Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, Conservative politician and Northern Ireland Secretary noted for his decency – obituary

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, who has died aged 89, was a gentlemanly asset to the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, notably as Northern Ireland Secretary; he also served as Conservative Party chairman and National Heritage Secretary.

Under Peter Brooke’s aegis – with Mrs Thatcher still in office – “back-channel” contacts with Republicans were opened that led eventually to IRA ceasefires, talks with Sinn Fein, the Good Friday Agreement and power-sharing between Unionists and Republicans.

His assertions in 1989 that it was “difficult to envisage” the military defeat of the IRA, and that if Sinn Fein renounced violence a future British government might talk, were scorned as gaffes, but in fact they were elements in a calculated strategy.

Particularly significant was his statement a year later that “the British government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”. Yet phrases such as “enough common ground” existing in Ulster encouraged both sets of extremists to prove him wrong.

One certain gaffe might have finished a man less well respected: Brooke’s rendition of My Darling Clementine on a Dublin television show hours after the IRA bombed a bus in Co Tyrone, killing seven Protestant construction workers.

Brooke spoke on Gay Byrne’s Late, Late Show of his “despair and distress” at the attack. Ireland’s leading chat-show host went on to question him about the death of his first wife, then pressed him to sing Danny Boy. An embarrassed Brooke eventually volunteered Oh My Darling Clementine.

Unionists were enraged, and a mortified Brooke agreed that the offence taken had been “wholly justified”, offering his resignation; Major refused it. Byrne said Brooke should have withdrawn from the programme, putting his readiness to appear despite the atrocity down to “innate good manners”.

Genial and open, Brooke was in many ways an ideal Northern Ireland Secretary. He brought to Stormont an utter absence of dissimulation, yet was prepared to ignore the advice of old hands and try to resolve the situation.

He had strong ties with Ulster. His family had moved to Co Monaghan from Cheshire in the 16th century, becoming powerful within the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. His cousins were the Brookes of Fermanagh, one of them Northern Ireland’s longest-serving premier.

Politics was, for him, only part of a much fuller life. He was devoted to his first wife Joan, and devastated by her death during a routine operation in 1985. He was an active churchman, serving as a lay adviser to St Paul’s Cathedral, and the last Cabinet minister to resist Sunday trading.

He was also devoted to cricket, a “walking Wisden”. A member of MCC and I Zingari, Brooke turned out for the Customs and Excise as well as for the Lords and Commons.

But it was, above all, his old-world courtesy, his concern for others – especially his staff – and his patience that marked Brooke out. When he first left the Cabinet in 1992 he was a credible candidate for Speaker, losing to Labour’s Betty Boothroyd largely because backbench Tories felt that the post should not go to someone fresh out of government.

Brooke’s sheer decency did lead to misjudgments. In 1986, as a local MP, he sat in on the discussions that led to Westminster’s Conservative council under Shirley Porter selling off flats in marginal wards in the hope of making them safe for the party. When eventually his role was disclosed, he typically defended the councillors accused of gerrymandering.

Similarly, when in 1991 Asil Nadir called at his surgery with complaints about the DTI’s handling of his company, Polly Peck, Brooke took them up with the Attorney-General – then was embarrassed when Nadir, a major Tory donor, jumped bail on fraud charges. Brooke insisted he had done “the sort of thing I would do for any constituent”.

When Mrs Thatcher and her Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, differed in 1988 over exchange rate policy, Brooke publicly admitted that they did not agree on everything. The same candour led him to dispute on the eve of a crucial by-election Peter Walker’s claim personally to have reinvigorated Wales; Walker was livid, and the seat was lost. And after Brooke warned that a by-election defeat at Christchurch could precipitate a Labour government, the seat fell to the Liberal Democrats.

Peter Leonard Brooke was born on March 3 1934 into a home steeped in politics. His father Henry Brooke, later Lord Brooke of Cumnor, became an MP when Peter was four, and Home Secretary under Macmillan and Home. His mother, Baroness Brooke of Ystradfellte, was a party vice-chairman.

From Marlborough he went up to Balliol, where he read Greats and became president of the Oxford Union, vice-president of the National Union of Students, general agent of the university Conservative Association, and national chairman of the Student Christian Movement.

He graduated in 1957 with a Third, but his command of Latin and Greek would impress Cabinet colleagues. He took an MBA at Harvard, then completed his studies in Lausanne, doubling as Swiss correspondent for the Financial Times.

In 1961 he joined Spencer Stuart and Associates, founding their London office and claiming to be the first headhunter in Britain to use American “executive search” techniques. In 1974 he became the company’s chairman, a post he held until joining the government in 1979.

He became a Camden councillor in 1968, resigning when promotion took him to New York and Brussels. Returning in 1973, he was passed over repeatedly for a seat, having to sit out the traumatic election of February 1974. He eventually fought Neil Kinnock at Bedwellty that October, recording the constituency’s lowest ever Conservative vote.

On Christopher Tugendhat’s appointment as a European Commissioner, Brooke was chosen for a by-election in the Cities of London and Westminster, winning comfortably in February 1977.

Coming to power in 1979, Mrs Thatcher appointed Brooke – her MP once she moved into Downing Street – a whip, an apt choice given his hereditary feel for the party. He was promoted a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, or senior whip, in 1981.

