Sam Swerling

Sam Swerling circa 2000

Samuel Swerling (b. 26 October 1939 - 16 September 2023 both at Watford, Hertfordshire, England) BA., LL.B.(Hons), was an English politician and active member of the Conservative Party from a young age, standing for them in numerous elections, including General Elections, and serving as a councillor on Westminster City Council. He was for over 30 years an activist in the Conservative Monday Club, holding numerous offices within it including national Chairman. In the new century he was an active member of the now defunct Conservative Democratic Alliance (CDA), and was a Vice-President of the Traditional Britain Group until his death.

Life

Education

Sam Swerling was educated at Repton School, and Trinity College, Dublin, and was for decades a partner and later a consultant in a firm of solicitors in the City of London. He was until his retirement one of England's Senior Law Lecturers, and for more than 26 years taught at the City University, London.

Early political activity

In 1959 Sam Swerling was adopted as the Greater London Council ( G.L.C.) Conservative Party candidate for Newham North-West, where his principle opposition were the Communist Party and Labour Party candidates). He was Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate at Stalybridge and Hyde in the February 1974 General Election (gaining 32% of the poll), and again at Nottingham East in October 1974 (34%). As a member of the London St.Marylebone Young Conservatives (of which he was Chairman in 1969) he became editor of their 20-page quarterly journal Bastion. He was winner of the Lady Colwyn (St. Marylebone) Cup, Speaking competition, twice: 1969 & 1970. In 1971-72 he sat on the Greater London Area Advisory Committee of the Conservative Political Centre (C.P.C.), and the G.L.A. General Purposes Committee C.P.C., 1975-1977.

In the years 1972-73 and 1975-78 he was Chairman of St. Marylebone C.P.C. He served as Vice-President of St. Marylebone Young Conservatives 1975-1979. In May 1971 he unsuccessfully fought the Church Street ward in the Westminster City Council elections. In 1971-72, 1975-77 was Vice-Chairman of the St. Marylebone Conservative Association. From 1978 – 1982 he served as Conservative Councillor for the Marylebone Ward on the Westminster City Council. He was for some years a Member of the Society of Conservative Lawyers and sat on their General Purposes Committee 1976-77.

In 1971 he researched and produced a Dossier on the National Council for Civil Liberties, the communist group, in support of a Resolution calling for disaffiliation by Greater London Young Conservatives. He gave evidence to the Conservative Parliamentary Home Affairs Committee on Communist subversion in British Industry and ways to combat it in October 1975.

Sam Swerling addressing the Conservative Party Conference in October 1978.

Conservative Monday Club

Executive officers of the old Monday Club in 1991. Gregory Lauder-Frost, Hon. Denis Walker, Sam Swerling, & Dr. Mark Mayall.

He joined the Monday Club in 1965, sitting on numerous committees, was elected to the Executive Council on June 5, 1972 as editor of the Monday Club Newsletter. Re-elected to the Executive Council in April 1973, he briefly resigned from the Executive Council during the Club’s internal disputes of June-July that year. He later succeeded Adrian FitzGerald as Editor of Monday World, the club's quality A4 magazine, and after retiring from that post remained on the editorial board. He was elected national Club Deputy Chairman 1977-80, was on the Club’s Speakers’ Panel list in 1979 and became national Club Chairman in April 1980, serving for two years, following which he stood again as Editor of Monday World when he told the membership that

"I realise the practical limitations imposed upon any Conservative pressure-group when the Party is in power. The best way to assert influence is through high quality research and publications. As our newsletter editor from 1972-74 I tried to achieve this and would seek to do so again."

In 1987 Sam Swerling became Chairman of the Club’s Politics & Sport Committee, with John Carlisle, M.P., as advisor, and later initiated the Club’s Philosophy Group. Sam remained an elected member of the Executive Council until 1993 and had fully supported the revitalisation proposals for the Club tabled from 1988 onwards by his friend Gregory Lauder-Frost and Dr. Mark Mayall.

In 1994, he stood again as an Ordinary Member of the Club’s Executive Council, but was unsuccessful, the Club being now firmly in the hands of non-radicals. His statement supporting that nomination said: "The Monday Club must one again become a dominant influence in the Tory party. The Maastricht Treaty has been a complete disaster and Britain must oppose EU federalism unequivocally. The Party must move to the Right and eradicate feeble policies."

In late 1993, he issued a Libel Writ against the Sunday Express newspaper for a defamatory article published that October, and received substantial out of court costs and damages in settlement.

