Geoffrey Rippon: the man who negotiated the UK’s European entry

In these Brexit times, we recall the Somerset-born politician who successfully negotiated Britain’s entry into what was then the EEC (‘Common Market’) in the early 1970s.

Geoffrey Rippon was born on 28 May 1924 in Writhlington, near Radstock, and educated at King’s College, Taunton, before studying law at Oxford, graduating in 1944. He became a successful commercial barrister, and was made a QC in 1964.

He was involved in Conservative politics at University, and pursued a political career initially in London local government, becoming a borough councillor, then Mayor, in Surbiton between 1945 and 1954. He was a London County Councillor for Chelsea, 1952-61, and leader of the LCC’s opposition Conservative Group from 1957 to 1959.

Though heavily beaten both times he stood for the rock-solid Labour parliamentary seat of Shoreditch and Finsbury in the 1950 and 1951 general elections, it was third time lucky, when he won marginal Norwich South at the 1955 general election.

At Westminster, he rose fast. By 1959 he was a junior minister, and in July 1962, he became Minister of Public Building and Works. After losing his seat in the 1964 general election, and returning at the 1966 election, in the safe Tory seat of Hexham, Northumberland, he combined his business interests with being a Shadow Minister under Edward Heath.

When Heath surprisingly won the 1970 general election, Rippon was initially made Minister of Technology, then a reshuffle a mere month later thrust him into the role where he left his greatest mark, that of the chief negotiator of the UK’s entry into the EEC. His legal background greatly assisted him in this politically complex and sensitive work, facing strong opposition from within his own party as well as the Labour Opposition.

His time in Brussels was not entirely consumed with exhausting negotiations. With a father (Arthur, 1914-37) and uncle (Albert, 1914-20) who both played county cricket for Somerset, it is no surprise that it was reported in 1972 that Rippon was captain of “the Brussels cricket team”.

After his EEC successes he was made Environment Secretary in late 1972, but when the Tories were ousted in the February 1974 general election, he never held ministerial office again. For the remaining 12 years of his time in the Commons, he was generally seen as a critic of the eventual new leader, Margaret Thatcher. So much so that a 1980 memo to the PM from her close aide, Ian Gow, noted plaintively: “I wonder whether we could find some job for Geoffrey Rippon to do, and which would keep him out of mischief.”

Though he had been a member of the right-wing Monday Club, he was not sympathetic to Thatcherism. In a 1985 Commons speech, he reflected on this irony: “The great thing in politics is not to be right at the wrong time. At that time I was thought extremely Right-wing by those of my colleagues who subsequently served with me in Cabinet”.

After retiring from the Commons in 1987 he became a Peer, taking a title which reflected his Northumberland rather than his Somerset roots. However, he spent his final years in the Quantock village of Broomfield to live, a local obituary said, within walking distance of his mother’s birthplace. Following his death in Bridgwater on 28 January 1997, he was buried in Broomfield’s Church.