Huw Thomas

Hywel Gruffydd "Huw" Thomas (14 September 1927 – 12 March 2009) was a Welsh broadcaster, barrister and Liberal Party politician.

Huw Thomas was born in Pen-bre, near Llanelli, and was a fluent Welsh speaker. He was educated at Ellesmere College in Shropshire, at Aberystwyth University where he read law and Queens' College, Cambridge where he obtained honours in Law Tripos. At Cambridge he was Vice-president of the Cambridge University Liberal Society and President of the Queen’s College Law Society. While at Aberystwyth he volunteered for RAF aircrew duties and served for four years. He later became a commissioned officer at the Air Ministry. He married his wife Anne in 1960. They had three children, Sheran, Guy and Charlotte. Anne Thomas died in 2005.

Thomas was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn and practised as a barrister in London and on the Chester and Wales Circuit. In 1955 he returned to London as an assistant director at the Old Bailey office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

He later switched careers and became a newscaster with Independent Television News (ITN), like fellow Liberals Ludovic Kennedy and Robin Day. Like these contemporary interviewers, Thomas gained a reputation for a penetrating style of questioning when it came to public figures, drawing on his courtroom experience of cross-examination. He also did other sorts of television, for example his collaboration with Bernard Braden on the Saturday afternoon sports and current affairs round-up programme, Let’s Go. Thomas later set up his own media consultancy firm, doing PR, producing documentaries and training programmes.

At the 1950 general election Thomas, aged only 22 years, fought his home seat of Llanelli. He came second in a four-cornered contest, albeit more than 30,000 votes behind the successful Labour candidate and sitting MP Jim Griffiths but he was one of the few Liberal candidates in 1950 who managed to save his deposit.

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