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Sir Victor Henry Goodhew (30 November 1919 – 11 October 2006) was a British Conservative politician. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for St Albans for 24 years, from 1959 to 1983, and was an early member of the Conservative Monday Club. Although he held right-wing views—he supported hanging, supported Enoch Powell's views on immigration, and supported closer links with the white regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa—he served as a government whip under Edward Heath in the early 1970s. His later career was blighted by ill health.
In Parliament, Goodhew served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ian Orr-Ewing, Civil Lord of the Admiralty, from 1962 to 1963, and then as PPS to Tam Galbraith, Joint Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Transport, from 1963 to 1964. The Conservatives were in opposition from 1964 to 1970. Edward Heath became leader of the Conservatives in 1965. Heath and Goodhew held opposite views on Africa, and it seemed that Goodhew's career had little prospect of advancement.
Goodhew was an early member (1962) of the Conservative Monday Club, formed to combat the influence of the Bow Group on the Government's African policies. He took part, with four other MPs, in a Club public meeting in January 1962 which affirmed support for Sir Roy Welensky and the Central African Federation, and Rhodesia, and criticised the policies of the then Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod. In 1970, the Club held a 'Law and Liberty' May Day rally in Trafalgar Square in answer to the "Stop the Seventy Tour" campaign designed to stop the all-white cricket tour. Several of the club's MPs spoke, including Victor Goodhew.
When the Conservatives returned to power in 1970, Heath appointed Goodhew as an Assistant Government Whip in June 1970, and he was promoted to a full government whip, as a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, in October 1970. He suffered a heart attack in October 1973 and had coronary bypass surgery; he resigned his post as a whip on medical advice. However, he went on to serve as a Member of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen from 1975 to 1983, and on the Select committee for House of Commons Services from 1978 to 1983. He was a House of Commons Commissioner from 1979 to 1983, Joint Secretary to the 1922 Committee from 1979 to 1983, and was Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Defence Committee from 1974 to 1983. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1982. He steered a Private Member's Bill to the statute book, to allow "death-bed" marriages to take place outside licensed premises. After another heart attack and further coronary bypass surgery in 1981, he stood down at the 1983 general election.
He died in Ascot.
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