Controversies and Criticism
The club has been described as "far-right" by journalists in newspapers across the political spectrum from The Daily Telegraph to The Guardian and, in 2002, as a "bastion on the Tory hard right" by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The Guardian claimed in 1968 that the organisation was "probably the nearest British equivalent to the American John Birch Society".
It was claimed by opponents of the club that many members had drawn closer to the National Front, it being reported as early as 1973 that NF members were moving to take over branches of the club. Thurlow, however, stated that it was doubted that members of the Monday Club were secret or even potential nazis. Nevertheless the bad publicity led to a series of purges, mainly in Club branches.
On 24 February 1991, The Observer ran a lengthy article entitled "Far Right takes over the Monday Club", stating that a number of senior members had tendered their resignations in protest at the Club's "takeover" by "extreme right-wingers", some of whom were associated with the Western Goals Institute. The Club's solicitors, Rubenstein, Callingham & Gale, sent a formal letter of protest to the editor of the Observer about the article, and demanded a right-of-reply for the Club. The editor agreed and Lauder-Frost, writing on behalf of the Club, subsequently challenged the article's accusations in a Letter to the Editor, which was published the following Sunday. He denied that a takeover had occurred, and claimed that none of the Club's policies had changed and that its direction was consistent with its aims and historical principles.
The playwright David Edgar described the Monday Club in an academic essay as "proselytis the ancient and venerable conservative traditions of paternalism, imperialism and racism."
Read more about this topic: Conservative Monday Club
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)