Conservative Monday Club

Head logo used by the Monday Club since the 1970s

Monday Club Executive Council members Gregory Lauder-Frost, W.Denis Walker, Sam Swerling and Dr.Mark Mayall, 4th April 1991.

The Conservative Monday Club, commonly referred to as the Monday Club, is a United Kingdom independent political pressure group, referred to by Harold Wilson as the "Guardian of the Tory conscience". At its peak in 1972 it had 10,000 members, but after 1992 it declined due to internal dissension, has little influence, and its role has been largely taken over by the Traditional Britain Group.

Foundation

Paul Williams MP who joined the Club in 1962 (until May 1991) and was Chairman Nov 1964 - Apr 1969.

The foundation of the Monday Club was a direct reaction to Harold Macmillan’s policies in turning the Conservative Party further to The Left than ever before. Macmillan had never been a real Tory and addressing the National Conference of Young Conservatives on February 15, 1961, he stated that he was a liberal and even had sympathy with the Labour Party, of which his only criticism was that it was "confused".

Rebelling against MacMillan’s ‘Winds of Change’ speech in South Africa, against decolonisation, a group of young Conservative Party activists, Ian Greig, Cedric Gunnery, Anthony McClaren and Paul Bristol, formed the Monday Club on 1st January 1961, with Bristol becoming the first Chairman, working full-time for the Club during 1963-4, travelling around the constituency associations addressing party activists. Its first policy statement deplored the tendency of recent conservative governments to adopt policies based upon expediency and demanded that instead Tory principles should be the guiding influence. The first meeting of the Club which the public could attend was held in September that year, on the subject of Kenya. The New Daily was the only newspaper which reported on the meeting. In November the Club’s first political paper appeared, entitled Winds of Change or Whirlwind? By January 1962 the Club had 50 members divided into five research groups, and affirmed its support for Sir Roy Welensky and the Central African Federation, severely criticising the policies of Iain Mcleod,, the Colonial Secretary. January also saw the Club’s first public meeting of support for Rhodesia addressed by no less than five Members of Parliament. In addition, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Marquess of Salisbury (d.1972), the 'high priest' of the Conservative Party who was opposed to Macmillan’s leadership, had became the Club’s first President and Patron announcing: "There was never a greater need for true conservatism than there is today." He was joined as another Patron, in March, by a former Colonial Secretary, Lord Boyd of Merton. The first political paper to be published by the Conservative Political Centre, an organ of the Conservative Party, on behalf of the Club, was Strike Out or Strike Bound by the Club’s Home Affairs Group in July 1963. Members of Parliament had been joining the Club, and by the end of 1963 there were eleven MPs in a membership of 250. The Club's public meeting at the 1967 Conservative Party Conference drew over 400 people with standing room only, and by October 1972 the Club's John Biggs-Davison, M.P., felt confident enough to announce at a conference that the Monday Club was "one of the great forces in British politics."

Campaigns

Africa

Club rally 3 May 1970 in London's Trafalgar Square

The Club, being opposed to decolonisation, campaigned against it, and in the years following foundation it continually had as its guests-of-honour and speakers leaders from Africa, natives and Europeans. In particular the Club devoted its efforts for some 18 years to supporting and getting justice for Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, and demanding European rule, and holding public meetings opposing sanctions. The tragedy is that for a decade of this period Britain had socialist governments obsessed with decolonisation and the destruction of European rule world-wide. After Rhodesia's UDI in 1965, Club MP Patrick Wall, M.C., in the House of Commons joined with the Marquess of Salisbury in the House of Lords to lead the real Tory revolt against their party's support for the Labour government's sanctions policy. The Club published umpteen papers and booklets on the subject of Rhodesia including One Man One Vote - Africa A to Z, by Tim Keigwin, Facing the Facts on Rhodesia by John Biggs-Davison, M.P., Rhodesia – Those Foolish ‘Five Principles’ again by Tim Keigwin, and Rhodesia: A Minority View? by Lord Salisbury, Julian Amery, John Biggs-Davison, Stephen Hastings, Patrick Wall and Judge Gerald Sparrow. Delegations from the Club went several times to Rhodesia where they had extensive meetings with government ministers including Ian Smith, and the Club's resolution on Rhodesia was debated at the 1970 Conservative Party Conference. In 1978 Gregory Lauder-Frost visited Rhodesia and stayed with P.K. van der Byl, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, whom he described as "absolutely sound". The Club found itself up against the entire left-wing British media on Rhodesia. Even so-called conservatives like Max Hastings showed themselves to be enemies. Hastings, then a reporter for the London Evening Standard, described Rhodesia's Foreign Minister (who was married to a Princess of Lichtenstein) as a "grotesque parody of a an English gentleman" and said that he and Ian Douglas Smith "would have seemed ludicrous figures, had they not possessed the power of life and death over millions of people"; Van der Byl had him deported from Rhodesia. Disgracefully, in the end it was Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government who betrayed Smith and the Rhodesian people.

