I chance upon the grave of George Burnaby Drayson as I am walking in a beautiful spot in the Yorkshire Dales, close to the River Wharf near the village of Linton.

Drayson, a former Captain in the Royal Artillery, was Conservative MP for Skipton for an astonishing 34 years, from 1945 until 1979 when he stood down.

He fought and won a staggering ten General Elections. His majority eroded over the years, holding on by a slender 590 votes in October 1974. He died in 1983.

The old Skipton seat, abolished in 1983, took in the towns of Barnoldswick and Earby which are now in Pendle.

So I feel a certain affinity and decide I want to know more about this man.

I take myself off to the library in Skipton to discover more about the old soldier who, says Wikipedia, escaped after being taken prisoner in the Western Desert, walking 500 miles to freedom.

I need to check this out.

Fortunately the library is still open.

Conservative run North Yorkshire County Council plans to close no fewer than 24 out of its 42 libraries. And, to cap it all, they are getting rid of their entire fleet of mobile libraries. All ten of them. And this in one of the most rural parts of England.

A 1960 edition of the Craven Herald tells its readers:

“Since his election 15 years ago, Mr G. B. Drayson, MP for Skipton, had toured his widespread constituency each year during the summer recess. He began this year’s tour in Linton, where he lived, and called at 20 villages in Upper Wharfdale and North Ribblesdale. A loudspeaker was fitted to Mr Drayson’s car and his arrival was announced in each village.”

It is a snapshot from an age long since gone.

Drayson, who paired with Labour MP Ian Mikado, hit the ground running when he was first elected in 1945, making speeches and tabling lots of questions, from Sunday cinemas to autocycles for country postmen, but, as the years passed, he made fewer and fewer contributions in the Commons.

Indeed, some years he uttered not a single word. Just one or two written questions.

In 1952 he eccentrically objected to civil servants signing their letters:

Yours Faithfully.

Instead, he insisted they should sign off as

Your Obedient Servant

In 1960 he demanded to know what action was being taken to ensure that children knew the words of the National Anthem.

But if you think he was a crusty old Conservative in every respect, you are wrong.

He could still surprise.

In 1976 he railed against the “adoration of the foetus” and championed a woman’s right to choose.

Throughout his long Commons career he expressed concern about pensioners.

Touchingly, this included the pensions of those retiring from the House of Commons.

In 1972 he declared: MPs are “private enterprise people”.

For the reasons I have given—the average age of entry, the average age of retirement and the average time spent as a Member—I have felt that a fortieth or perhaps a fiftieth was the most appropriate basis. It may well be that some of the newer Members come straight from the office desk, or wherever they have been working, with accumulated pension rights. But many of us entered the House from the Army. We were trying to build up our careers and were not thinking too much about our pensions at the time.

I should not be happy about a young chap going after a job at the age of 20 whose first question was, "What is the pension?" Other things are more important in the early stages. If, when I started work in the City, I had been more concerned about what my pension would be, I probably would not be in the House. I was determined not to worry too much about the pence in those days but to try to move forward.

We should make an exception because we are individuals, we are private enterprise people. We should not be here, on either side of the House, if we were not. Members have struck out along an independent line and have not worried too much about future security and pensions because of their anxiety to come here. We make a mistake if we try and model our pensions of a scheme whereby people enter at 18 or 20 years of age and stay right through to the age of 60, accumulating 40 years, and setting a two-thirds pension.

A junior official at the Foreign Office finishing up as ambassador does well if he gets two-thirds of his final pay. But we do not come in on that basis. It is difficult for anyone here to accumulate 40 years' service. Indeed, it is almost impossible under our system. Very few people, on the figures I have quoted, of 40 years average service, average retirement at 57 and 17 years' service in the House of Commons, will retire on one-third of permanent salary when leaving this place. That is why I support the Amendment.

I wonder what IPSA would have to say about that?

Not a lot, I suspect.