The Mid Staffordshire constituency of the United Kingdom Parliament held a by-election on 22 March 1990. The result was the election of Labour candidate Sylvia Heal to succeed the previous Conservative Member of Parliament John Heddle, who had precipitated the by-election by committing suicide. Background John Heddle was first elected to Parliament in the 1979 general election when he had gained the Lichfield and Tamworth constituency from Labour. After boundary changes, he represented Mid Staffordshire from 1983. He was a popular extrovert at Westminster but in the late 1980s he found himself with severe financial problems due to the property price crash, and on 19 December 1989 he was found dead in his Jaguar car in an isolated spot near Chartham, Kent. At the previous general election in 1987 the result had been: Candidate selection Conservative Reports in the press indicated that the local Conservative Association was reported to be in 'some disarray' at the start of the by-election campaign; an experienced agent was sent up from London to run the campaign. The party received 250 applications to stand as candidate, among whom were said to be Lady Olga Maitland; the Conservatives denied rumours that Jeffrey Archer was hoping to stand. On 2 February the Conservatives selected Charles Prior, a 43-year-old chartered accountant from Newbury who was a former member of Berkshire county council and a member of the Bow Group. Prior, managing director of a publishing and training company, was the nephew of former Northern Ireland Secretary James Prior, and beat former MP Richard Ottaway in the final selection. Labour Following criticism of Labour candidates for previous by-elections, the party had set up a panel of five senior members to draw up shortlist of approved candidates, from which the local Constituency Labour Party would make the final selection. Deputy Leader Roy Hattersley was in charge of the process. A shortlist was drawn up during January, with some concerns being reported about whether the candidate from the 1987 election, Crispin St Hill, would be on it. St Hill was a black community worker from Brent and previous by-elections had seen the party resist selecting black candidates for by-elections. He did secure a place on the shortlist but the local party selected Sylvia Heal, who had made a prominent speech at the 1989 party conference supporting the leadership's change of policy on nuclear disarmament from unilateral disarmament to a multilateralist approach.