Skipton MP and his wife visited Moscow back in 1952

Accompanied by his wife, Winifred, he was the first Conservative MP to visit the country, then part of the Soviet Union, since the Second World War.

The last delegation from Britain had taken place several years before the war, and had included Lady Astor and George Bernard Shaw.

Mr Drayson, Skipton MP from 1945 to 1979, and Mrs Drayson, were very much in demand following their visit to the country, both nationally and locally.

Both Mr and Mrs Drayson broadcast their experiences over the BBC while Mr Drayson's colleagues in the House of Commons were 'greatly interested' in his Russian trip, and he was called upon to address the Conservative Finance, Trade and Industry Committee.

After that, Mr Drayson spoke to the Craven Herald from their home in Kilnsey, while Mrs Drayson gave an 'interesting talk' to members of the North Ribblesdale Habitation of the Primrose League at Settle.

Talking to the Primrose League - an organisation founded in 1883 to support and spread Conservative principles - Mrs Drayson made it clear that her husband had had not gone to Russia with the disapproval of his party; he had gone with its full knowledge and consent.

It was an economic conference which had held the promise of quite a bit more trade with the western world, she explained.

The position of textiles in the UK at the time was 'serious in the extreme' and if Russia expressed a desire to do trade with the country, it was 'good for all' said Mrs Drayson, who went on to say the country could not afford to miss opportunities of doing trade with Russia and Eastern Europe.

People might say normal channels of trade existed through Hong Kong, she said, but explained that the Chinese were 'not particularly interested in keeping up the prosperity of Hong Kong at present'.

She added that China had been at the Moscow conference in force and that there had been talk of £10m trade each way with China, including £3.5m in textiles - she was not sure how far the plan had got, but it might well have been concluded.

The hotel in Moscow where the Draysons stayed was the 'most palatial' she had seen in Europe.

There was a gigantic foyer with massive chandeliers and beautiful marble columns, and the delegates all had luxurious suites of rooms.

The conference itself was also held in splendid surroundings with the most wonderful of equipment including machines for 'simultaneous translation'.

A number of guides and interpreters were allocated to the delegates and asked whether they 'had been watched', Mrs Drayson said they had no real real consciousness of being followed.

But, they had been told it was likely that once out of every three times they went out, they would be. The guides, although very friendly and helpful, she was sure were actually members of the Russian secret police.

She went onto describe some of the women she met - the older ones were much softer and flexible, while the younger ones were 'rigid, fanatical members of the Communist party'.

When she told them a little about life in England and the good things, she could see a 'look of total disbelief come over their faces' - it was not what 'they had heard about in Pravda'.

Although they could only leave the hotel for short distances and with a special fleet of cars, they had seen 'quite a lot'.

On a walk 'off the beaten track', and unofficial, Mrs Drayson had gone off with a Russian speaking person along Gorky Street and had ended up on a mud track. There, they had found a log cabin, a relic of Czarist Russia. It was about the size of a small shippon and housed 36 people.

Inside was a woman cooking on a small gas stove for three families, it was the worst case of overcrowding she had seen, said Mrs Drayson.

They also visited a textile mill, which had not been unlike a mill in Skipton or Barnoldswick, although working conditions were quite different.

There was no right to strike, the employees had to work 'fantastically hard' and the penalties for absenteeism were 'tremendously severe'.

She believed anyone off work without excuse was liable to one year's imprisonment and if anyone was late more than three times, they would have pay deducted.

There was also a visit to a school - for boys between the ages of seven and 17 years old where all the teachers were women. She was shown a book where the discovery of America was not attributed to Christopher Columbus, but to a 'Russian explorer'.

She also described the brilliance of the ballet, but how it had been used for 'propaganda purposes'.

"In this country, we have to keep up our educational level because only a trained mind can resist this propaganda. The Russians are the world's number one propagandists," she said.