WILLIAM WHITLOCK, who has died aged 83, was Labour MP for Nottingham North from 1959 until 1983.
A thoughtful, unassuming politician, Whitlock was one of the invisible men of Westminster until in 1969, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, he was thrust into the spotlight when gunmen ejected him from the Caribbean island of Anguilla.
Anguilla (population 5,500) had broken away from St Kitts and Nevis in 1967 and subsequently declared itself a sovereign republic under "President" Ronald Webster. The affair placed Britain (then still responsible for Anguilla's defence and foreign relations) in a quandary, and in March 1969 Whitlock was dispatched to consult the High Commissioners of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Barbados.
Whitlock proceeded on to Anguilla with Britain's proposals - including an amnesty for the rebels, the appointment of a magistrate, and consultations with the Anguillans about development. On his arrival, he was welcomed by 500 islanders singing "God Save the Queen". Later, however, men armed with automatic rifles blocked off the road to the house where Whitlock and his party were having lunch. Webster entered the house and told Whitlock: "We are very annoyed about your proposals and I want you to leave Anguilla in 30 minutes."
To emphasise their demand, Webster's men fired four bullets into the house. Accordingly, Whitlock and the British administrator, Tony Lee, thought it prudent to withdraw. Once safely in Barbados, Whitlock said he was convinced that a Mafia-type organisation was operating on the island.
Some of the British press later suggested that Whitlock had helped to precipitate the crisis through a lack of tact, an accusation which he strenuously refuted. Many felt that Whitlock - who shortly afterwards was asked to stand down as a junior minister, but thereafter never complained - had been made a scapegoat by his superiors, and that the Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart should have been more supportive. Tony Lee, meanwhile, returned to the island shortly afterwards accompanied by British troops. Anguilla reverted in 1971 to being a de facto British dependency, and in 1980 was formally separated from St Kitts and Nevis.
The son of a dockworker, William Charles Whitlock was born at Southampton on June 20 1918 and educated at Itchen Grammar School and Southampton University. During the Second World War, he served with the Hampshires as part of the British Expeditionary Force. He took part in Operation Dynamo and scrambled aboard a fishing boat under machine-gun fire on the last day of the Dunkirk evacuation. He later joined the British Airborne Division and crossed the Rhine after landing in Holland by glider.
After the war, he joined the Labour Party and became area organiser for the shopworkers' union in Leicester. By 1957, he was president of the Leicester City Labour Party. That year he was chairman of the selection panel that chose Betty Boothroyd as the Labour candidate in the by-election in Leicester South-East, following the resignation of Captain Charles Waterhouse, the leader of the Suez rebels.
In 1959, Whitlock was chosen for Nottingham North, and defeated the Conservative candidate by 24,005 votes to 18,952. He served as an Opposition Whip from 1962 until 1964, Vice-Chamberlain of the Household from 1964 until 1966, Comptroller of HM Household from 1966 to 1967, and Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in 1966 and 1967. He was Deputy Chief Whip in 1967, and the same year was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs.
Throughout this time, he played hockey for Leicester, and bowled slow-medium for the Lords and Commons cricket team. In later life, he immersed himself in worthwhile causes.
He married, in 1943, Jessie Reardon; they had five sons and two adopted daughters.
