Policy Search

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Policy Search was a small think tank based in 14 Tufton Street in Westminster in the late 1980s. It provided a base for Christopher Monckton in 1987 and according to Monckton was associated with Sir Alfred Sherman and a number of others.[1] 14 Tufton Street is a building occupied in 2009 by Diocese in Europe.

Sherman

Sir Alfred Sherman was reported as 'chairman of Policy-Search, an independent policy studies centre.' at the end of an article he wrote in the guardian in april 1987[2] In a later article Policy search was referred to as 'a clearing-house for studies in decision-making and opinion-forming in public affairs.'[3]

Policy Search as part of the new crop of Tory think tanks

'Most of the present crop of tanks were started in the 1970s', reported the Guardian in late 1987.

Among the newest are the Social Affairs Unit (managing on a modest pounds 50,000 a year), run by Dr Digby Anderson, an academic and ordained Anglican priest; and Policy Search, founded by Sir Alfred Sherman. He is the maverick who stared as a socialist, after an East End Jewish childhood, and became a policy adviser to Mrs Thatcher before falling into disfavour; the shortness of his temper eclipsing the brilliance of his logic.

Somewhere between is the Centre for Policy Studies, started by Sir Keith Joseph before he became Social Services Secretary in the early 1970s, with Sherman as his right-hand man. Together with the tanks say they can co-exist without overlap. But there is a coterie, with New Right luminaries sitting on the boards of various bodies. They go to each other's lunches and some authors write for more than one organisation.

It's a paradox that they're in business at all. Sherman is fond of pointing out that the Tories are known for being The Stupid Party. Trying to get a minister to think about a new policy 'is like trying to sell condoms to an impotent man,' he believes. Even so, Sherman knows that Conservatives are vexed by the difficulties of implementing change.[4]

HIV/AIDS

Monckton intervened in the debate about HIV/AIDs in the 1980s, writing an extensive report on the subject in 1987 for a little known group called Policy Search, with a preface by Dr. John Seale.[5] In an 'author's note' Monckton thanked Sir Alfred Sherman, Nigel Morgan, Melanie Walsh, Hilary West and Sergeant Graham Barton of Policy Search, who 'gave me an office at 14 Tufton Street, SW1 and a great deal of helpful advice and support'.[6] the note also thanks 'those who have read the manuscript and have made constructive comments': George Bunton, formerly a surgeon at University College Hospital, Dr. Jonathan de Pass, Andrew Roberts, Robert Fleming Securities Ltd, Dr Georges Kaye Cromwell Hospital, Dr. David O'Connell, Graham Webster-Gardiner, Conservative Family Campaign, Andrew Lownie, John Farquharson and Co..[7]

In it he advocated 'mandatory annual screening' for everyone aged 13-65[8], the introduction of an officially issued but voluntary 'AIDS-FREE card' and 'in extreme cases' the 'quarantining of AIDS carriers... if the figures from the national tests demonstrated that it was essential'.[9] Publicity on HIV and AIDS should be 'redrafted to include at least a modicum of morality', wrote Monckton.[10]

Years later Monckton reminisced:

He would have averted the Aids epidemic (having produced 'probably the first working model for the transmission of this particular kind of retrovirus in the UK', he insisted to the cabinet on compulsory testing of adults, legally enforced 'restricted association' for people who were HIV positive, but nothing was done). 'Lobby groups howled. The homosexual lobby said we know you, you're a Catholic, you don't like queers.'[11]

Le Pen

In 1987 Sherman and Policy Search were involved in inviting Jean-Marie Le Pen to the Conservative Party conference:

Sir Alfred Sherman... one-time adviser and speechwriter to Mrs Thatcher, is no longer a member of the Downing Street inner circle. Next month he looks like falling further out of favour.
How so? Because he is expected to be seen around Blackpool during the Conservative conference in company with a highly embarrassing guest. Policy Search, a research firm with which Sir Alfred has links, is organising the advertised visit of Jean Marie Le Pen, ultra-right-wing leader of the French National Front, to the conference fringe.
Mr Le Pen and a number of other right-wing French deputies are to meet the press, and will address their own fringe meeting on the final evening of the conference - the day before the Prime Minister's triumphal address to the closing rally.
Sir Alfred insists that Le Pen is neither a fascist nor a racist, that the poor chap has been much misunderstood and that he will one day be President of France. Whether or not Mrs Thatcher shares this view, it is unlikely that she will be grateful to her old ally for using her very own victory celebration to prove his point.[12]

Notes

  1. ↑ Christopher Monckton, The Aids Report: An examination of public health policy on AIDS, London: Policy Search, 14 Tufton Street, Westminster, SW1, May 1987.
  2. ↑ Alfred Sherman, The Third Term: Policies and politics in the election balance - Series on the Conservative future The Guardian (London) April 8, 1987
  3. ↑ Alfred Sherman 'Agenda: Why the image men are against the grain - The day the hairdresser came into British politics' The Guardian (London),July 20, 1987
  4. ↑ John Cunningham 'The think-tanks' role in the battle for Britain (first of two articles): The growing mini-industry of political policy units', The Guardian (London), October 6, 1987
  5. ↑ Christopher Monckton, The Aids Report: An examination of public health policy on AIDS, London: Policy Search, 14 Tufton Street, Westminster, SW1, May 1987.
  6. ↑ Christopher Monckton, The Aids Report: An examination of public health policy on AIDS, London: Policy Search, 14 Tufton Street, Westminster, SW1, May 1987.
  7. ↑ Christopher Monckton, The Aids Report: An examination of public health policy on AIDS, London: Policy Search, 14 Tufton Street, Westminster, SW1, May 1987.
  8. ↑ Christopher Monckton, The Aids Report: An examination of public health policy on AIDS, London: Policy Search, 14 Tufton Street, Westminster, SW1, May 1987, Summary p. 5
  9. ↑ Christopher Monckton, The Aids Report: An examination of public health policy on AIDS, London: Policy Search, 14 Tufton Street, Westminster, SW1, May 1987, Summary p. 6
  10. ↑ Christopher Monckton, The Aids Report: An examination of public health policy on AIDS, London: Policy Search, 14 Tufton Street, Westminster, SW1, May 1987. Summary, p. 7
  11. ↑ Tim Adams 'THE INTERVIEW: A favourite policy adviser of Mrs Thatcher in the Eighties, the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is now the country's most notorious climate-change sceptic and has thrown down a challenge to Al Gore to a public debate on global warming. What does he know that we don't? Only that he has never been wrong' The Observer (England) May 6, 2007 Pg. 6
  12. ↑ Ian Aitken 'Agenda: Liberal Assembly - Points of Order' The Guardian (London), September 11, 1987
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