Michael Higgs (politician)


Sir John Michael Clifford Higgs DL was a solicitor from Brierley Hill who served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Bromsgrove from 1950 to 1955.

Early life and family

Higgs was the son of Alert W. Higgs, a solicitor from Lye in Worcestershire.
He was educated at Shrewsbury School and at the University of Birmingham, where he graduated with an LL.B. He was admitted as a solicitor in 1934.
He married twice: first in May 1936 to Diana Louise Jerrams of Springfield Clent, and secondly in June 1952 to Rachel Mary Jones, from Pedmore, Stourbridge.

Career

During World War II he served with the Royal Artillery from 1939 to 1942, and then from 1942 to 1946 as a member of the Judge Advocate-General's staff.
He was a member of Staffordshire County Council from 1946 to 1949, and of Worcestershire County Council from 1953 to 1973, serving as the chairman of the latter from to 1959 to 1973. He was then chairman of Hereford and Worcester County Council from 1973 to 1977.
He was elected at the 1950 general election as the MP for the newly created Bromsgrove division of Worcestershire. He was re-elected in 1951, and stood down from the House of Commons at the 1955 general election.
He was made a Deputy Lieutenant of Worcestershire in August 1968, and it was announced in the 1969 New Year Honours that he was to be knighted. The knighthood was conferred on 11 February 1969, in Buckingham Palace.