Harvey Proctor - Right-wing Affiliations

Right-wing Affiliations

Having welcomed Enoch Powell's controversial speech of April 1968, Proctor became an active member of the Conservative Monday Club. He was the Club's Assistant Director from 1969 to 1971 and a member of its Executive Council from 1983 until he stood down as an MP in 1987. In April 1982 he made a bid for election as the Club's Chairman but was defeated. He was well known for his views opposing immigration, and for many years was Chairman of the Club's Immigration and Repatriation Committee (later renamed, under him, the Immigration and Race Relations Committee). He contributed an article to the Club's newspaper Right Ahead (October 1985 Conservative Party Conference issue), entitled Blackpool Revisited calling for an examination of the immigration issue. However, Proctor was alive to the politics of the issue and in 1973 moved to purge members of the National Front from the Monday Club. As Secretary of the Monday Club Northern Ireland Policy Committee, he backed calls from Ulster Unionist MPs for Mrs Thatcher to implement her 1979 Conservative General Manifesto commitment to "establish one or more elected regional councils in Northern Ireland with a wide range of powers over local services" in place of the 1982-86 Northern Ireland Assembly, and opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which earned him the admiration and support of the then Ulster Unionist Party Leader Jim (now Lord) Molyneaux and the then Ulster Unionist Chief Whip and MP for East Londonderry, Willie Ross.