A large, genial, untidy figure with a rare gift for languages, Battersby had an enormous range of knowledge and contacts, particularly in the former Soviet empire. He was one of the first British intake of directly elected members of the European Parliament, having won Humberside in 1979. His politics were of the centre, though he was strongly anti-Soviet and pro-European - the latter position putting him at odds with the Thatcherite wing of the party during the 1980s.
Above: Bob Battersby (pictured left) aboard the Hull-based tug 'Irishman'. The photo was shot while inspecting a Polish fishing fleet off the Falkland Islands
Having previously worked as an EEC
official on the drafting of the Common Fisheries Policy, he became chairman
of the Parliament's fisheries working group and did his utmost to defend the
interests of British trawlermen, including his own Grimsby constituents. A
voracious appetite for detail made him an effective representative in a wide
range of other constituency work, and he was also chief whip of the European
Democratic Group, which included Conservative MEPs.
Battersby spoke upwards of a dozen languages, and could make speeches in any
of them, including Icelandic. On a parliamentary delegation to China, he
chose, to the consternation of his hosts, to make an address in Tibetan.
Though he picked up new tongues with unusual ease, he worked hard to perfect
them: during dull sessions in the parliament chamber, he could be seen
laboriously memorising Chinese characters.
Robert Christopher Battersby was born on December 14 1924 at Sheffield,
where his grandfather founded the Sheffield Star; his father edited the
paper between the wars, in both of which he served as an artillery officer.
Bob went to Firth Park Grammar School, Sheffield, and won a scholarship at
16 to study General Sciences at Edinburgh University.
In 1942 he joined the Royal Artillery, but soon afterwards suffered severe
head injuries in a motorcycle accident - at the inquiry the driver of the
truck he had hit reported: "The last I saw of Cadet Battersby was his boots
disappearing over the top of my cab". He was invalided out of the RA, but
persuaded the Intelligence Corps he was fit for service after being sent for
recuperation to a mental hospital, where he was the only inmate eager to get
back into uniform - most of the others were feigning madness to avoid it.
In due course Battersby was attached to the 2/7th Gurkhas during the advance
northwards through Italy to the Gothic Line. Here he observed the practice
of rewarding Gurkha soldiers with half a crown for each pair of ears
(suspended on bits of string) which they brought back from skirmishes.
In November 1944 his division moved to Greece which, having been liberated
from the Germans, was descending into a civil war between Communist rebels
and a fragile government. Battersby was mentioned in dispatches and served
in the bodyguard for Winston Churchill during a Christmas visit to Athens
while street fighting was raging; even the prime minister felt obliged to
carry a pistol.
From 1945 to 1947 Battersby operated as an intelligence officer in the
mountains of Macedonia, close to the Albanian border. He was repeatedly
subjected to death threats, apparently from within the anti-Communist
partisan group to which he was attached, on the basis that his death might
provoke a helpful increase in British support. In such treacherous
territory, he learned to carry hand grenades rather than small arms as "a
more effective negotiating tool".
On returning to England, Battersby took up an Army scholarship to
Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge, to read Russian and Modern Greek, the first
undergraduate to do so; he was still a reserve officer, and commanded the
University's territorial guard of honour at the vigil for King George VI in
1952. After leaving Cambridge he spent a period teaching at The Leys School,
Cambridge, and studying in France.
He then found work as a salesman for Harry Dowsett, a maverick entrepreneur
who once shot his own chauffeur, and whose business activity repeatedly
challenged Cold War embargoes on East-West trade. Battersby's job was to
sell trawlers and industrial plant to the Russians, travelling to remote
parts of the Soviet empire in the company of KGB minders whom he came to
know well.
Once, when on a Trans-Siberian train in which the electric lights had
failed, Battersby was playing cards with fellow-passengers by the light of
flaming glasses of vodka, until a jolt threw burning spirit all over the
carriage, setting it on fire and inviting accusations of Western sabotage.
But his command of Russian enabled him to talk his way out of this and other
scrapes. On another occasion, in Moscow, an official eyed Battersby
suspiciously and said: "You're not from here, are you?" As Battersby
faltered, his interlocutor went on: "I'd know that accent anywhere. You're
from Gorky."
In 1963 Battersby moved to Glacier Metals, which became part of Associated
Engineering, and from 1971 to 1973 he was Sales Director of GKN Contractors.
Throughout this time he was selling and overseeing the installation of
industrial plant and machinery throughout the Eastern bloc; but he was also
developing friends and contacts in dissident circles. He was in Hungary in
1956, and in Prague in 1968; he was also involved with Prague University and
with Polish church groups in arranging student exchanges with the West.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he fell foul of the Russian authorities, who
withdrew his East European visas in 1973. Unable to pursue his career in
East-West trade, he moved to Brussels to spend six years as an EEC official
in the agriculture and fisheries directorates.
Undismayed by losing his seat in the 1989 European election, Battersby had
no interest in retirement. He continued learning new languages, and took
enthusiastically to consultancy work in his former stamping grounds. He
negotiated transport routes across Central Asia on behalf of Tractobel, a
Belgian utility group, and worked with the accountancy firm Coopers &
Lybrand on advisory projects for new governments in the region.
Battersby was in Bucharest when Ceaucescu fell, and spent a month at Tbilisi
during vicious fighting against Georgian rebels. He became the Tories'
special adviser on Eastern Europe, and remained chairman of the European
Parliament's Friends of Poland group.
Bob Battersby, who died on September 30, was appointed MBE in 1971, and CBE
in 1990. For his work with the Church in Poland, in 1990 he was awarded a
Papal knighthood of St Gregory - a rare distinction for a non-Catholic.
He married first, in 1949, June Scriven; they had a daughter. The marriage
was dissolved, and he married secondly, in 1955, Marjorie Bispham, whom he
met when she found him asleep in her reserved seat on a train at the Gare St
Lazare. They had two sons and a daughter. "
(Source)