David Steel MP, he was responsible for introducing, as a Private Member's Bill, the Abortion Act 1967, and has argued for greater liberalisation of this legislation in recent years (see Abortion in the United Kingdom). He also became the Liberal Party's spokesman on employment, and in 1970 its Chief Whip. In 1976, after the downfall of Jeremy Thorpe, and a short period in which Jo Grimond acted as caretaker leader, he won the Liberal leadership by a wide margin over John Pardoe. At only 38 years old, he was one of the youngest party leaders in British history. In March 1977, he
Jeremy Thorpe labourer and having joined the police as a constable, rose to the rank of superintendent. One of his many sons, John Thorpe, became an Anglican priest and served as Archdeacon of Macclesfield from 1922 to 1932. The archdeacon's marriage in 1884 to a daughter of the prosperous Anglo-Irish Aylmer family brought considerable wealth to the Thorpes, as did his elder daughter Olive's marriage into the influential Christie-Miller family of Cheshire. Both John Henry and Jeremy Thorpe would benefit from this connection, as the Christie-Millers paid the costs of their education. Jeremy was his parents' third child, following two sisters. His