By his own account, Norman St John-Stevas received a traditional Catholic education. He holds that his public career began at the age of 12, at Hyde Park Corner, when he heckled a communist speaker off the stage and took his place, holding forth on the subjects of the Virgin Mary and the Polish people. He went on to Cambridge, was an active member of the Cambridge Union, where he gained a reputation as a Catholic apologist, and beginning in the 1950s, he became something of a fixture on British television. His faith was deep, but he was uncomfortable with the Church’s philosophical bent toward authoritarianism, refusing to abandon his conscience for the sake of politics or the Church. As such, he was a great supporter of the Second Vatican Council, attending all of its sessions. He broke with the official Church line on birth control in the late 1960s – the triumph of his conscience over his adherence to Catholic doctrine.
At Cambridge, Norman St John-Stevas founded the Defenders of Human Rights, a society whose purpose was the promotion of human rights and the rejection of totalitarianism. This led to the opportunity to speak at the Conservative Party Conference in 1949 and selection as the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Dagenham for the 1951 General Election. He would finally enter Parliament as the Member for Chelmsford in 1964, but not before he was drafted into the ultimately successful fight to reform the United Kingdom’s obscenity laws and began editing the collected works of Walter Bagehot, the preeminent writer on the British Constitution.
After entering Parliament, St John Stevas would continue to seek reform of British laws regarding matters of conscience – working to end theatre censorship and decriminalize homosexuality. He also brought his Catholic faith to bear, voting to abolish capital punishment and uphold laws against abortion and euthanasia. On immigration, he was in favor of strict controls, compassionately administered. Unlike Margaret Thatcher and most of the Conservative Party, he voted against the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Bill (which took away the right of East African Asians to British passports) and in favor of the 1968 Race Relations bill. When it came to foreign affairs, St John-Stevas had a muddled position on the Suez crisis: “I was against going in against coming out and ended up being anti-Eden, anti-Nasser and anti-American,” and was in favor of the UK entering the European Economic Community. On economic affairs, he was a firm believer in the post-war economic consensus that Margaret Thatcher would smash.
By the eve of the 1970 General Election, Norman St John-Stevas had established himself as a public figure, known for his work on reforming British law and his role in the media as a Catholic apologist, although one with an independent streak. After the election, he would remain on the backbenches until November 1972, when Ted Heath appointed him as a junior minister at the Department and Education and Science under Margaret Thatcher.
