dementia.
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Categories: 1937 Births, 2020 Deaths, Alumni Of The London School Of Economics, Members Of Surrey County Council, Conservative Party Mps For English Constituencies, Place Of Birth Missing, Uk Mps 1983–1987, Uk Mps 1987–1992, Uk Mps 1992–1997, People With Cerebral Palsy, Politicians From Bristol, Members Of The Greater London Council
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