Winnie & Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo, comrades in the SACP/ANC

The Club continued to actively support European government in South Africa until The End in 1993. In 1982 they released a paper reporting on the evidence given by former ANC Congress member and SACP member Bartholomew Hlapane, to the US Senate Sub-committee on Security and Terrorism , where Hlapane had said "No major decision could be taken by the ANC without the concurrence and approval of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party". In 1986 the ANC's President, Oliver Tambo commenting on civilian casualties of ANC terrorists that "We are saying South Africa must bleed and die....let the whole country experience this." The Club pointed out in 1987 that only 9.4% of blacks in Africa had the sort of democracy called for by Britain and the USA, and that if Zimbabwe, now, in reality, a Marxist one-party state, was taken out of the equasion, it would only be 7.6%. They further cited P.W.Botha: "It is the big lie that a black government in Africa is of necessity a majority government……it is a sad fact that only a minute percentage of blacks in Africa have obtained (the kind of) democracy, liberty, and justice" which the West wanted imposed on South Africa. In 1986 the Club’s George Gardiner, M.P., addressed a packed meeting on the subject of South Africa following his recent visit to that country.

Dr.Treurnicht

In 1989 the Club's influential Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Gregory Lauder-Frost, called for the banning of the communist African National Congress (ANC), the closing down of their London office, opposed any release of Nelson Mandela, reminding people of his 1964 terrorist convictions when he pleaded guilty in court to possessing an arsenal sufficient to kill a quarter of a million people, saying "I planned it [terrorist attacks] as a result of calm and sober assessment of the political situation". The Club called for a stand against "international terrorism" which at that time was almost universally left-wing and communist. When the leader of the South African Conservative Party, which held 22 seats in their Parliament, Dr.Andries Treunicht, was invited to London in June 1989 by the Western Goals Institute, the Club’s Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Gregory Lauder-Frost, organised a series of top-level meetings for him and rounded it off with a packed South Africa Dinner at the Charing Cross Hotel. On the March 5, 1992 the South African newspaper The Citizen reported on a Monday Club press release which “urged the White voters in South Africa to reject the National Party and support the South African Conservative Party” in the forthcoming referendum for ‘reform’ (suicide) proposed by President F W de Clerk. The Club stated that "South African Whites had the right to exist as a self-governing nation" and that voters "should turn their backs on the disastrous and inept National Party government of Mr de Klerk and rally instead to the banner of Dr Andries Treurnicht."

Economics

Victor Montague, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, who had been a Member of Parliament for 21 years, joined the Club in 1964. He was notable for calling, in 1943, for the exclusion from the Conservative Party of the businessmen and financiers who brought with them an liberal individualistic approach to social policy. In 1970 he wrote in a Club paper that a completely different set of Whig values now dominated the Conservative Party. He was also President (1962-84) of the Anti-Common Market League: in January 1963 the Club had opposed entry to the EEC and suggested a Commonwealth alternative. This policy was not continued and the issue divided the Club until circa 1980 when it moved firmly against Britain’s membership of the EEC (later the EU). In 1966 the Monday Club was the first group to produce a quality paper on selling council houses to their tenants in order to reduce the financial strain on the ratepayer. Michael Carter, the then Chairman of the Club’s Housing Study Group, said this should be done "as quickly as possible".

