Solicitor and politician; Born June 29, 1934; Died April 20, 2008

Richard Alexander, who has died aged 73, was the Aberdeen-born Conservative MP for Newark during the party's 18 years in government from 1979-97. He championed an eclectic range of causes during his time in parliament, from small businesses to homosexual equality and, unusually for a Tory, pit closures which affected his constituency.

Although the Nottinghamshire coalfield carried on working during the bitter miners' strike of 1984-85, it suffered with the rest of the industry as pit closures subsequently intensified.

Alexander's subtle opposition involved campaigning against the dumping of nuclear waste and the importation of coal for local power stations through ports on the Humber.

When, much later, in October 1992, Michael Heseltine announced 31 pit closures, Alexander said there was a "wave of anger sweeping across north Nottinghamshire such as I have never known before". He also accused ministers of reneging on undertakings given to the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, whose members broke away to keep working during the strike, and criticised British Coal for shutting down potentially profitable mines before they could be sold privately.

Richard Thain Alexander was born in Aberdeen on June 29, 1934, the son of Richard Alexander, later Lincoln's city architect, and his wife, Gladys. The family soon left Scotland for Yorkshire where Alexander was educated at Dewsbury Grammar School before attending University College, London, where he read law. Joining a firm of solicitors in Lincoln on graduation, he then worked as an assistant solicitor in Scunthorpe until 1964.

For the next two decades he was senior partner at Jones, Alexander in Retford, a practice he kept up even after entering parliament in 1979.

Alexander had joined the Young Conservatives in 1957 and had served in local government as a member of Nottinghamshire County Council and Bassetlaw District Council, including a stint as mayor of Retford.

Having secured a long-held Labour constituency, Alexander was especially sensitive to his constituency's mining community. Otherwise, he was a staunch Thatcherite who accused Tony Benn of "treason" during the Falklands War, opposed relaxation of immigration rules and voted to toughen up Jim Prior's trades union legislation. The only real blot on his Commons career was an ill-advised article in which he said an embrace between the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward would further the cause of homosexual equality.

Alexander lost Newark at the 1997 election and returned to local government as a Newark and Sherwood District Councillor.

He died after a short battle with cancer and is survived by his second wife, Pat, and a son and daughter from his first marriage.

David Torrance