ERIC FORTH spent his parliamentary career in opposition to those in power, first as an irritant to his own side as a dissident member of government and then enthusiastically as a backbench guerrilla constantly harrying new Labour.

Forth seemed to have all the characteristics of a solid right-wing Tory. He had been briefly a schoolboy communist but then moved swiftly and decidedly to the right. He was sympathetic to South Africa’s white minority rulers, in favour of capital punishment and implacably opposed to equal opportunities.

He had a strong libertarian streak and, as Minister for Higher Education, supported Sinn Fein’s being allowed to campaign at universities on free speech grounds. He also respected his counterpart rebel on the Labour benches, Dennis Skinner, and praised the outgoing Leader of the Commons, Robin Cook, declaring that he “was someone who loved the chamber and brought to the chamber wit and knowledge”.

He was a dedicated parliamentarian and joyfully aggressive heckler who won an award as best opposition politician and was in a list of the top 100 MPs to pose written questions.

Eric Forth was born in 1944 in Glasgow and educated at Jordanhill College School and the University of Glasgow, where he was secretary of the Conservative Club. He graduated in politics and economics and then worked as a buyer for Ford and then for Rank Xerox until 1970 when he became a management consultant.

Meanwhile, Forth had served on Brentwood Urban District Council from 1968 to 1972 and in 1974 contested the safe Labour seat of Barking in both the general elections that year. In 1979 he was elected to the European Parliament for Birmingham North.

Four years later he was elected MP for the new seat of Mid-Worcestershire in a solidly Tory area. He set out his stall on the right wing from the start, voting to restore the death penalty, supporting an England rugby tour of South Africa and opposing the Sex Equality Bill in his maiden speech. He was also not afraid to rebel against the whips, and was among 16 Tories who voted against increasing Britain’s payments to the European Commission budget.

In 1986 he was appointed parliamentary private secretary to Angela Rumbold, the Education Minister. If the move was intended to tone down Forth’s more extreme pronouncements, it failed, with him declaring that Aids was “largely self-inflicted”. He later opposed a measure by Clare Short to outlaw semi-naked photographs from newspapers, claiming that Page 3 models were merely “exploiting the male population”.

Meanwhile, Forth had retained his seat in the 1987 election, and a year later was appointed Consumer Affairs Minister. He had a strictly non-interventionist approach, opposing several consumer protection measures as too bureaucratic, but he did crack down on unscrupulous estate agents. In July 1990 Forth’s boss, the Trade and Industry Secretary Nicholas Ridley, gave an interview to the Spectator that insulted the Germans and was forced to resign. In the subsequent reshuffle, Forth was moved to Employment Minister, where he clashed with wages councils and upset Cornish businessmen by suggesting that they were too reliant on government handouts. Forth was an early supporter of John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister.

After the 1992 election, when Forth held his seat with a reduced majority, he was moved to the slightly less sensitive post of Schools Minister, where he seemed to feel more at home.

In July 1995 he was promoted to Higher Education Minister, but two months later his parliamentary career was nearly ended. Boundary changes meant that Forth’s neighbouring constituency of Worcester became a realistic Labour target and the sitting MP Peter Luff successfully applied to replace him as the Tory candidate for Mid-Worcestershire at the next election.

After an unsuccessful application at a solid Maidenhead, Forth was chosen to succeed the retiring veteran southeast London MP, Sir John Hunt, to fight the redrawn and newly named Bromley and Chiselhurst.

Forth took the seat in 1997 with a notionally reduced majority, but found himself in opposition. Shortly before the election, with a Labour victory almost certain, Forth supported a campaign for Michael Portillo to succeed Major, but when Portillo lost his seat Forth became campaign manager for Peter Lilley and, when Lilley dropped out of the contest, became a John Redwood supporter. In the final contest between Kenneth Clarke and William Hague, it is assumed that Forth voted for Hague.

In the following years, with the Tories still badly damaged by their defeat and Labour rampant, Forth came into his own as an exponent of what he would later call “trench warfare” in the Commons. Shrugging off accusations that he was misusing procedure, Forth used every delaying tactic available to him to halt measures he disagreed with. He was fervently opposed to what he saw as unnecessary lawmaking and many backbenchers of all parties saw their Private Members’ Bills scuppered by Forth.

In 2001 he was made Shadow Leader of the House by the new Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, against whom Forth later plotted. Two years later, in the contest to succeed Duncan Smith, Forth backed David Davis and was sacked from the front bench by the eventual winner, Michael Howard.

In the 2001 General Election Forth was returned with a reduced majority but last year increased his lead to more than 13,000.

A keen Elvis Presley fan who sported long sideburns in his first years in Parliament, Forth had an instinctive dislike of authority. Fiercely combative, he would speak his mind and supported causes he believed in no matter what others thought or the consequences to his own advancement.

It was thought by many that the fictional right-wing Tory MP Alan B’Stard, recently revived as an equally disagreeable new Labour acolyte, was based at least partly on Forth.

Forth’s 1967 marriage to Linda St Clair was dissolved and he married Carroll Goff in 1994. He is survived by her, his two daughters and a stepson.

Eric Forth, Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, was born on September 9, 1944. He died of cancer on May 17, 2006, aged 61.