Swinton circle

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The Swinton Circle (aka the London Swinton Circle) is a right-wing conservative British pressure-group with links to the Conservative Party. It claims to be generally Unionist and Eurosceptic.

The chief significance of the Swinton Circle today is that, following the repudiation of the Monday Club by the Conservative Party Leadership ^[1], the Circle is now the only right-wing pressure group to enjoy the favour of the Party, which permits MPs and other senior figures to address its meeting. (Conservative MPs are forbidden to be members of the Monday Club or to address its meetings) However, it has been repeatedly claimed in the national press that the views of the Circle are at least as extreme as those of the Monday Club.^[2]

Given that the Circle claims a membership in excess of 500 and increasing while the membership of the Monday Club is stated to be "back below 600" ^[3] it can be argued that the Circle has now supplanted the Monday Club as the leading pressure group of the Conservative right.

The Circle has strong links with the White Supremacist Springbok Club and the two groups have claimed to hold joint meetings.

1 History
2 Accusations of Far-Right Extremism
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

The London Swinton Circle was founded in 1961 by Conservatives who had attended Party training schools at Swinton Castle in Yorkshire, and who wished to maintain contact through regular meetings in London. Since 1996 the group has widened its membership.^[4]

Prominent early members included Roger Moate MP and Bee Carthew of the Monday Club ^[5]

At the 1982 Conservative Conference the Swinton Circle held a fringe meeting entitled "Repatriation - a Constructive Alternative" addressed by Enoch Powell. In 1983 it hosted a meeting addressed by Ivor Benson, South African author of "The Jews: the World Wide Conspiracy" ^[6]

In 1999 the then Chairman, Allan Robertson, launched a monthly newsletter Tough Talking From The Right, described as "an independent monthly newsletter published in broad support of the London Swinton Circle". ^[7]

Recent speakers have included:

Godfrey Bloom MEP (United Kingdom Independence Party, Yorkshire)^[8]
Sammy Wilson MP (DUP, East Antrim)^[9]
Simon Heffer, Journalist^[10]
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (a Labour Life Peer)^[11]
Peter Robinson MP (DUP, East Belfast)^[12]
Philip Davies MP (Conservative, Shipley)^[13]
Derek Turner, Editor of Right Now^[14]
Professor Alan Sked, the former chairman of UKIP^[15]
Jillian Becker, the author and expert on counter-terrorism^[16]
Jeffrey Donaldson [MP (DUP, Lagan Valley)^[17]

The current Chair of the London Swinton Circle is Alan Harvey, a former National Front activist.^[18]

[edit] Accusations of Far-Right Extremism

The Swinton Circle has frequently been linked with Far-Right Extremism.

On 28 April 2002 The Observer claimed:^[19]

"A number of right-wing groups flutter on the fringes of the Tory party, giving their support to Duncan Smith. One is the Swinton Circle, a bland name hiding a set of hard-right ideologies on immigration and the EU. The Circle has links with the Springbok Club, a group of supporters of the South African apartheid regime, and is led by Alan Harvey, a former NF activist.

"It backed Duncan Smith for leader, because he was 'pro-capital punishment, voted against the age of homosexual consent being reduced from 21 and opposed legalisation of cannabis'.

"An active member of the Circle and one of its former leaders was Bill Binding, who was deputy head of the British Ku Klux Klan. Last October, he expressed his admiration for Duncan Smith and has now rejoined the Tories.

"In 1997, Binding stood as a BNP parliamentary candidate in Dagenham, east London. He now says he quit the KKK four years ago after concluding that all races were genetically alike."