Richard Drax

Drax passed out from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned in the British Army joining the Coldstream Guards on 9 December 1978 as a second lieutenant.[3] Drax was promoted lieutenant on 9 December 1980,[4] before being transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers after active service on 9 December 1983, ending his first period of full-time military service.[5]

Drax was reinstated on the Active List on 10 September 1984, beginning his second and final period of regular service. He retained the rank of lieutenant with seniority from 10 September 1981 to reflect the three years he had served.[6] He was promoted captain on 10 March 1986.[7]

He relinquished his British Army commission on 9 September 1987, thereby retiring after nine years' service as a Coldstreamer.[8]

Drax worked at York's Evening Press as a reporter in 1991,[2] before joining BBC South where he appeared on both radio and television media, including the daily television news programme South Today.[9]

Selected as a Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate in July 2006, at the general election in May 2010 Drax defeated the incumbent Labour Member of Parliament for South Dorset, Jim Knight, later Lord Knight of Weymouth.[10] Drax retained his seat in the 2015 general election with an increased majority and the 2017 general election.

On 5 February 2013, Drax voted in the House of Commons against a Second Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 that legalised marriage for same-sex couples.[11]

In the House of Commons he has sat on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and currently serves on the European Scrutiny Committee.[12]

In 2009, Drax faced criticism from political rivals for 'hiding his aristocratic roots' by not using his full quadruple-barrelled name. It was suggested the then leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, had asked wealthy Conservative candidates to shorten their names to appear more in touch with normal people. Drax denied the accusations, saying that he only used the shortened version of his name because of the "logistic mouthful", while Cameron's comments were a "throw away joke".[13]

In January 2016, the Labour Party unsuccessfully proposed an amendment in Parliament that would have required private landlords to make their homes "fit for human habitation". According to Parliament's register of interests, Drax was one of 72 Conservative MPs who voted against the amendment who personally derived an income from renting out property. The Conservative Government had responded to the amendment that they believed homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass the new law that would explicitly require it.[14]

In June 2020, Drax wrote an article in the Dorset Echo suggesting that rioters linked to the Black Lives Matter protests had been responsible for desecrating the cenotaph war memorial in London.[15]

During the 2010 United Kingdom general election campaign period, in which Drax was campaigning to be MP for South Dorset, the Daily Mirror reported that Drax's family had earned their fortune through slavery. Drax's response questioned his responsibility for "something that happened 300 or 400 years ago", stating "it's not what I stand for", and cited the desperation of his opponents- "all they can do is pick at bits of my family history". In 2013, the BBC reported that his ancestor John Erle-Drax, who had an estate in Barbados,[21] was recorded in a database created by University College London as having received £4,293 12s 6d in compensation for 189 slaves when slavery was abolished.[22]

A 2020 investigation by The Guardian found that Richard Drax still owns and grows sugar on the same Drax Hall plantation in Barbados that made the family's fortune. Over 200 years, 30,000 slaves died at this and the other Drax plantations, according to Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Chair of CARICOM's Reparations Commission. "The Drax family has done more harm and violence to the black people of Barbados than any other," he said.[17]