the parliamentary seat of Cleveland, Yorkshire. He was later elected Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Haltemprice 1954–1983, and for Beverley, Yorkshire 1983–1987. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food 1955–57, and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer 1958–59. He was UK delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1962, Vice-Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Defence 1965–1977, Chairman of the British-South Africa Parliamentary Group 1970–1987, on the British-Portuguese Parliamentary Group 1979–1987, and leader of the British delegation to the North Atlantic Assembly 1979–1987, of which he was president, 1983–1985. In February 1972, in the House of Commons he called for government intervention in the miners' strike, saying that "initimidation and even violence by picketing miners has given rise to widespread anxiety". During the Thatcher years, Wall reflected that Britain had "moved rapidly to the Left under Labour governments, and more slowly to the Left under successive Conservative governments". During this period, he sat on numerous parliamentary committees, one of which recommended building a strategic airfield in the Falkland Islands after the war. Views on Africa and communism Wall chaired several party committees concerned with Africa. He defended the British colonial record and was convinced of the benefits of white rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. In 1960, he claimed that the colonial problem arose not from differences in colour, but from differences in standards. "What we have to do is to work as hard as we can by raising the standards of the black Africans to ensure that we level up and do not take the easy way out by levelling down. Progress in Central Africa depends on the maintenance of standards and I believe we owe it, not only to our kith and kin, but to the vast mass of as yet uneducated black Africans for whom we are trustees, to see that the existing standards in Central Africa are not debased." (cf. Reeves, p. 116). He was a friend of the Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith, and fully supported him. After Rhodesia's UDI in 1965, he joined forces with Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury, to lead the Tory revolt against their party's support for the Labour administration's sanctions policy. Wall believed that white rule in Southern Africa was the last bulwark against the spread of communism in the region, which he described as "this evil virus". He argued