International Freedom Foundation - London UK Office

London UK Office

The IFF (UK) published an occasional Freedom Bulletin. The January 1989 edition (no.5, 8 pages) was devoted exclusively to opposing the Reagan-Gorbachev Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement, which had been signed at the Washington Summit in December 1987. They called for its abandonment and stated that from a Western angle it was appeasement.

The director of the IFF's London office, at 10 Storey's Gate, Westminster, was Marc Gordon (b. 1966). On January 31, 1989 in a BBC Radio 4 interview, Gordon praised Western Goals (UK) for its activities in "exposing left-wing political activities of charities", such as Oxfam and Christian Aid.

The IFF strenuously opposed the June 1989 visit to London of Dr. Andries Treurnicht of the Conservative Party (South Africa), organised by the Western Goals Institute. Gordon stated that the IFF was against apartheid, (The Guardian, June 6, 1989). He was, however, accused of wearing T-shirts embossed with the legend "hang Nelson Mandela".

Gordon was publicly disowned by the UK Conservative Party after he claimed to have gone on a patrol with anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua and was photographed holding an assault rifle. (London Evening Standard, September 11, 1996, p. 5).

On August 1, 1989, during the debate about whether or not the Hong Kong Chinese should be given British passports, Gordon stated that "as regards Hong Kong, the IFF believes human labour should not be subject to restrictions on its movement". By September 25, 1992, Gordon was railing against the Western Goals Institute, and urged the Conservative Party (UK) to expel WGI members (Jewish Chronicle), a move doubtless assisted by his South African paymasters, (London Evening Standard, September 11, 1996, p. 5). In response, WGI's Gregory Lauder-Frost wrote to the Jewish Chronicle on 25 September 1992 stating that "the Conservative Party has always been a broad church. However, Marc Gordon's I.F.F.'s support for the importing to our overcrowded island of 3,000,000 Hong Kong Chinese would not, I believe, endear him to the vast majority of grass-roots conservatives."

Gordon later managed, in 1996, without revealing his political past, to get a post with Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party, where he was helping to choose candidates. It emerged that Gordon had been Vice-Chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students before it was controversially banned by the then Tory Chairman, Norman Tebbit, in 1987, for "its extremist views". (London Evening Standard, September 11, 1996, p. 5).

Read more about this topic:  International Freedom Foundation

Famous quotes containing the words london and/or office:

    I don’t care very much for literary shrines and haunts ... I knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle’s yard. And when I said, “Why throw a stone into Carlyle’s yard?” she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.
    Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)

    Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
    David Hume (1711–1776)