Alan Clark

Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (13 April 1928 – 5 September 1999) was a British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), Government Minister, author, and diarist. Alan was the elder son of the historian Lord [Kenneth] Clark of Saltwood, OM, KCB, CH, and educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford. He served in the Household Cavalry Training Regiment (1946) and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force (1952-54). He qualified as a Barrister-at-law (Inner Temple) in 1955, and in 1963 was a member of the Institute for Strategic Studies.

He worked for some time as a military historian under Sir Basil Liddell-Hart, and was the author of several important books, including his controversial work criticising World War I military commanders, The Donkeys, as well as his three volumes of Diaries, two volumes of which were published posthumously. His diaries contain an account of political life under Margaret Thatcher, as well as a moving description of the weeks preceding his death, which he continued to write until he could no longer focus on the page.

Alan became known for his flamboyance, wit, and irreverence. One-time Chancellor Norman Lamont called him "the most politically incorrect, outspoken, iconoclastic and reckless politician of our times".

Parliamentarian

He unsuccessfully sought the Conservative selection for Weston super-Mare in 1970, missing out to Jerry Wiggin. He subsequently became MP for Plymouth Sutton at the February 1974 General Election with a majority of 8,104, when Harold Wilson took over from Edward Heath as Prime minister of a minority Labour government. At the General Election in October 1974, when Labour gained a small overall majority, Clark's vote fell by 1,192 votes, but he retained a comfortable majority with 5,188. His first five years in parliament were spent on the Conservative opposition benches.

Alan Clark served as a junior Minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Department of Employment, Department of Trade and Industry, and Ministry of Defence. He became a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1991.

Monday Club

Completely opposed to the Common Market, Clark joined the Conservative Monday Club in 1968 and was soon chairman of its Wiltshire branch. In 1971 he was blacklisted by Conservative Party Central Office for being too right-wing, but after representations by him, and others, he was removed from the blacklist. In 1973 he stood for election as an Ordinary Member on the National Club’s Executive Council when he made the following statement to the membership:

Any country must defend itself and the Conservatives should remedy the catastrophic cuts in the territorial and civil defence. Immigration must stop, and so must the idiotic sanctions on Rhodesia. Crime must not pay, and the views of soft sociologists must cease to dominate official policy. Education means standards, not phoney equality. Strikers must get no Welfare.

He was still a member of the Monday Club in May 1975. It is unclear when he let his membership of the club lapse, but possibly it was upon becoming a government minister. He continued to address Club events: at the Club conference at Chilham Castle on 10th May 1980 on ‘Subversion’: the Young Members Group Conference at the Oxford & Cambridge Club on 20th July 1985; the last being in January 1992 in a committee room at the House of Commons at the invitation of Gregory Lauder-Frost, then the Club's Political Secretary.

Like the Monday Club, Clark held strong views on British unionism, racial differences, social class, nationalist protectionism and Euroscepticism. He referred to Enoch Powell, who regularly addressed the Club, as "The Prophet", and once declared: "It is natural to be proud of your race and your country"; and in a departmental meeting, allegedly referred to Africa as "Bongo Bongo Land". When called to account, however, Clark denied the comment had any racist overtones, claiming it had simply been a reference to the President of Gabon, Omar Bongo. Clark argued that the media and the government failed to pick out the racism towards white people and ignored any racist attacks on white people. He also, however, described the National Front chairman, John Tyndall, as "a bit of a blockhead".

Publications

• Barbarossa - The Russian-German Conflict 1941-1945, Hutchinson, London, 1965.
• The Fall of Crete, London, 1969, ISBN 10: 0450002551.
• Suicide of Empires: The Battles on the Eastern Front 1914-18, New York, 1971, ISBN 10: 007011126X.
• Saltwood Castle, London, 1975.
• The Donkeys, London, 1991, ISBN 10: 0712650350.
• Aces High: War in the Air Over the Western Front 1914-18, HarperCollins, 1974, ISBN 10: 0006136273.
• The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922-1997, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1998, ISBN: 0-297-81849-X
• Alan Clark Diaries. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1993, ISBN: 0-297-81352-8.
• Diaries: Into Politics, edited by Ion Trewin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000, ISBN: 0-297-64402-5.
• The Last Diaries, edited by Ion Trewin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2002, ISBN: 0-297-60714-6O