Patrician Tory devoted to serving the public

Lord Pym, the former foreign secretary who has died at the age of 86, was an old-style, patrician, one-nation Tory whose career ultimately foundered on the unyielding radicalism of Thatcherism.

Francis Pym and prime minister Margaret Thatcher constantly disagreed, sometimes in spectacular fashion. She believed she would have had to resign after only three years in power if he had won a passionate argument over the Falklands war.

He had taken over as foreign secretary on the eve of the war after the resignation of Lord Carrington. Pym was keen to do a deal with the Argentinians. Margaret Thatcher was implacably opposed. He pressed compromise proposals on the cabinet which she described as “totally unacceptable”.

She and Francis Pym had already had serious differences over economic reform – he wanted a gentler, less harsh line with more thought for the rising number of unemployed. Just as Geoffrey Howe, the then chancellor, announced that things might be becoming a little better, Pym made a speech of unrelieved gloom about the economy. He was in charge of presenting government policy at the time and the media asked Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary, how Francis Pym could remain in office.

“I didn’t know the answer,” Sir Bernard said on Friday night. “So I quoted Mona Lott from Itmar – the wartime radio show It’s That Man Again – and said it was being so cheerful as kept him going.”

It was after the Falklands war had been won that the final break came. Pym said publicly on BBC’s Question Time programme that he thought it was bad for any government to have too large a majority. It was a view shared by many who feared the government was becoming too overweening – Sir Bernard says now that Pym was probably right. But Mrs Thatcher’s patience snapped. Following her landslide victory in 1983, she sacked him.

At root perhaps it was not just policy differences that set them apart – in the early years of her government most members of the cabinet were one-nation Tories rather than rightwing radicals – but their very different personalities. He was a rather cerebral man, not particularly charismatic, yet with his wonderful voice he had an ability to command the Commons. Despite a somewhat distant demeanour, he was a man of compassion and was well-liked.

Pym, a war hero – he won the Military Cross in the second world war – had had much more in common with Sir Edward Heath who had made him chief whip when he was prime minister. Yet Mrs Thatcher made Pym defence secretary when she came to power in 1979. There was friction between them almost from the start. He ordered a replacement for the Polaris nuclear deterrent and then fought tooth and nail in cabinet to ensure there was enough money to pay for it when she was determined on cuts.

After leaving the cabinet he formed the Conservative Centre Forward group to “recapture the Conservative party for the traditional brand of Toryism”. Despite some initial support, Thatcherism was in the ascendant, the moment was not right and the group achieved little. Pym left the Commons for the Lords in 1987.

Born in 1922 into a comparatively wealthy family, Francis Leslie Pym came from a long line of men who had devoted themselves to public service. He was descended from the great parliamentarian John Pym, one of the five MPs that Charles I unsuccessfully tried to arrest in the chamber of the Commons in 1642 in a move that triggered the English civil war.

Francis Pym’s father was an MP and his grandfather was Bishop of Bombay. The young Francis was educated at Eton and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. During the second world war he was in the 9th Royal Lancers, fought in the Italian and African campaigns, including at Alamein, and was twice mentioned in despatches.

He ran the family estate and became a county councillor in Herefordshire before becoming MP for Cambridgeshire in 1961. He married Valerie Daglish in 1949 and the couple had two sons and two daughters.

On Friday night Tory leader David Cameron paid tribute to Lord Pym, saying: “He served the country he loved with great courage in wartime and great distinction in peace. His was a life dedicated to public service.”