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Alan Clark

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"There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water."

 
 
Wikipedia: Alan Clark


The Rt Hon. Alan Clark

Member of Parliament
for Plymouth Sutton
In office
28 February 1974 – 9 April 1992
Preceded by David Owen
Succeeded by Gary Streeter

Member of Parliament
for Kensington & Chelsea
In office
1 May 1997 – 5 September 1999
Preceded by (new constituency)
Succeeded by Michael Portillo

Born April 13, 1928
Died September 5, 1999
Political party Conservative

Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (13 April, 19285 September, 1999) was a British Conservative politician, historian and diarist. He was also a Privy Councillor, and was thus styled The Right Honourable Alan Clark.

Early life

Alan Clark was the elder son of the renowned art historian Kenneth Clark (later Lord Clark of Saltwood). He was educated at St Cyprian's School, Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Modern History. He went on to read for the bar, but after he was called, he did not practise and instead became a military historian. His first book, The Donkeys (1961), was a revisionist history of British involvement in the Great War, which was well received by the public but which greatly irritated the Army.

In more recent years this work has been condemned by some historians for being one-sided in his treatment of World War One generals. When challenged by the eminent military historian John Terraine he was unable to provide an attribution for his Donkeys and Lions quotation. It was the inspiration for the popular pacifist musical Oh! What a Lovely War, though Clark himself was not pleased with the adaptation. He produced several more studies of the First and Second World Wars, before becoming involved in politics.

Career

Clark entered Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Plymouth Sutton at the February 1974 general election and served in various junior ministerial posts at the departments of Employment, Trade and Defence during the Thatcher governments of the 1980s.

He was an outspoken maverick with strong views on animal rights, Unionism, race, and class. The diaries openly reveal his sympathy for a British version of National Socialism[1] and recurring worries about Japanese militarism. Although he was personally liked by Margaret Thatcher - a leader for whom he had great admiration and an occasional passion - she never entrusted him with high office and he left Parliament in 1992 following her 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 into Arms-for-Iraq, which helped undermine John Major's government. At the same time 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 judge, and her two daughters, Josephine and Alison. After sensationalist tabloid headlines, Clark's wife Jane remarked upon what Clark had called "the coven" with the catty line: 'Well, what do you expect when you sleep with below stairs types?', and referred to her husband as an: 'S, H, One, T'.

Clark published his political and personal diaries in 1993 , which caused a minor scandal at the time with their candid descriptions of senior Conservative politicians such as Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd and Kenneth Clarke. In particular, they embarrassed former chief whip Michael Jopling, reported by Clark as having described the self-made Heseltine as being someone who "buys his own furniture" (as opposed to inheriting enough of it). The account of Thatcher's downfall in 1990 has been described, by some reviewers, as the most vivid that we have and is now accepted by most contemporary political historians to be the definitive account. Two subsequent volumes of his diaries have covered the earlier and later parts of Clark's parliamentary career.

Following the election of 1992, Clark became bored with life outside politics and returned to Parliament as member for Kensington and Chelsea in the election of 1997. Clark was alone in criticising NATOs campaign in the Balkans.[2][3]

To date he is the only Member of Parliament to have been accused of being drunk at the dispatch box. In 1983 while at Employment he was making a reading of a bill in the Commons after a wine-tasting dinner with his friend of many years standing, Christopher Selmes. The complexities of the bill were too unclear for him to answer questions, and the opposition MP, Clare Short, stood up 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.

Death

He died in 1999 of a brain tumour. It has been claimed by Father Michael Seed that Clark converted to Roman Catholicism just before his death, but his widow denied this. He is buried in the grounds of Saltwood Castle. After his death, the Kensington & Chelsea constituency was contested and won by Michael Portillo.

Media

A BBC TV serialisation of his Diaries in 2004 starring John Hurt re-ignited the controversy surrounding their original publication and once again brought his name into the UK press and media. An authorised biography of Mr. Clark, by Ion Trewin, is due for release in July 2008.

Books

  • Diaries: Three volumes 1972-1999
    • Volume 1 Diaries: In Power 1983-1992 (1993)
    • Volume 2 Diaries: Into Politics 1972-1982 (2000)
    • Volume 3 Diaries: The Last Diaries 1993-1999 (2002)
  • The Donkeys, A History of the British Expeditionary Force in 1915 (1961)
  • The Fall Of Crete (1963)
  • Barbarossa, The Russo-German Conflict 1941-45 (1965)
  • Aces High, The War in the Air Over the Western Front 1914-18 (1973)
  • The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922-1997 (1998)
  • Suicide of Empires, Battles on the Eastern Front 1914-18 (1999)
  • Backfire, A Passion for Cars and Motoring (2001)
  • Summer Season: A Novel
  • The Lion Heart: A tale of the war in Vietnam

References

  1. ^ 1 Alan Clark Diaries: Into Power, Page 280, Phoenix Paperback 2000 Edition, December the 8th, 1981: Frank [Frank Johnson, sketch writer for The Times] pretended he wanted to talk about the Tory Party, but he really prefers to talk about the Nazis, concerning whom he is curious, but not, of course, sympathetic. Yes, I told him, I was a Nazi, I really believed it to be the ideal system, and that it was a disaster for the Anglo-Saxon races and for the world that it was extinguished. He both gulped and grinned 'But surely, er, you mean ... (behaving like an unhappy interviewer in Not the Nine O'Clock News after, e.g., Pamela Stephenson had said something frightfully shocking) ideally in terms of administrative and economic policy ... you cannot really, er ...' Oh yes, I told him, I was completely committed to the whole philosophy. The blood and violence was an essential ingredient of it's strength, the heroic tradition of cruelty every bit as powerful and a thousand times more ancient than the Judaeo-Christian ethic.
  2. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/341713.stm
  3. ^ 3 Alan Clark Diaries: The Last Diaries, Page 389, Phoenix Paperback 2003 Edition, April the 4th, 1999: I am hugely depressed about Kosovo: Those loathsome, verminous gypsies; and the poor brave Serbs.
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Parliament of the United Kingdom (1801–present)
Preceded by
Dr David Owen
Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton
Feb. 19741992
Succeeded by
Gary Streeter
Preceded by
(new constituency)
Member of Parliament for Kensington and Chelsea
19971999
Succeeded by
Michael Portillo

 
 

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