After the 1983 election, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Education. He resisted cuts to the polytechnics, but had to concede a halving in the minimum student grant and a cut in Open University funding. On Oxford’s decision in 1985 not to award Mrs Thatcher an honorary degree, Brooke commented: “No cause can be considered lost until the University of Oxford has espoused it.”

That November, Brooke was promoted to Minister of State at the Treasury when Ian Gow resigned over the Anglo-Irish Agreement. He was pitched into complex EC budget negotiations, which he handled with skill. Though not a Thatcherite, he held the PM’s respect through his loyalty and competence, and after the 1987 election she promoted him to Paymaster-General.

Further elevation came that November. When Mrs Thatcher’s plan to make Lord Young party chairman was derailed by senior colleagues, Brooke became her choice for the post, which he combined with his Treasury work.

Though an election had just been won, he faced a difficult task at Central Office. The tenure of his predecessor, Norman Tebbit, had been increasingly unhappy, and divisions had opened up over the best approach to fighting elections and campaigning.

Brooke healed these quickly. He launched a membership drive, decided the party could not afford to move headquarters and ordered a £1 million facelift, and reorganised Central Office’s eight divisions into three. Yet many considered his reforms cosmetic, and some of the “old guard” blamed by reformers for the party’s poor image survived.

Appointed a privy counsellor at the start of 1988, Brooke was widely seen as a “stopgap” chairman until a new one was appointed to win the next election. He presided over a disastrous 1989 Euro-election campaign, in which voters were warned that Labour would force Britain on to a “diet of Brussels”. Yet he left Central Office reckoned a safe pair of hands.

That July, Mrs Thatcher promoted Brooke to the Cabinet as Northern Ireland Secretary. He formed a close working relationship with senior police and military officers, ending a period of friction; this paid dividends as the IRA unexpectedly called a ceasefire for Christmas 1990, then ramped up the violence again as Gerry Adams pressed for early talks between Sinn Fein and the government.

Brooke struggled to get talks started between Ulster’s democratic parties; they collapsed, then resumed as Major threw his weight behind the drive to break the cycle of violence. The day after the 1992 election, which the IRA marked with bombings in the City of London, Brooke left the government, becoming a Companion of Honour.

The Speaker’s Chair fell vacant with Bernard Weatherill’s retirement, and Brooke was widely tipped to win. He was not helped, however, by four other Conservatives standing, and 72 Tories backing Miss Boothroyd. Voted on first, she was elected by 372 votes to 238.

Within six months, Brooke was back in the Cabinet as National Heritage Secretary, after David Mellor’s resignation. He observed: “I always preferred to go in to bat when the score was 46 for 6.”

With the BBC’s Charter up for review, Brooke warned that the Corporation’s efficiency would be fiercely scrutinised, and that it must abandon its “Auntie knows best” attitude. He published a White Paper advocating renewal of the Charter and the merger of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and Broadcasting Standards Commission; he eased the ban on ITV companies acquiring each other, starting the process that eventually produced one dominant company. He also implemented Major’s election pledge to set up a National Lottery; in 1994 Camelot was selected to run it ahead of Virgin’s Richard Branson.

The hottest potato he inherited was a report from Sir David Calcutt recommending replacement of the Press Complaints Commission by a quasi-judicial body, and the criminalisation of intrusive media behaviour. Brooke accepted the case for outlawing intrusion, but not for replacing the PCC, despite believing it had failed; with the 1997 election in prospect, he persuaded Major to give the press one more chance rather than alienate them.

After serious fire damage to Windsor Castle, he promised government funds for its restoration. Labour MPs demanded that the Queen make a contribution; Brooke defused matters by ordering a review of fire protection in all royal palaces. He also made the Arts Council accountable to Parliament, streamlined its bureaucracy and appointed the former arts minister Lord Gowrie to chair it.

Plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day in Hyde Park caused him embarrassment. Veterans felt a proposed Spam-fritter fry-up frivolous, and there was talk of Dame Vera Lynn boycotting it, before Brooke smoothed feathers by postponing it until the anniversary of VE-Day. He also set up the Millennium Commission, proposing 12 great public buildings across the country – the germ of the idea that produced the Dome.

Having finally left the government in June 1994, from the back benches he encouraged moves toward peace in Ulster, complimenting Gerry Adams on his “courage and leadership” in bringing about the IRA ceasefire.

He also, unexpectedly, became a rebel, voting against Virginia Bottomley’s plan to close Bart’s Hospital; Brooke accused her of lacking the “moral courage” to face her critics in the House.

In opposition from 1997, he chaired the Northern Ireland Select Committee as it monitored the tortuous path to devolution, and served on the British-Irish Parliamentary Body. He continued on the latter after leaving the Commons in 2001 with a life peerage, and from 2004 to 2006 chaired the Association of Conservative Peers. He retired from the Lords in 2015.

Peter Brooke married Joan Smith in 1964, initially by proxy to clear bureaucratic delays, as her family lived in Brazil and she wanted to enter Britain as his wife; her cousin stood in for Brooke at the ceremony in São Paulo and Brooke arrived in Brazil soon afterwards with his father (then Home Secretary), on the last plane to come into the country before the “Coup of 64”. He married, secondly, in 1991, Lindsay Allinson, who survives him with three sons from his first marriage; a fourth died in infancy.

Peter Brooke, born March 3 1934, died May 13 2023