made a particularly effective contribution to fighting around the Savio River. In 1945 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Political career At the 1945 general election, Prior-Palmer was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for Worthing, a new constituency which had been created in boundary changes just before the election. He was placed on retired pay by the army in 1946 with the honorary rank of brigadier. In parliament, Prior-Palmer began his career by voting (along with many backbench Conservative MPs) against the large loan from the United States that the Labour government had negotiated after the end of Lend-Lease. However, these were the only dissenting votes he ever cast against the Conservative whip. In 1946 he argued for retaining conventional defence in addition to nuclear arms, because an answer would be found to the atomic bomb. With an interest in army training and the cadet services, in May 1947 Prior-Palmer moved a new clause to the National Service Bill which would give an incentive to those who were called up for National Service after achieving a level of efficiency in the cadets. In March 1948 he went on a Parliamentary delegation to East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar). Later that year he warned of the danger of invasion of the United Kingdom by air, and urged the creation of a force to tackle it. His constituency was safely Conservative and Prior-Palmer had a majority of over 21,000 in the 1951 general election. In the first month of the new Parliament, with a Conservative government once again, he was required to apologise after being overheard saying that the Labour frontbencher and former Minister Jim Griffiths "had never done a damned day's work in his life". In May 1953 he launched a debate on the need for voluntary defence services. In September 1954 he was named on a delegation to visit the Soviet Union. Prior-Palmer supported abolition of capital punishment in an unwhipped House of Commons vote in February 1956, one of only 48 Conservative MPs to do so. He backed the Eden government on Suez, arguing that it took British and French intervention to get a United Nations force to come in. Having served as chair of the Conservative Backbenchers' Army sub-committee for most of the 1950s, he was made vice-chairman of the Defence Committee from 1958. Knighted in 1959, Prior-Palmer was regarded as an 'elder statesman' but