The Club was often divided on Free Trade and liberal economics, but in July 1972 their magazine Monday News carried an editorial which stated: "The 19th century assumption of Manchester Liberals that economic and social interests are always, necessarily and naturally in harmony, is as erroneous and disruptive in effect now as it was then. We cannot leave our environment to be shaped solely by the dictates of profits and technology." A rejection, therefore, of Thatcherism before it even got off the ground. The Club’s Taxation Committee was very active producing studies, and the Foreign Affairs Committee was constantly active into the 1990s, both with highly qualified professionals and academics sitting upon them.

Immigration

Club A5 booklets from 1972 & 1969

The Club was possibly best known for its trenchant opposition to non-European mass immigration into the UK. For over 30 years the Club’s MPs were active in the House of Commons opposing Race Relations and associated legislation which was designed to oppress the indigenous population and to silence opposition to immigration. The Club consistently called for the abolition of the Commission for Racial Equality arguing that it was "Stalinist". In 1965 the Club stated in its printed Aims paper: we seek "the repeal the Race Relations Act, which is a menace to our liberties. The ordinary law provides protection for everyone from violence and from provocation likely to lead to a breach of the peace. Firmly curtail immigration and encourage immigrants to return home to apply their skills in their own societies." In May 1969 they published a booklet entitled Who Goes Home? by the Club’s George Kennedy Young, former Director of the British Government’s intelligence service, MI6. On November 13, the Club issued a Press Statement on Immigration in which they said: "We are betraying future generations of British people if we allow the character of the British population to be fundamentally changed by an influx of alien people. The people of this country, whose views are being disregarded, must agitate actively by democratic means to insist on urgent action by Government."

In the Conservative Party General Election Manifesto for 1970 the Party pledged to halt immigration and set up a government agency to encourage immigrants to return home. This proved to be just another vote-catching false promise and the Club continued its campaign. Ronald Bell, Q.C., M.P., was among the most outspoken Club MPs on this issue and stated that "Britain is being colonised and the day will come when the White population will become a minority. We must have an immediate cessation of Immigration and an effective policy of Repatriation." On March 14, the Club published a further booklet, by Geoffrey Baber: Standing Room Only, on the immigration issue, preceding the Club's huge "Halt Immigration Now!" rally at Westminster Central Hall in September. This resolution was formally drafted and a delegation delivered it to Prime Minister Edward Heath at No.10 Downing Street.

Club rally against Immigration, Westminster Central Hall, 16 Sept 1972

The Club was heartened by noises from the Conservative Party in the late 1970s about immigration, not least Margaret Thatcher’s famous comment about the British people feeling they were becoming “swamped” by immigrants. Again this proved to be just a ruse to draw voters away from the then growing National Front. The Club’s campaign continued. In October 1982 the Monday Club published its latest, slightly revised, policy on immigration. It called for:

• Scrapping of the Commission for Racial Equality and Community Relations Councils.
• Repeal of the Race Relations laws.
• An end to the use of race or colour as criteria for the distribution of state benefits & loans.
• An end to positive discrimination and all special treatment based upon race or colour.
• An end to all further large-scale permanent immigration from the New Commonwealth.
• An improved repatriation scheme with generous resettlement grants for all those from New Commonwealth countries who wish to take advantage of them.
• The redesignation of the Ministry of Overseas Aid as a Ministry for Overseas Resettlement.

The Club stepped up its calls for the Commission for Racial Equality to be abolished, launching scathing attacks upon it in April 1981 and October 1982. The next year the Club held a huge all-day public meeting on the subject in Westminster Central Hall, opposite the Houses of Parliament, addressed by a catalogue of MPs and important speakers. It was revealed at the same time in an opinion poll published in the News of the World that no less than 47% of the immigrant community favoured a well-financed resettlement programme and would be likely to take advantage of it.

An example of the political establishment’s opposition to the Club’s campaigns on this issue occurred in January 1989 when the young chairman, Anthony Murphy, and other members of the Monday Club’s Yorkshire branch were distributing Club leaflets in Bradford city centre headlined "Civil War in Bradford?" containing a montage of press cuttings from the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, The Spectator, and The Independent, and demanding an end to immigration. They added that the ever increasing numbers of Asian immigrants was having a detrimental impact on Bradford and that at present rates something akin to civil war would occur if something were not done. Enter Conservative Party Councillor Eric Pickles (today a Member of Parliament) but who came from a Labour family and who had seriously considered joining the Young Communists as a youth (his amazing reason for joining the conservatives was the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czecho-Slovakia) who had been, from 1982-87, Chairman of the Joint Committee Against Racism!). He and his so-called conservative friends on Bradford City Council began a successful campaign to have the Club's branch Chairman, who had been a prominent Party activist and local office-bearer, and who had stood the previous year as Conservative candidate for Bradford Wyke, expelled from the Party. The hard-left Leeds Other Paper reported that "Tory leader Eric Pickles announced his expulsion from Bradford Conservative constituencies". The Club’s feelings, however, appeared to be shared by the British people as the Daily Express headline on August 30, 1989 stated: "Blacks and Asians should be given government cash to return to their country of origin, say a majority of Britons."

