Bill Yates remembered

Monday 19th April 2010, 1:12PM BST.

Shirley Tart remembers one of Shropshire’s political giants

Bill Yates receives his doctorate from Melbourne University

It’s the sort of phone message you dread hearing when you have friends overseas. And this morning, this one came: “Shirl, you are impossible to find but I just wanted to tell you that Bill died yesterday.”

It was one of my oldest and much loved friends, Camilla Yates, registering the death of her husband. And while we use phrases like ‘end of an era’ lightly, this certainly is. In modern political history, William Yates was probably the most colourful and memorable Member of Parliament the Wrekin parliamentary constituency has known. Well I’ll stick my neck out and say so, anyway.

And it’s almost fitting that Domino Bill – a title he won because of the time he spent playing dominoes with the electorate in local pubs – until yesterday the only living person to have sat in both the House of Commons and in the Australian Parliament, should have died in the run up to a British general election.

Although he had now lived in Australia for many years, Bill’s interest in both UK and international politics was undimmed.

He relished the debate, rattled off his views to local politicians and thought nothing of copying them to world leaders!

Elected as Conservative MP for the Wrekin in 1955, the big man with the big personality, outrageous humour and a leg permanently stiffened by a war injury, Bill Yates became a bit of a Pied Piper in the area and beyond.

It was not uncommon for those of other political persuasions to say when they met him on the hustings: ‘Well I can’t vote for you, Bill lad, but I’ll not vote against you.’

As a result of the connection he forged with his electorate, both here and in the Australian House of Representatives, he unseated a sitting Labour member both times.

Bill would have been 89 this September and had struggled with ill health – much of it sparked by his long time leg injury for many years. In recent months, he had spent most of his time in a nursing home at Tallangatta where the couple had lived.

When he and Camilla moved to Australia from the family home in old Stirchley village, their four boys, Tom, Peter, Mark and Oliver were small. Bill also had three other children from his first marriage, Elizabeth who died recently, Angela and William who died from leukaemia while he was still at school.

Bill was granddad to 16 grandchildren and three great-grand children.

Tom is currently Austrade Consul General in Libya; Mark went into medicine, became a geriatric specialist and is now a university professor; Peter was once chief executive of the Kerry Packer dominated PBL board and is now chairman of the Royal Institution of Australia; Oliver is executive director of Macquarie Bank. While despite some odds, Bill Yates carved a spectacular second political career in Australia, a little bit of his heart was always back home in England.

And after his funeral and cremation on Thursday, his ashes will be brought to his childhood home at Appleby in the Lake District.

When I called Camilla back this morning, she said: “For him, it was a release. But he’d had a lovely day on Saturday, he came home for the day, Peter and Susan were here and Bill was full of beans.

Then on Sunday morning, I telephoned to say we’d be down to see him and literally had the car door open when the telephone rang and they said he had passed away. He’d had breakfast, been cheeky with the nurses and just died quietly.”

He didn’t do much else quietly, though. During the 1956 Suez Crisis he became one of his own government’s strongest critics. He once interrupted on a point of order, saying: “I have come to the conclusion that Her Majesty’s Government has been involved in an international conspiracy”.

Whether that touched a nerve or not, later that day representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union at the United Nations joined forces and demanded a cease-fire as a secret alliance between Britain, France and Israel was revealed.. Indeed, that exposure led directly to the downfall of Prime Minister Anthony Eden.

Bill Yates lost his seat in the 1966 General Election and the following year, left the Conservative Party over an Arab-Israeli War dispute.

In Australia, he was elected Liberal Member of the House of Representatives, representing the Victoria seat of Holt until 1980.

But that was not all, he and Camilla then moved the remote but idyllic Australian territory of Christmas Island where he was appointed administrator.

Retirement? Well that didn’t happen.

In 2003 aged 82, Bill became a Doctor of Political Science following publication of his thesis on British policy during the Suez crisis.
It has been such a pleasure over the years to welcome Bill and Camilla to our home and to visit them Down Under. And I can do no better than end with part of the notice for the local Australian paper.

“Bill died peacefully in Tallangatta after a lovely day at home watching his bees and discussing international politics. A man of strong conviction and great integrity.”

And from so many more who knew and loved him, Amen to that.

View more: The Wrekin news.

1
Matt

April 20, 2010 at 11:22

They shouldn’t have voted him out in 1966! Wrekin suffered his loss in the following years.

A very nicely written tribute.

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2
Sarah Clarke (nee Dockerill)

April 21, 2010 at 12:02

I have such happy and fond memories of ‘Uncle Bill’, Camilla and ‘the boys’, he came to see us all in West Sussex a few years ago and as a family we always talked about going to see them in Australia. My Mother and Father, Eddie and Faye Dockerill, (my Father was Bill Yates Election Agent) are deeply saddened by the news and will be sending love and best wishes to the family, and also wish to extend this to all their many friends in their beloved Shropshire. Although they are now based in West Sussex they still have a house in Shrewsbury which they visit often. Sarah Dockerill (now Clarke)

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3
Camilla Yates

April 23, 2010 at 02:58

My dear Sarah. Thank you for your thoughts and wishes from all the family. Bill was in a nursing home for the last 6 months and was not happy, because he had a stroke he could neither stand nor walk. Fortunately we managed to get him out for the day twice a week in his wheelchair. He had come out on Saturday and had a lovely day as Peter and his wife were here for the weekend and after speaking to him on the phone on Sunday morning and saying we would all be down to see him in 2 hours the telephone rang to say that he’d just gone. A wonderful release and way to go for him, but a terrible shock to all the family. The funeral service was yesterday and I will send you a copy of the order of service. Thank you for your kind wishes.
Love.
Camilla.

