Paul Bryan

Sir Paul Elmore Oliver Bryan (3 August 1913 – 11 October 2004) was a British Conservative politician. Early life Bryan was born in Karuizawa, Japan, the seventh of nine children of The Rev Ingram Bryan. He lived in Japan until he was eight and then returned to England and was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead. He studied Modern Languages at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took great interest in sport, playing cricket and rugby – he was scrum half in the college rugby team where he played alongside his friend Iain Macleod, the future Conservative Chancellor. After graduating he worked in Halifax, Yorkshire, where he met his first wife Betty Hoyle. They married in 1939. Military career Paul Bryan had a distinguished wartime career. He served with the Royal West Kent Regiment during World War II. He entered as a private soldier and attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel gaining the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). In 1942 he fought first in North Africa as part of the Torch Landings. He was given command of 6th Battalion for the invasion of Sicily and then Italy in September 1943. For his "outstanding" leadership shown in the capture of Centuripe, Bronte and Monte Rivoglia in Sicily, he was awarded a DSO. After leading his battalion at Monte Cassino, he finished the war as commandant of a training unit established at Barmouth, Wales. Here he brought his wartime colleagues Denis Forman and Fred Majdelaney as instructors. Political career After the war he worked in Sowerby Bridge where he started to take an interest in politics. He contested Sowerby in 1949, 1950 and 1951. In 1955 he became Member of Parliament for Howden in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and later for Boothferry from 1983 until he retired in 1987. In 1956, Edward Heath, then Chief Whip, invited him to become a whip. He was vice-chairman of the Conservative Party 1961–65, a whip 1956 and 1958–61, and Minister for Employment from 1970 to 1972. Bryan was one of the first Tory MPs after the Labour victories of 1974 to suggest openly that it was time for Edward Heath to resign. In the leadership contest of 1975, he served on William Whitelaw's campaign committee. He was captain of the Parliamentary Golf Society and vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee from 1977 to 1987.