Alan Lee Williams
British Labour MP turned Social Democrat and Atlanticist campaigner
Alan Lee Williams was Labour party national youth officer under Hugh Gaitskell's leadership before becoming an MP. He was parliamentary private secretary when Roy Mason was Defence Secretary and he followed when Mason became Northern Ireland Secretary. Defence was a constant interest of Williams, chairing the Parliamentary Labour Party's Defence Committee and, after losing his Hornchurch seat in 1979, chairing Peace Through NATO. In addition to work for the European Movement - he was treasurer from 1972 to 1979 - he has strong US links. He is currently director of the Atlantic Council. He became one of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission members in 1976 and has chaired the European working group of the right-wing Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington since 1987. In 1981, Williams was one of the founding members of the Social Democratic Party and subsequently of the Liberal Democratic alliance. Williams also chaired the English Speaking Union.
Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding and TUCETU
Tom Easton wrote in Lobster in 1996 that Williams was Joseph Godson's foremost British associate in his work for CSIS and NATO, and that from his office as director of the English Speaking Union he had chaired Godson's Labour and Trade Union Press Service and, with the renewed rise of CND in the late 1970s, had become a central figure in the government-funded Peace Through NATO.[1] In March 1973, according to the historian Giles Scott-Smith, Brian Crozier mobilised Godson, Douglas Houghton and Williams to organise a conference in Amsterdam on the common problems of the US and Europe.[2]
Easton wrote in Lobster in 2003 that Williams was one of the officials of the Atlantic Council of the United Kingdom who ran the Trades Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding (TUCETU), whose forerunner was the Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding set up by Godson. Easton added that Williams also helped run the British American Project, serving on its UK advisory board, and appeared in the American Enterprise Institute's New Atlantic Initiative.[3]
Affiliations
Notes
- ↑ Tom Easton, Who were they travelling with? SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party, Lobster, issue 31, June 1996, accessed 5 November 2026.
- ↑ Giles Scott-Smith, Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network: Cold War Internationale, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p.218.
- ↑ Tom Easton, Tittle-tattle, Lobster, issue 45, Summer 2003, accessed 5 November 2026.