by Sean Rankin

INVISIBLE HANDS: MAGGIE’S MILITANT TENDENCY

This article will trace the career trajectory of former members of the notorious Federation of Conservative Students. Proscribed by the Tory leadership in the 1980s, “Maggie’s Militant Tendency” were so called due to their reverence for Thatcher and their perceived entryist agenda, that mirrored the tactics of the left-wing organisation the Militant Tendency.

Founded in the 1930s, the FCS became increasingly radicalised, and by the 1980s was split into three distinct and competing factions. The largest and strongest of these factions, and the one that the individuals we cover here belonged to, was the Libertarian faction. The Libertarians were heavily influenced by the ideology of Madsen Pirie’s Adam Smith Institute and the Libertarian Alliance, run by Chris Tame.

One of the most provocative actions of the FCS was the production of the infamous “Hang Nelson Mandela” posters and stickers, thus pronouncing their opposition to the widespread support the then jailed leader of the ANC had gained in Britain.

Follow us down the rabbit hole to discover the shadowy sleeper cell of Margaret Thatcher’s former militants, whose collective histories connect Brexit, the Tory Party, the Big Tobacco lobby, Unionism, the BBC and dark money political campaigns.

(DAVID) RUSSELL WALTERS

In February 2023, we investigated Tobacco Industry lobbying at Holyrood, including the activities of Philip Morris International, the largest tobacco company in the world. What we didn’t report at the time was the identity, and long history of political intrigue, of PMI’s chief lobbyist, (David) Russell Walters.

Walters is a former assistant director of FOREST, a smokers rights group, and alleged front, for Tobacco Industry lobbying. The research group Tobacco Tactics have previously stated that:

“FOREST’S practice of appointing directors from the libertarian right is likely to render direct influence unnecessary…Their adherence to an anti-regulatory neo-liberal philosophy which, in its extreme forms, denigrates concerns over health, the environment and social justice by linking them to communist authoritarianism, is broadly in line with the industry’s commercial interests.”

Prior to his involvement with the Tobacco industry, Walters was a former manager of the Scottish Conservative Party Central Office under the leadership of Thatcherite Michael Forsyth, who purged Party staff and replaced them with individuals such as Walters who were all from “the ultra-right, libertarian wing of the party”. Walters has also served as Special Assistant to Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London.

As well as joining the Federation of Conservative Students, as a young man Walters also worked as a covert courier for the UK wing of an anti-Soviet organisation called the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS).

Walters has also been involved with the Adam Smith Institute, an opaque think-tank linked to the FCS, and which has received multiple historical donations from the tobacco industry.

During Thatcher’s reign Walters was active as a senior operative in the intelligence gathering department of the right-wing Economic League. The Economic League’s main objectives were to gather intelligence on and infiltrate left-wing organisations and trade unions, compiling blacklists of subversive/socialist activists that could be used for vetting by employers and police operatives. The League also kept files on 40 prominent Labour politicians, including Gordon Brown. He was also an organiser for the right-wing pressure group Committee For A Free Britain. * (See section on David Hart below)

Walters has served as an executive board member of the free-market conservative think-tank The Selsdon Group and has been listed on Companies House as a former director of multiple pro-Brexit/ Conservative organisations, including the Democracy Movement, Conservative Way Forward Ltd and Renewal 2030.

BRIAN MONTIETH

Brian Monteith, a former Conservative MSP and Brexit Party MEP, was Chairman of the FCS in 1982.

We have covered Monteith’s involvement in numerous alleged dark money campaigns before, targets of which included regulation of the vaping industry, Jeremy Corbyn and Scottish independence.

Monteith is a Director of the Brexit advocacy think-tank Global Britain and worked as Head Of Press for the Leave.EU campaign. He was the Head of Research at the now dissolved right-wing Scottish think-tank Policy Institute and served on the advisory council of The Freedom Association. Like Walters, Monteith also worked for Michael Forsyth.

