David Stirling - Later Life

Later Life

Stirling was the founder of the Capricorn Africa Society - a society for promoting an Africa free from racial discrimination. Founded in 1949, while Africa was still under colonial rule, it had its high point at the 1956 Salima Conference. However, because of his emphasis on a qualified and highly elitist voting franchise, Africans opposed it. Conversely white settlers believed it to be too liberal. Consequently the society was ineffective, although surprisingly the South African Communist Party used Stirling's multi-racial elitist model for its 1955 "Congress Alliance" when taking over the African National Congress of South Africa. Stirling resigned as Chairman of the Society in 1959. That year, following gambling losses he was obliged to note John Aspinall - I owe you £173,500 in the accountant's ledger. One night in 1967 he lost a further £150,000. In 1968 he won substantial damages in Libel against Len Deighton amongst others.

Stirling was concerned about the political power of trade unions in Britain, and planned to establish an organisation GB75, which he described as "an organisation of apprehensive patriots" which would help the country in the event of strikes. In August 1974, before Stirling was ready to go public with GB75, the pacifist magazine Peace News obtained and published his plans, and eventually Stirling - dismayed by the right-wing character of many of those seeking to join GB75 - abandoned the scheme.

He was knighted in 1990, and died later that year aged 74.

In 2002 the SAS memorial, a statue of Stirling standing on a rock, was opened on the Hill of Row near his family's estate at Park of Keir.

The current Laird of the Keir estate is his nephew Archie Stirling, a millionaire businessman and former Scots Guards officer.