Terry Dicks (1937-2020) *83

was a British Conservative Party politician. He was MP for the constituency of Hayes and Harlington from 1983 to his retirement in 1997, having unsuccessfully contested Bristol South in 1979, when he lost to Labour's Michael Cocks. He was educated at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford (DipEcon). Dicks was known for his hardline right-wing views and caused controversy over several public statements he made. His strong opposition to state funding for the arts inspired Labour MP Tony Banks to claim, in a February 1990 debate, that Dicks' presence in the House of Commons was "living proof that a pig's bladder on a stick can get elected to Parliament."

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 (Cormack) reminds me of Henry VIII not with all the doublet and hose, but at least well fed.”

Regarding Derrick Gregory, a mentally subnormal man 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 Observer journalist hanged by Saddam Hussein in 1990, Dicks said he "deserved to be hanged" on the eve of his execution.

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?"