Peter Harry Steve Griffiths (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2013) was a British Conservative politician best known for gaining the Smethwick seat by defeating the Shadow Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker in the 1964 general election, against the national trend, by using anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric.
Griffiths became leader of the council's Conservative group in 1960,[6] serving as a local councillor until 1963 when he resigned to stand again for the Smethwick parliamentary seat in the forthcoming general election.
Labour's victory in the 1964 election had been predicted, and Patrick Gordon Walker, who had been Shadow Foreign Secretary for 18 months, was expected to hold on to his seat.
[8] Instead, Griffiths gained the seat for the Conservatives on a 7% swing, in a county borough that had the highest percentage of recent immigrants to England.
While the Speaker objected to such language, he refused to censure the Prime Minister, and order in the Commons chamber was not restored for ten minutes.
He both supported and arranged for Smethwick council to purchase a row of houses with the intention of letting them exclusively to white families.
[6][10] The government's Housing minister, Richard Crossman, was able to block this proposal by refusing the council permission to borrow the money required.