Dicey Trust

The Dicey Trust was a conservative organisation set up in 1975 and named after the seminal constitutional lawyer A. V. Dicey. The group was established to ‘encourage the rule of law’ through lectures and presentations at schools and colleges. It was set up by, among others, the Conservative MP Rhodes Boyson. Other members of the Trust included the conservative academic Antony Flew, a charter surveyor Francis Bennion and a merchant banker called Gerald Howarth (who would later become Shadow Defence Secretary under David Cameron).

At that time Gerald Howarth was the honorary director of Freedom Under the Law, an organisation first formed to counter the anti-apartheid movements and its boycott campaigns in particular. Francis Bennion, who was also a member of Freedom Under Law, in 1972 had brought a private prosecution against the young Peter Hain for criminal conspiracy in relation to Hain's activities as chairman of the Stop the Seventy Tour Campaign.

After the launch of the Dicey Trust, Howarth told the press that he and his collaborators were ‘alarmed at the number of young people who seemed to predominate in movements which were unconstitutional.’ He referred to a ‘steady drip technique being used to threaten the rule of law’ and ‘a systematic attempt to discredit the police.’ The Guardian said the Trust would apply for charitable status and that it hoped to raise £100,000. By 1980 the conservative academic Max Beloff was the Chairman of the Trust.