Also like Walters, Monteith has a long history of association with conservative think-tanks and tobacco industry lobby groups. He has worked for smokers astroturf outfit FOREST and their associated campaign The Free Society, as well as Thatcher’s Tufton Street enforcers, Centre for Policy Studies.

Monteith runs the anti-independence, free-market website thinkscotland.org.

PAUL STAINES/ GUIDO FAWKES

Mercenary Westminster sweety-wife Paul Staines was a member of the Libertarian wing of the FCS and chair of its Humberside University chapter in the 80s. Whilst chair he attempted to form a secret alliance with local members of the far-right BNP to disrupt meetings of left-wing groups in the area.

Like Walters, Staines was involved in the Committee for a Free Britain, working as a “foreign policy advisor” alongside David Hart, and edited the Committee’s “British Briefing” a “monthly intelligence analysis of the activities of the extreme left” that sought to “smear Labour MPs and left-leaning lawyers and writers”. He was also active in the Libertarian Alliance. **

(Staines founded PR firm MessageSpace which we wrote about in our investigation of alleged Vaping industry astroturf group We Vape UK and was also a staunch Brexiteer).

ROBBIE AND NICK GIBB

Robbie Gibb is a former Vice-Chairman of the FCS and his brother Nick Gibb was a member. Alongside Russell Walters, the Gibb brothers were also active in the ranks of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists.

Robbie Gibb currently sits on the board of the BBC and has a long history of working for the corporation, including as political editor. Gibb served as Chief of Staff to Conservative Shadow Chancellor Frances Maude and as Director of Communications for Prime Minister Theresa May.

Gibb was intimately involved in the development stages of GB News before leaving the project prior to it’s launch. He is the owner of The Jewish Chronicle and was a staunch Brexiteer during the 2016 referendum.

Robbie’s brother Nick Gibb is currently the Conservative Minister of State for Schools and has been MP for Bognor Regis since 1997. Other high profile Conservative Party figures involved in the FCS include Mark Francois, Dougie Smith and Andrew Rosindell (John Bercow also a notable member).

DAVID HART

Despite not being affiliated to the FCS, it feels pertinent to briefly profile David Hart, who appears to have attracted at least three members (Walters, Staines and Dougie Smith) of the FCS to his cloak and dagger activities after the Federation’s dissolution.

Hart was a notorious property developer, businessman and playwright who was also a high-level advisor and black propaganda operative for Thatcher and the Conservative Party. Hart worked closely with Thatcher and MI5 during the Miner’s strikes as a conduit between the government and miner leaders they saw as amenable to betraying the movement behind closed doors. Hart was responsible for funding and organising groups of miners willing to cross the picket lines as part of the National Working Miners Committee, from which would later emerge the Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

He later became an advisor to Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Portillo, and lobbied on behalf of the defence industry.

Hart was a virulent right-wing libertarian and founded the Committee For a Free Britain, with funding from Rupert Murdoch. The CFB was a political pressure group that sought to push the Conservative Party ideology to the right, whilst at the same time targeting left-wing individuals and movements. This included the British Briefing, a clandestine blacklist regularly distributed to selected politicians and journalists that smeared activists, trade unionists and politicians.

conclusion

It is impossible to gauge the influence the FCS had on these men 40 years ago, or what influence they exerted on the FCS in its radicalised, terminal stages. It is also unfair to suggest that they have, as individuals, been following a clear and organised agenda to continue the work of the FCS, in a clandestine campaign spanning four decades.

However, what is notable is the consistency with which, independently, these individuals appear to have maintained their loyalty to the ruthless libertarian, free-market ideology of the FCS and Thatcher, and how their projects and interests have frequently overlapped and intertwined since the 80s.

To discover that they persist to this day, in positions of influence in UK politics, and that their movement has achieved history-altering political victories in the recent past, is enough to give those of us who believe in a different system, a different world, a cold shiver up the spine.

FOOTNOTES

Follow Sean Rankin on Twitter: @ClydesiderRed

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