Ednyfed Hudson Davies obituary

The former MP Ednyfed Hudson Davies, who has died aged 88, was a polymath with an extraordinary range of talents and interests, only one of which was a pursuit of politics. Armed with two degrees in politics, from Swansea and Balliol College, Oxford, and a further honours degree in Welsh, he began his professional career as a political academic and this propelled him, somewhat accidentally, into the House of Commons. He was elected twice as a Labour MP and served in two separate parliaments, but he left politics in 1983 having failed to secure election as a candidate for the Social Democratic party.

He won his first election unexpectedly in Conwy, in north Wales, in 1966, capturing what had been a comfortable Conservative seat from the long-serving incumbent, Peter Thomas, a former Welsh secretary of state. Hudson Davies secured a big swing to Labour by campaigning on the party’s plans for leasehold reform, an issue that was particularly pertinent to much of the local electorate in Llandudno at the time. He lost the seat in 1970, but returned to parliament for a further term as MP for Caerphilly in 1979. He joined the SDP in 1981 and fought Basingstoke for the new party two years later.

During the break in his parliamentary career, Hudson Davies worked in news and current affairs for the BBC, specialising in Welsh language features and travelogues and he also qualified as a barrister. He was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn in 1975 and practised for a year before being appointed chairman of the Welsh Tourist Board in 1976. In this post he pursued a policy of encouraging tourism in small farming communities in order to maintain existing agricultural enterprise and the rural population of the country.

He was an early exponent of Welsh devolution and was himself bilingual. As a child he had listened to his two sets of grandparents, from north and south Wales, communicating in their second language, English, because they could not understand the others’ dialect. He successfully campaigned at Westminster for the use of the Welsh language to be permissible on tax returns and vehicle licence applications.

Ednyfed was born in Llanelli, the son of a scholarly Congregational minister, Ebenezer Curig Davies, and his wife, Enid (nee Hughes). He first attended school in Bangor, where the family moved when he was four. Later, he went to Dynevor grammar school and University College, Swansea. From 1957 until 1961 he lectured in politics at the University of Wales, in Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University), and he then took up a post as a politics lecturer at the Welsh College of Advanced Technology, later the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, in Cardiff.

He had joined the Labour party at 18 and by the middle of the 1960s had become well known in the Welsh party, where he was viewed as a potential future star. He agreed to stand in Conwy in 1966, believing he could not win but viewing the prospect as an experience that would enhance his prospects as a lecturer.

He was popular at Westminster, but seen as a maverick. He won friends for his charm and learning, but the breadth of his interests diminished his commitment to everyday politics. He played competitive chess over the telephone before the internet was invented and enjoyed sailing, fast cars, photography and falconry. The enthusiasm with which he embraced life proved inimical to a long-term successful political career.

In 1972 Hudson Davies married Amanda Barker-Mill and went to live on land owned by her family in Hampshire. As a couple they established a number of educational projects in the New Forest, including a dairy show farm and the country’s first butterfly farm, and after leaving politics, he concentrated his energies in this area. He ran the New Forest Enterprise Centre and also developed a business career in commercial radio with Ocean Sound and, subsequently, the Lincs FM group of local radio stations in Yorkshire and the east Midlands. He was closely involved with the New Forest Ninth Centenary Trust and edited the Welsh language pages of the Radio Times.

He and Amanda divorced in 1994. In 2016 he married his long-term partner, Sue Owen. He is survived by Sue, by Rebecca and Elinor, his twin daughters with Amanda, by his grandson, Oscar, and by Sue’s daughter, Katharyn.

• (Gwilym) Ednyfed Hudson Davies, lawyer, politician and broadcaster, born 4 December 1929; died 11 January 2018