Club leaflet for 1992 UK General Election

On the 15th May the Club’s Foreign Affairs Committee had resolved that Hong Kong Chinese should not be permitted to settle in the UK and that the Club should oppose further mass immigration from that place once it was handed over to Red China, and actively campaigned on this issue. The Club issued a Press Release on the June 9, 1989, to this effect which was printed in full in the South China Morning Post. Gregory Lauder-Frost, then the Club’s Political Secretary, and Chairman of its Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on their behalf to the Daily Telegraph on October 9, 1990 saying: "Most of the 50,000 refugees per year [to Britain] are economic migrants, and the government should deport them as soon as possible, just as they are deporting Vietnamese economic migrants from Hong Kong. We want the strictest possible entry to Britain for those of other cultures. Why do we accept people here from all over the world? Are we always the nearest ‘free’ country for refugees?"

The Club’s Executive Council wrote to The Observer newspaper on July 28, 1991 stating: "It is entirely legitimate to identify Europe and the British Isles as a distinctive cultural area, and unrestricted Third World immigration as a challenge to its existence." A Club Minute noted that in the Conservative Party Conference Handbook for October that year there were 14 Notices of Motions from grass-roots constituencies on immigration issues. Party officials would not permit any to be debated. The Club's position on immigration was reiterated in a letter in The Times from Lauder-Frost on the Club's behalf in October where he stated that the annual levels of immigration "were unacceptable"." On December 6 the Club’s Sam Swerling was cited in a large article on immigration in The Guardian newspaper saying "immigration has led to a sense of cultural disinheritance among Europeans", with Lauder-Frost adding "it bodes ill for the future to sit around and try and make excuses for immigrants to stay here."

The Club held meetings up and down the country on this subject right into the 1990s. In September 1996 the Club published a booklet on Immigration by their President, Viscount Massereene & Ferrard, in which he called for a "generous scheme for voluntary repatriation", the traditional position of the Club for decades. In 2013 Oxford Professor David Coleman produced a report stating: "White Britons will be a minority before 2070” because immigration had become the primary driver of demographic change."

Other

The Club was concerned with a wide range of issues and these included Ulster, defeating the IRA, anti-Communism, taxation, housing, law & order, industrial relations, media bias, educational subversion, immigration & repatriation and attacking the Conservative Party for not seriously opposing socialism. Despite the concerns of the Liberals at Conservative Central Office, the Club's influence was felt. Moreover, Central Office openly funded the Tory Reform Group which existed to move the party to The Left. In 1983 the Club’s Chairman, David Storey attacked the liberals within the Party who, he said, were chasing "the barren wasteland of consensus politics".

Ukrainian issues highlighted in the Monday Club News, Oct 1972

As far back as June 1969 the Club held a packed conference at the Caxton Hall in Westminster on ‘’The Grip of The Left on the BBC and other media’’. The Club continued their reports in particular on the BBC which were usually conveyed to government ministers. In 1991 Lauder-Frost achieved considerable publicity for the Club in his attacks against the BBC. "What annoys us is that the BBC does not support the British people. It is another case of history being rewritten by Left-wing trendies" he had said about an anti-British "Timewatch" programme. About the same time the Club discovered that the BBC were aiming to appoint Janet Street-Porter, who Lauder-Frost described as "an awful promoter and purveyor of downmarket youth sub-culture programmes" with an enthusiasm for "fringe broadcasting", to the prestigious post of BBC Head of Arts. This attack received wide publicity including a full front page article in the London Evening Standard. One of the Club's members of parliament, John Carlisle, weighed in against her the following day.. She did not get the job.

