Airey Neave Trust

The Airey Neave Trust commemorates the late Airey Neave DSO OBE MC MP who was assassinated in the Palace of Westminster in 1979. In 1975, Neave was the campaign manager for Margaret Thatcher's victorious attempt to become leader of the Conservative Party. He was rewarded with the post of head of her private office. He was then appointed shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and was poised to attain the equivalent Cabinet position when he was assassinated. Neave is alleged to have been involved with some right-wing security service plots against Harold Wilson's Labour government, such as the Clockwork Orange project in Northern Ireland.

The Trust is active in two main specific areas:

Research

The Trust funds research on issues of 'tyranny and injustice'. It has worked closely with research institutes in the United States. In 2001 it organised a joint seminar attended by many leading British and American practitioners in the field of counter-terrorism.

The work of the Trust is increasingly focused on the need to support those with policy responsibilities for counter-terrorism.

The first project, launched with the involvement of the Metropolitan Police, aims to prevent, deter, disrupt and detect terrorist activity particularly in its preparatory stages. The second is a £50,000 two-year study on "Transnational Networks and the Implications for International Security". This is being undertaken by a member of the Cambridge Security Programme.

The Trustees wish to build on this work by expanding research into practical counter-terrorist issues. Among the proposals currently under consideration are radicalisation of Islamic youth, suicide bombers and countering terrorist hostile surveillance within the UK.

Refugees

The Trust also focuses its attention on Home Office approved refugees, already in the United Kingdom who need to perfect their knowledge of English and to requalify in their professions. Support is concentrated in the higher education field, principally post graduate work.

Fund-raising events have, according to their website included:

the organisation of a race evening in the City of London every year for the past seventeen years, which have raised over £150,000; a concert in St John’s, Smith Square, in 1996, two Quiz Nights, one in the Duke of York’s HQ, and the other in the Imperial War Museum in 1999, all three again making substantial profits for the work of the Trust.

Past Research Awarded

They also fund the University of Bradford's Department of Peace Studies

Trustees

The President:

The Rt Hon The Lord Mayhew of Twysden QC DL

Trustees:

Dame Veronica Sutherland DBE CMG (Chairman)

Professor Christopher Andrew MA PhD

Brigadier E A Butler DSO MBE

Mr Hugh Tilney (Deputy Chairman)

Sir Kevin Tebbit KCB CMG

The Hon Marigold Webb

The Hon Patrick Neave

Professor Paul Wilkinson

The Hon Sir William McAlpine Bt

Administrator: Mrs Hannah Scott

Further reading

Routledge, Paul (2002) The Day I Met Airey Neave's Killers, Mail On Sunday, 3 March

"...the killing has spawned only conspiracy theories. Enoch Powell, the Tory-turned-Ulster Unionist, blamed the CIA. The motive, apparently, was that Neave's plans to reintegrate Northern Ireland within the UK would deny the United States a role in a final settlement of the Irish problem. Other elements of the secret state have also been accused: journalist Kevin Cahill believes Neave was on the point of instituting a large-scale overhaul of the security services. While working as a Commons researcher in 1984 he became friendly with security staff and claims not one of them believed terrorists planted the bomb; it was an inside job. 'Everyone knew what happened,' he was told, but it was too dangerous to speak about it in detail.

Clockwork Orange

"'Clockwork Orange' is the name of the secret British security services project which was alleged to have involved a right-wing smear campaign against British and Northern Irish politicians in the 1970s. The project was undertaken by members of the British intelligence services and the British Army press office in Northern Ireland, whose job also included routine public relations work and placing disinformation stories in the press, as part of a psychological warfare operation against paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland."

Margaret Thatcher House of Commons Speech