Gordon Bagier - Telegraph He joined the Labour Party in 1950, and served on Keighley (as Labour group leader, 1958-60) and Sowerby Bridge councils. He entered the Commons in 1964, winning Sunderland South from the Conservatives as the rundown of the shipbuilding industry intensified. He would hold it comfortably at six subsequent elections. There was great concern in the north-east at the control organised crime was exerting over fruit machines, and fear that it might extend to other forms of gambling. Bagier spent six months touring clubs in the region, and in 1967 handed to Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, a report naming eight American gangsters who were planning an invasion of Britain's gaming clubs. As early as May 1966, Bagier was criticised by colleagues for visiting Spain and agreeing with his hosts not to raise General Franco's blockade of Gibraltar. That summer he joined 11 other Right-wingers demanding "exemplary" punishment of Left-wingers who had rebelled against Wilson's imposition of a prices and incomes freeze. Bagier first visited Greece in February 1967 with the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The military overthrew the elected government that summer, and in April 1968 he returned, with four other MPs, as guests of Maurice Fraser, who was handling the new regime's PR. The visit outraged the Left. Bagier accepted an assurance from the prime minister, Col Papandreou, that he wished to "restore political decisions as soon as possible." Bagier accused Amnesty International of "grossly exaggerating" allegations of the torture of political prisoners by the police. That September he returned to Greece, and rumours began circulating at Westminster soon after that an MP was in the pay of the Greek government. Bagier's colleague Ivor Richard tabled a motion for a Select Committee to investigate links between Fraser and MPs "in connection with the activities of the present Greek government," and Fraser tried in vain to stop The Sunday Times publishing an article exposing his activities. When the article appeared, Bagier declared: "The claim that Mr Fraser has a British MP in the pay of the Greek government has amazed and angered everyone." But the following March he admitted acting as a paid consultant for Fraser from May to October 1968, at £500 a year. He insisted Fraser had never asked him to act on behalf of the Greek government, but it emerged that he had no other clients. The Colonels" robust line on law and order echoed Bagier's own. In 1971 he refused to vote against Reginald Maudling's refusal to admit the German student activist Rudi Dutschke; and at the height of the IRA's bombing campaign he urged Jenkins to make sure bombers who were caught were charged with treason. In 1975 Bagier again enraged the Left by visiting South Africa at the height of apartheid as a guest of its government. He retired at the 1987 election, and the next year was appointed Deputy Lieutenant for Tyne and Wear. Gordon Bagier married, in 1949, Violet Sinclair, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. Gordon Bagier, born July 7 1924, died April 8 2012