To be sickened to hear all the tributes being paid to Cecil Parkinson

[wasonthelist]

The "father" who refused to have anything at all to do withhis daughter -

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/12120477/The-only-promise-Cecil-Parkinson-ever-kept-never-to-see-his-daughter.html

Uriah was the gist of it that the price his wife extracted from him?

It doesn't specifically say that. It does say that when the issue was brought up that he was unable to see Flora, he used to cry bitterly.

Crocodile tears, probably.

Chose not to. It just makes him spineless and selfish.

I remember thinking that all the adults seemed awful when they were on the news, but then it must have been just about the worst time of all their lives.

I wonder if his wife did make a condition that he couldn't see his daughter. I wonder if she ever regretted that. Can't imagine it myself as a parent but then she did influence him to change from Labour to Tory so she sounds awful anyway

Mrs Parkinson was the daughter of a rich man - it wouldn't have been a case of poor divorced former Mrs P and her children scraping by had she divorced. Maybe she suspected CP would have treated her as badly as he treated Keays and Flora, but her family would have stepped into the breach financially. I always got the impression from Parkinson that the old adage 'keep your friends close but your enemies closer' applied to him.

I know single parents were demonised in the 1980s but I don't remember women being particularly more vulnerable financially than they are today as sahm. My mum worked, her friends worked. It wasn't unusual to have a career.
That said, I do believe Parkinson was capable of damaging the future career prospects of SK - he was, after all, the more powerful one in that relationship. I don't think it reflected at all well on her that she was willing to sleep with a married man for 12 years, but who knows what he said to her wrt his marriage.