Geoffrey Stewart-Smith

Dudley Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, was a soldier, editor, politician, and anti-communist activist (born December 28 1933; died March 13 2004)

The Conservative Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, reported the Guardian 'hit the headlines when he sensationally ousted Labour's former foreign secretary, George Brown, from his seat in Belper, Derbyshire, in the 1970 general election. His brief parliamentary career was more notable, however, for demonstrating that the establishment would not tolerate a British incarnation of Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was anticipated that Stewart-Smith might use his Commons position to spread the obsessive anti-communism he had earlier deployed in alliance with the China lobby, professional redbaiters in the United States, the Taiwan government and apartheid South Africa. Instead, he tamely accepted his whip's instructions that Edward Heath did not want to be embarrassed by any British recrudescence of the McCarthyism that had faded in the US a decade earlier. To general surprise, Stewart-Smith emerged as a progressive Tory.

Education

Stewart-Smith was educated at Winchester College, from where he went to Sandhurst and a commission in the Black Watch. He served in Germany and, for more than three years, in Nigeria.

Career

Counter-subversion

According to the Telegraph, after resigning his commission in the Army in 1960, 'he worked as a financial public relations consultant in addition to his anti-Communist activities.'

The Guardian reports that 'he joined the Sunday Express, and then the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). While there, he began his anti-communist work with books like The Defeat Of Communism (1964), Non-Military Warfare In Britain (1966) and No Vision Here (1970), produced by the Foreign Affairs Publishing Company he ran from his home in Petersham, Surrey.' No Vision Here 'alleged that "vitally important" intelligence reports were being suppressed or blocked from reaching the Prime Minister.'

'He also produced East-West Digest, which was distributed free to MPs and was described as the "journal of the foreign affairs circle", a body headed by the likes of the Dowager Lady Birdwood. The funds to subsidise this operation came mostly from "foreign friends".'

'As director of the Foreign Affairs Circle and editor of its journal East-West Digest, he saw himself as "one of those awkward non-conformists who feel that we Europeans have both an obligation and duty to help further the cause of liberty in Communist countries".'

'From 1965, Stewart-Smith was involved with an outfit called the British Military Volunteer Force, trying to recruit British officers to fight in Vietnam, though he saw himself strictly as a fundraiser. "I would never have fought alongside them," he said.'

MP

'Stewart-Smith was adopted as the prospective Parliamentary Conservative candidate for Belper in 1966, and four years later pulled off the most sensational result of election night when he ousted George Brown by 2,000 votes... During his four years in Parliament, Stewart-Smith was trenchant in his support for his constituents, to the point of demanding that the government raise their pay offer to miners during the strike. He surprised his Right-wing friends even more by attacking Mrs Thatcher on the ending of school milk.

Apartheid support

'In 1974, he fell out with the World Anti-Communist League over its anti-semitism. In 1987, during his bankruptcy appearance, he disclosed that the main contributor to his Foreign Affairs Research Council had been apartheid South Africa.'

Resources

• Andrew Roth Obituary Geoffrey Stewart-Smith Rabidly anti-communist MP with a moderate streak The Guardian, Tuesday 13 April 2004 01.33 BST

Obituaries Geoffrey Stewart-Smith daily telegraph, 12:03AM GMT 20 Mar 2004.