Stephen Milligan

Stephen David Wyatt Milligan (born 12 May 1948 died 7 February 1994) was the Conservative MP for Eastleigh and PPS to the then Minister for defence procurement Johnathan Aitken, at the time of his death at the age of 45. The following is from his obituary in the Guardian on 8 February 1994:

Milligan was at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became president of the Union. He went into journalism, first with the Economist, where he was in turn industrial editor and chief EC correspondent between 1972 and 1980. (In 1976, he published a book, The New Barons, on British trade unions in the key years of the seventies.) He then joined the BBC as presenter of Radio Four's World Tonight programme for three years moving from there to the Sunday Times to become foreign editor and Washington correspondent, before returning to BBC TV in 1988 as their European correspondent. His foreign affairs experience was noticeable in his interventions in the Commons, and he became secretary of the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council in 1991.

He resigned his BBC position on becoming a candidate for the safe Tory seat of Eastleigh in 1990. Among the aspiring candidate's earliest marks were attacks on staffing waste within the BBC - although he supported the retention of the licence fee.

Milligan had begun to make his mark in the Commons as a Government loyalist and, recently, an effective defender of the party in its current troubles. He had already achieved the first step on the ladder to ministerial promotion by becoming a parliamentary private secretary to Jonathan Aitken, Minister of State for Defence. He spoke in the Commons as recently as last Friday, supporting a bill on energy conservation. Shocked colleagues were last night talking about his enthusiasm and optimism for the future and for his career.

Bizarre circumstances of death

From "The Age - Melbourne online:

STEPHEN MILLIGAN, was a Tory MP and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the notorious arms dealer Jonathan Aitken, then a minister in the Tory government. On 7th February 1994, he was reported to have been found tied to a chair with a plastic bag over his head and a satsuma stuffed into his mouth. The usual embarrassment surrounding these cases seem to have prevented the press from carrying out an in-depth investigation into various discrepancies in the case. Aitken, was known to have an particular interest in Sado-Masochistic sex - Milligan wasn't. He was engaged at the time to a women who is now a Tory MP. More relevant perhaps is Aitken's well-documented links to intelligence agencies and his role in shadowy arms deals that were conducted in the Ritz hotel in Paris in 1993.

See Also

• Minister for arms dealing - Little Man blog
• Accident or murder & the unanswered questions - Newsmedia - Keith Harris 1999
• Police probe MP's suspicious death - BBC 8 February 1994

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