Club leaflet for Party's 1991 conference

The Club had long been anti-communist and gave its support to those countries seeking freedom from Communist tyranny and opposed the gross injustices of the post World War II settlements. Sir Victor Raikes, KBE, one of the Club's stalwarts and a former Chairman, had been Conservative Member of Parliament for South-East Essex 1931-45 and was one of the MPs who condemned the agreements of the Yalta Conference as "unfair and a disgrace". As far back as October 1972 Monday Club News had carried an article "Freedom for Ukraine!" Gregory Lauder-Frost secured his friend Count Nikolai Tolstoy, then embroiled in a libel action over his book, The Minister and the Massacres to speak to a capacity Club Foreign Affairs dinner in October 1988. With the reunification of Germany question looming, the Club's Foreign Affairs Committee, in February 1990, wrote to all Conservative Party MPs with the committee’s resolution calling for the restoration of the German borders as they were on 1st January 1938, until a Peace Treaty had been agreed, adding that this is what was called for at the Potsdam Conference. The committee's chairman, Lauder-Frost, had the final word: "there must be no gains for communism." In October 1991 the Club sent the first UK political delegation to Croatia, including two Members of Parliament, one of whom, Roger Knapman, was a junior government minister, to observe their war of independence, dining with the government and having a private audience with President Franjo Tudjman. Andrew Hunter M.P., presented both the Foreign Office and No.10 Downing Street with the Club's findings..

The Club's Annual Dinners, usually held at the Savoy, the Café Royal or latterly at the Charing Cross Hotel, were popular events invariably being sold out. Luminaries such as Julian Amery (1963), Sir Arthur Bryant (1966), Churchill’s favourite historian, who spoke on "the preservation of the national character and English traditions", Enoch Powell (1968), former Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home (1964 & 1969) and Geoffrey Rippon, Q.C.,M.P.,(1970) are examples of the quality of their guests-of-honour in that first decade. The Club also held what were always packed fringe meetings at Conservative Party conferences with important speakers. The Club, throughout its existence, was a prolific publisher. All these activities would continue into the early 1990s

Developments

Kensington Cllr George Pole, Monday Club Chairman 1969-1972, when its membership peaked.

In 1966-67 it was decided to expand the membership and at the 1969 Annual General Meeting the Chairman, Paul Williams, announced that the membership now exceeded 1500. The Club had, from early days, a very active Universities branch network and ordinary members’ branches were also established throughout the U.K. By 1970 the Club had 35 MPs and 33 Lords in their ranks, and at the April 1971 AGM the new Chairman, George Pole, announced that "our membership is around 10,000 including 30 branches and the universities group", undoubtedly the largest membership of any conservative group, ever. Most of these members were active at all levels of the Conservative Party and many stood as councillors and Parliamentary candidates. Ian Waller, writing in the Sunday Telegraph commented that the Monday Club had "overtaken the Bow Group, that it was undoubtedly in tune with the current mood among conservatives, and that it is skilfully led and of wide appeal."

With the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and especially after the British victory in the Falklands War, a great many members thought that with such a (perceived) right-wing Conservative Government that the Monday Club had lost its raison d'étre and the membership dropped away. The Club temporarily saw a reversal of this trend between 1988 and 1992 with the disillusionment of the Conservative Party in government and its liberal agenda. Under the leadership of some younger members and a more dynamic Executive Council membership doubled in this short period, despite the left-wing's serious attempts to get the Club bad publicity in 1990-1. Packed Conservative Party Conferences' fringe meetings tackled contentious issues the party refused to address; Club Seminars were held new publications on The UN, the NHS, Taxation, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, UK Foreign Policy, Defence, and Housing, contributed to this.

Like so many organisations of this nature, the Club had internal crisises, caused by 'the enemies within', in 1973, 1984, 1991 and finally, following Lauder-Frost's resignation at the end of May 1992 when a power struggle took place. These all resulted in expulsions, bad publicity and a loss of members. The resignation of the Chairman Dr. Mark Mayall at the 1993 AGM, and changes to the Executive Council that year, left the Club greatly changed and decimated of members and impetus, leading the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus to announce that "the Club should be effectively abandoned as an arena of Right-wing struggle and effort, and resources should be put into the pursuit of new vistas."