Alan Clark - Political Career

Political Career

Clark became MP for Plymouth Sutton at the February 1974 general election. During his first five years in parliament, the Conservative Party was in opposition. Although he was personally liked by Margaret Thatcher, for whom he had great admiration, he was never promoted to the cabinet, remaining in mid-ranking ministerial positions during the 1980s.

Clark received his first ministerial posting as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Employment in 1983, where he was responsible for moving the approval of regulations relating to equal pay in the House of Commons. His speech in 1983 followed a wine-tasting dinner with his friend of many years standing, Christopher Selmes. Irritated by what he regarded as a bureaucratically written civil-service speech, he galloped through the script, skipping over pages of text. The then-opposition MP Clare Short stood up on a point of order and, after acknowledging that MPs cannot formally accuse each other of being drunk in the House of Commons, accused him of being "incapable", a euphemism for drunk. Although the Government benches were furious at the accusation, Clark later admitted in his diaries that the wine-tasting had affected him. To date, he is the only Member of Parliament to have been accused in the House of Commons of being drunk at the dispatch box.

In 1986 he was promoted to Minister of Trade at the Department of Trade and Industry. It was during this time that he became involved with the issue of export licences to Iraq. In 1989, he became Minister for Defence Procurement at the Ministry of Defence.

Clark left Parliament in 1992 following Margaret Thatcher's fall from power. His admission during the Matrix Churchill trial that he had been "economical with the actualité" in answer to parliamentary questions over export licences to Iraq, caused the collapse of the trial and the establishment of the Scott Inquiry, which helped undermine John Major's government.

Clark became bored with life outside politics and returned to Parliament as member for Kensington and Chelsea in the election of 1997. Clark was critical of NATO's campaign in the Balkans.

Clark was an outspoken maverick with strong views on British unionism, racial difference, social class, and in support of animal rights. It is evident that he was a High Tory, nationalist and a protectionist and at the least, always put the British interest above all others, which included strong Euroscepticism. He referred to Enoch Powell as 'The Prophet'. Clark once declared: "It is natural to be proud of your race and your country", and in a departmental meeting, allegedly referred to Africa as "Bongo Bongo land". When called to account, however, by then Prime Minister John Major, Clark denied the comment had any racist overtones, claiming it had simply been a reference to the President of Gabon, Omar Bongo.

Clark pointed out that the media and the government failed to pick out the racism towards white people and ignored any racist attacks on white people. He also however described the National Front chairman, John Tyndall, as 'a bit of a blockhead'. and disavowed his ideas.

When Clark was Minister of Trade, responsible for overseeing arms sales to foreign governments, he was interviewed by journalist John Pilger who asked him:

JP "Did it bother you personally that you were causing such mayhem and human suffering (by supplying arms for Indonesia's war in East Timor)?"

AC "No, not in the slightest, it never entered my head."

JP "I ask the question because I read you are a vegetarian and you are quite seriously concerned about the way animals are killed."

AC "Yeah?"

JP "Doesn’t that concern extend to the way humans, albeit foreigners, are killed?"

AC "Curiously not. No."

While involved in the Matrix Churchill trial he was cited in a divorce case in South Africa, in which it was revealed he had had affairs with Valerie Harkess, the wife of a South African barrister (and part-time junior judge), and her daughters Josephine and Alison. After sensationalist tabloid headlines, Clark's wife Jane remarked upon what Clark had called "the coven" with the line: 'Well, what do you expect when you sleep with below stairs types?', and referred to her husband as an 'S, H, one, T'.