The Daily Mail reported on the 27th June 27, 2003 that at a reception held a few nights before, Sam Swerling had confronted former Monday Club member John Bercow, now a Member of, and The Speaker in Parliament, over the latter’s public denunciations of the Club, of which he was once an active member, called him a "monstrous hypocrite", and invited him outside. Sam Swerling and Gregory Lauder-Frost attended the funeral service and burial of CDA founder Michael Keith-Smith on July 15, 2010, and they and other ex-Monday Clubbers Lord Sudeley & AVR Smith were at the huge Memorial Service for John Gouriet, at Westbury, Wiltshire, on the September 4, 2010.

Sam Swerling at the Great Countryside March in London, 22 Sept 2002.

Anti-Communist

An ardent anti-communist, in the 1970s Sam Swerling authored a number of well-researched essays on Communists and Marxists active in the United Kingdom. He was later a member and supporter of the Western Goals Institute, and was a guest at the major political dinner held by them on the 25th September 1989, at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, London, for El Salvador's President, Alfredo Cristiani, and his inner cabinet. Others present included Lord Sudeley, Lord Nicholas Hervey, Professor Antony Flew, Sir Alfred Sherman (policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher), Dr. Zigmunt Szkopiak (Foreign Affairs Minister to the Polish Government-in-Exile), Colonel Barry Turner, R.E. (Retd)., Andrew V R Smith (Director WGI), Gregory Lauder-Frost (Vice-President WGI), W. Denis Walker, and Harvey Ward, the last two having held positions in Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia.

Other groups

He was one of the founding members of the Conservative Democratic Alliance (C.D.A.) (dissolved December 2008), and was a speaker at two of their packed fringe meetings at Conservative Party Conferences at Bournemouth. He was also a Vice-President of the Traditional Britain Group, and appeared regularly at their dinners and conferences where he addressed several of the latter, notably the conference held on 7 October 2022, on the 'State of the Nation', where he was roundly applauded.

Death

Sam Swerling died at Watford, Hertfordshire, at 5 p.m. on 16 September 2023 from complications with prostate cancer. His funeral took place at St. Peter's Church of England in Bushey Heath, attended by numerous political friends from both the old Conservative Monday Club and the Traditional Britain Group, including his old friend Gregory Lauder-Frost.

Family

Sam Swerling married Anne Kathleen, and they had a daughter, twin sons and several grandchildren. Sam had sisters, Penny and Pam (twins), and Sarah-Anne. Their brother Graham and sister Ruthie predeceased them.

Publications

Sam Swerling has authored many essays including:

• Authoritarian Methods - comment on obscenity laws and enforcement in the "Monday Club Newsletter", September 1969.
• The Confidence Tricksters in the "Monday Club Newsletter" May/June 1971.
• Whose Civil Liberties? in "Monday World", Autumn 1971, p.3-5.
• Who's Getting at Our Kids? Monday Club booklet, 1972. (Reviewed in the "Conservative Political Centre Monthly", October 1972).
• Some Uncivil Liberties – a critical appraisal of the National Council for Civil Liberties, Monday Club booklet, September 1972. (Reviewed in the "C.P.C. Monthly" November 1972).
• Aspects of Law and Order in "Monday World", Spring 1972.
• Industrial Relations in "The Marylebone" April/May 1973 edition.
• Industrial Relations – A New Charter for Militants? in the Monday Club Discussion booklet Signpost to Salvation, September 1974, prepared for the October 1974 General Election.
• Winning the battle of words, in "The Spectator" 17th August 1974.
• The Labour Party & Trotskyist Infiltration through the Militant Group 1976 published by the Movement for True Industrial Democracy.
• Picketing – A Case for Revision in "Tory Challenge", June 1976, pps:6 – 7.
• Picketing, a Suitable Case for Treatment in "Conservatism Regained", Monday Club, Oct 1976.
• How the Conservatives Will Triumph in "Tory Challenge", June 1977, p.7-8.
• Zimbabwe - Triumph or Disaster? in "The Marylebone", June/July 1980 edition.
• Tories and the Unions in Tory Action’s magazine "Neither Up Nor Down".1981.

His legal publications include: Succession Law: Suggested Solutions, June 1996.

In 2017, his political memoir Sam Swerling - Nation, Tradition & Liberty was published.

References

Most of the above page has come from Guardian of the Tory Conscience - The 30 Crucial Years of the Monday Club 1961-1991/2 by Gregory Lauder-Frost, expected publication date being late 2023.