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4
IAN PAYNE

April 24, 2010 at 08:52

I put on a massive exhibition about Eden marking the 50th anniversary of his Prmiership in 2005 at Warwick Library. How on earth did I miss Bill and his memories – because I did !!!

I never knew Eden was brought down by a member of the Tory Party in the way described
- shame on me !!!

Bill seems a wonderful Brit and prinicipled man and politician !!!! How we need those types NOW – cometh the man cometh the hour !!!!

RIP Bill !!!!

BW,

IAN PAYNE [WALSALL]

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5
Marian Ralps(Garbett)

May 1, 2010 at 18:55

I have some wonderfull memories of Bill ,When he was M P for the Wrekin I was still at school and had passed a entrance exm to go to the Wulfrun College in Wolverhamton Due to the College being i Staffs and I lived in Shrops I was denide a place. Bill took my case to the house of commons. I still haveall the letters andthe Hansard that Bill sent and the letters that he wrote to me. I wil always treasure them.

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6
Camilla Yates

May 2, 2010 at 01:01

Words spoken at Funeral of Bill Yates. Tallangatta. 20th April 2010. DWJ

I am deeply honoured to be asked to speak at the funeral of our dear friend Bill Yates. I share with you all the sorrow of knowing we shall not again enjoy the joy of his greeting, the warmth of his embrace, the laughter and companionship, the gentle teasing as he wheedled from us our scattered thoughts, leading us towards a better understanding of the world. We hold this great man, larger in life than most of us, in such high esteem.

You have heard two great eulogies from his family – a family of wordsmiths. Why did I ask that this service should begin with another eulogy in the form of the passage from scripture : “Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us”. You will not find this passage in all our Bibles for it is comes from the books written between the Old Testament and the New, called “The Apocrypha”. Written by a man we called Sirach, in praise of Great Men. So, why do we need at this service another Eulogy? As it were, a third eulogy?

While this service was being planned, I asked that this passage be read. This for two reasons. First, I believe it is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. Reason enough! Secondly it is utterly realistic. The writer speaks not only of great men who are known, but also of the great who are unknown, who have no memorial.

We, each of us, holds in our head our own personal pantheon of great men . . . for me Winston Churchhill, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa

(for unlike our scriptural writer, we must now-a-days sinclude women. At the time of the writer women did not count unless, like Deborah, they waged furious battle against the Philistines. And, may I say, we have our own heroines with us here this morning!)

Was Bill, larger than life though he always was, was he famous? By how many will he be remembered one hundred years from now? Unless of course, someone should write the brilliant biography of Bill that should be written. Where will his name be seen in the annals of our times? Maybe, he will be known for the distinction of being the only person to have taken his seat in the House of Commons, the Mother of Parliaments, and then to have sat in our own House of Representatives in Australia. And, too, he may be remembered for being the only parliamentarian to have had the imagination, flair and wit to keep bees in the garden of Parliament House. Perhaps too, it will be known that although he paid for his own passage to Australia, the Australian Government made the best investment of Sixty Pounds it has ever made, in bringing Bill’s family out to Australia as “Ten Pound Poms”! Forgive me if I sound an ironical note, but I am serious. Was ever Sixty Pounds better spent?

Unless his biography is written, who in future years will know of Bill’s passion for the underdog? Who will know of his deep concern for the peoples of the Middle East? Of his searing passion that the wrongs be righted in the Holy Land, where Palestinians were uprooted and dispossessed following he duplicity of those who followed the Balfour Declaration and tried to create one right by mounting one more wrong upon another. His integrity cost him his place in the House of Commons. (Does the life of a politician demand compromise when one holds firmly to one’s principles?) If so, Bill could never have been a great politician. Above all, he had too much integrity.

Camilla has said many times that the life of their family was a game of snakes and ladders. A most appropriate metaphore. Up to the top. Down to the bottom. Yet on again. Never defeated. And this is true of all the family. What a family! Not one of quiet, suburban domesticity! You could hear them streets away. And Bill would tackle anything for the sake of his family. He took whatever jobs he could find : like teaching unwashed Australian kids the Latin language (surely, in all education the most thankless of tasks!) And he did this with verve and imagination, often not understood by all his colleagues in the Common Room. He then set himself to seek a new career by winning a seat in parliament in a new suburb, amongst people often very different from himself. In all this his family was at one with him. As one, yet different one from another. A band of individualists, all of whom had to show courage too, being sent off alone, one by one as children ofa tendeer age : to Japan, to Indonesia, to Singapore and to China.

I return to my earlier point, “Let us praise Famous Men”. . . . “The Lord apportioned to them great Glory.” But our scriptual writer was a realist. Although there are some men who have left a name behind them, some, he says, have lived godly lives but have left no name. They have left something greater than a mere name : they have left a family. What they leave behind is a tradition, a way of living to be copied down the generations, by their children and their children’s children till the end of time.

Those of us who have known Bill will not forget him. His integrity will not be lost while his family goes on. To my mind he was a great man, as he would been to the writer of today’s scripture. His righteous deeds will not be forgotten for they will remain with his descendants, and his inheritance with their childrens’ children. They will stand for the things he stood for. His offspring will continue and their glory will never be blotted out. So Bill’s name will live on from generation to generation.

May he rest in peace and rise to glory.
Amen.

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