Howard Sydney Johnson (25 December 1910 – 13 September 2000) was a British solicitor and building society director who became an unorthodox Conservative Party Member of Parliament.
Johnson, who considered himself a radical, espoused many positions which put him outside the mainstream including opposition to fox hunting and support for unilateral nuclear disarmament.
[1] He was called into the Royal Artillery in the regular army on the outbreak of war in 1939, and served in North Africa where he was injured in 1943 and invalided out with the rank of Major.
[2] He made his maiden Parliamentary speech in May 1950, on the subject of controls on housing, about which he had professional experience as a director of land and property development companies.
[8] In November 1953, Johnson prompted laughter in the House of Commons with a question to the Secretary of State for War asking whether he would employ troops to clear seaweed from the south coast to exterminate the breeding grounds for a new type of fly, Coelopa frigida.
[2] He kept up the pressure and in 1957 a major inquiry was called into bribery and corruption, which involved officers running protection rackets among Brighton bookmakers and nightclubs.
[3] Early in 1956 Johnson backed moves to end capital punishment, and when constituents complained he replied by inviting them to choose "a mere robot" instead.
Johnson described it as disgraceful and a practice "which prevents our calling ourselves a civilised nation"; with many Conservative MPs supporting hunting, his remarks had a cool reception.
[3] In his last year in Parliament, Johnson again took up against the Grand National after the 1959 race saw only four finishers and one horse put down after breaking its back at Becher's Brook.
He sent a telegram to Home Secretary Rab Butler denouncing the "massacre of horses"[3] and demanding immediate legislation to either ban the race or to change the rules so as to remove all danger.
On 29 October 1959 the Southdown hunt with 14 hounds charged into Johnson's 3-acre (1.2 ha) garden at Ditchling in Sussex, wrecking the hedges and damaging crops.
[3] He moved on to the League Against Cruel Sports of which he became Vice-President; he supported direct action by squatting in the roads in front of hunts, arguing that the result of any protesters being killed was that the huntsman "stand a very fine chance of hanging or imprisonment".
[20] His political stances became more left-wing, as he joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and dismayed his colleagues in the property development business by opposing the Brighton bypass road.