of individual Ministers to appoint to regional bodies, such as health and water authorities. The thought of Ministers directing more services is certainly alarming. The possession of power is always dangerous. Only by spreading power can we minimise its dangerous effects. The checks and balances of local elections each year within the life of a Parliament are the best deterrents to extreme action." In a reshuffle of July 1985, Meadowcroft was appointed the head of the Liberals' by-election unit. In 1986, he was the Liberal Party's spokesman on community relations and opposed the introduction of visas for Commonwealth migrants. Meadowcroft was amongst those in the Liberal Party who criticised leader David Steel's compromises with the SDP over defence policy and favoured nuclear disarmament. He favoured a European defence policy, independent of both the United States and the Soviet Union, and without nuclear weapons. After publishing a paper on defence, together with Archie Kirkwood and Simon Hughes, named Across the divide, shortly before the Liberal Assembly voted for an amendment to Steel's defence strategy that required a non-nuclear system, he was jeered by other Liberal MPs and Peers at the 1986 Assembly, and accused of violating collective responsibility for the Liberal front bench. Meadowcroft said that they had been assured that the Alliance's joint report on defence would not be published around the same time as their paper and that this promise had not been kept. He later served as party spokesman on local government and on housing. In one of his final speeches, in 1987, he highlighted the problems of rising housing costs: "We should reduce the immense pressure on the south-east, where house prices, or more accurately, land prices spiral upwards, way ahead of inflation. It seems to me that it is no longer possible for young people, as first-time buyers, in the south-east to have the type of housing which we, in the north, would regard as adequate or desirable. That will not do." Meadowcroft was defeated in the 1987 general election by Labour candidate John Battle. Some suggested that his approach had been less suited to parliamentary than to municipal politics. Post-Parliamentary career Meadowcroft was a trustee of the Community Development Trust 1986-96 and chaired the Electoral Reform Society 1989 to 1993. He is a member of the Society's governing council. Meadowcroft was on the team to discuss the Liberal Party's merger with the Social Democratic Party