Alec Beechman

Nevil Alexander Beechman (5 August 1896 – 6 November 1965) was a British barrister and Liberal politician who was Liberal National MP for St Ives from a 1937 by-election until 1950.

Family and education Alec Beechman was the only surviving son of Mr N. C. and Mrs Emily Beechman. He was educated at Westminster School where he was King's Scholar and princeps oppidanorum (head boy). He then studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was Domus Exhibitioner in Classics.

In 1953 he married Mrs Mary Gwendolyn Caradoc Williams, the widow of Captain Garth Caradoc Williams, RE.

Career During the First World War Beechman was commissioned in the British Army as a second lieutenant in May 1915 at the age of eighteen. in the same week as he celebrated his 21st birthday. He became a captain in 1917 and received nine wounds in fifteen minutes at Passchendaele. He subsequently became an instructor of officer cadets. In 1922 Beechman also served as chairman of the Union of University Liberal Societies.

The Oxford University Liberal Club suffered a decline during the First World War. Many undergraduates went off to fight and many Liberals found the approach of their party in government decidedly illiberal, especially after the coming to power in December 1916 of the Lloyd George Coalition government and the much closer relationship this meant with the Conservatives. One of those engaged in its revival after the war was Gilbert Murray, Professor of Greek and who Beechman, as a Liberal and classics scholar, must have encountered and respected. The Club which Gilbert helped revive and of which Beechman became the first president was made in Gilbert's ideological image and endorsed the Asquithian Liberals, that is those in the party who distanced themselves from the supporters of Lloyd George and collaboration with the Tories. The new Club was indeed inaugurated by Asquith himself.

During the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Beechman opposed British intervention, saying that he would rather resign or "go back to the trenches myself" than support a war.

Despite the growing link between the Liberal Nationals and the Conservatives, Beechman remained at heart a Liberal and saw collaboration with the Conservatives as essentially an anti-socialist front. He stood at the 1945 general election as a National Liberal albeit without Conservative opposition and remained MP for St Ives until he stood down at the 1950 general election. According to one historian of Liberal politics in the South West of England, the Liberal Nationals were looking to distance themselves from their Conservative allies after the 1945 general election and he names Beechman and George Lambert the MP for South Molton in Devon as two Liberal Nationals who were likely to favour a new Centre grouping of reunited Liberals, Conservative reformers and the right wing of the Labour Party.

In December 1949, Beechman announced he would retire at the 1950 general election due to ill-health from pneumonia. After he stood down St Ives continued to return National Liberals against Labour and Liberal Party opposition until the Conservatives formally absorbed the National Liberals in 1968.

Honours and appointments Beechman served as a member of the Select Committee on National Expenditure (Naval Services sub-committee). He was a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Minister of Overseas Trade, PPS to the Under-Secretary of State at the Dominions Office in 1940 and to the Minister of Health in 1942–45. From 1943 to 1945 he was a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, i.e. an assistant government whip and he served as Chief Whip to the Liberal National Party from 1942 to 1945.

Beechman continued to live in St Ives after retirement from the House of Commons in a flat overlooking the harbour. From 1957 to 1965 he served on the town council.