Alan Clark

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Alan Kenneth Clark (13 April 1928 – 5 September 1999), a British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), author, and diarist.

He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet at the Departments of Work, Trade, and Defense.

In 1991, he became a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. He wrote several books of military history, including his controversial work The Donkeys (1961), which inspired the musical satire Oh, What a Lovely War! Clark became well-known for his flamboyance, wit, and irreverence.

Norman Lamont dubbed him "the most politically defrank, outspoken, iconoclastic, and reckless politician of our days."

Clark is best known for his three-volume Alan Clark Diaries, which include a candid account of political life under Thatcher as well as a moving account of the weeks leading up to his death. Clark was an ardent promoter of animal rights.

Early life

Alan Clark was born in Lancaster Gate, London, the elder son of Scottish art historian Kenneth Clark (later Lord Clark) and his wife Elizabeth Winifred Clark (née Martin), who was Irish. Colette and his brother, Colette (also known as Celly) and Colin, were born in 1932. He started as a day boy at Egerton House, a preparatory school in Marylebone, and, from there at the age of nine, he moved to St Cyprian's School in Eastbourne. Clark was one of the seventy boys rescued after the school was destroyed by fire in May 1939. He was transferred from Midhurst with the school to Midhurst.

The Clarks moved their son to Cheltenham College Junior School in September 1940, with the Luftwaffe threatening south-east England. In January 1942, he went to Eton. He joined the Territorial training regiment of the Household Cavalry based in Windsor in February 1946 but was dismissed in August after leaving Eton. He then moved to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Modern History under Hugh Trevor-Roper, receiving a third-class honours degree. He began writing for the motoring press before heading to read for the bar in Oxford. In 1955, he was admitted to the bar but did not have a statute of procedure. Rather, he began privately researching military history in the hopes of writing on the subject for work.

Personal life

Clark, 30, married Jane, the daughter of Colonel Leslie Brindley Bream Beuttler of Wellington's Regiment and a descendant of her mother's side of the Scottish ornithologist William Robert Ogilvie-Grant, grandson of the 6th Earl of Seafield, in 1958. They had been married for 41 years and had two sons: two brothers.

On August 15, 2019, 59, his elder son James (who lived in Eriboll, a Scottish estate) died of a brain tumor.

Although assisting in the Matrix Churchill trial, he was implicated in a divorce case in South Africa in which it was revealed that he had affairs with Valerie Harkess, the wife of a South African barrister's wife, and her children, Josephine and Alison. Clark's wife Jane remarked on what Clark had called "the coven" with the phrase: "Well, what do you expect when you sleep with below-stairs models?" Clark's wife Jane remarked on Clark's description of "the coven" with the quote: "Well, what do you expect when you sleep with below-stairs styles?" Clark's wife Jane wondered. She referred to her husband as a "S, H, one, T."

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Political career

Clark joined the Conservative Monday Club in 1968 and was soon Chairman of its Wiltshire branch, despite being utterly opposed to the Common Market. He was blacklisted by the Conservative Party Central Office in 1971 for being too right-wing, but after seeing him and others, he was barred from the blacklist.

In 1970, he unsuccessfully applied for the Weston super-Mare, losing out to Jerry Wiggin. With a majority of 8,104, Harold Wilson took over from Edward Heath as Prime Minister of a minority Labour government in February 1974. Clark's vote in October 1974, when Labour gained a small majority, was down by 1,192 votes, but he maintained a majority with 5,188. His first five years in parliament were spent on the Conservative opposition benches. In May 1975, he was still a member of the Monday Club. It's unclear when he let his membership lapse, but it could have been as a result of his appointment as a cabinet minister. He continued to attend Club functions until 1992.

During the following Party leadership race, he was encouraged by Airey Neave to vote for Margaret Thatcher, but he is believed to have favored Willie Whitelaws. The following year, the Common Market and Clark Free Vote was voted against, with Enoch Powell's praising speech being defeated. "I'd rather live in a socialist Britain than one ruled by a lot of foreigners," Dennis Skinner told him the next day. Although Margaret Thatcher, for whom he had a great respect, and columnist George Hutchinson praised him for inclusion in the Shadow Cabinet, he was never promoted to the cabinet and spent his remaining in mid-ranking ministerial positions during the 1980s.

Clark was first elected as a Parliamentary Undersecretary of State at the Department of Employment in 1983, where he was in charge of requesting legislation relating to equal pay in the House of Commons. Christopher Selmes, his friend of many years, was invited to a wine-tasting dinner in 1983. He was irritated by what he saw as a bureaucratically written civil-service speech, he galloped through the script, skipping over pages of text. Clare Short, the then-opposition MP, stood up on a point of order, after acknowledging that MPs are unlikely to officially accuse each other of being inebriated in the House of Commons, accused him of being "incapable," a term for drunk. Despite the fact that the government benches were outraged over the allegation, Clark later confessed that the wine-tasting had affected him. He is the only Member of Parliament to have been accused in the House of Commons of being inebriated at the despatch box to date.

Clark was promoted to Minister of Trade and Industry in 1986. It was during this period that he became involved with the issue of export licenses to Iraq, the Matrix-Churchill affair. He was appointed Minister of Defence Procurement at the Ministry of Defence in 1989.

Following Margaret Thatcher's demise from office, Clark left Parliament in 1992. In response to parliamentary inquiries about what he knew about arms export licences to Iraq, he said he had been "economic with the actualité," which led to the trial's conclusion and the establishment of the Scott Inquiry, which failed to destabilize John Major's government.

Clark became dissatisfied with life outside of politics and returned to Parliament as a member for Kensington and Chelsea in 1997, becoming critical of NATO's campaign in the Balkans.

Clark had a strong view on British unionism, ethnic inequity, socioeconomic class, and the assertion of animal rights, nationalist protection, and Euroskeptic mistrust. "The Prophet" was Enoch Powell's nicknamed him by the author. Clark once said, "It is natural to be proud of your race and your nation," and in a departmental meeting, he referred to Africa as "Bongo Bongo Land." Clark denied that the remark had any racial overtones when called to account, saying it had simply been a remark on Gabon's President, Omar Bongo.

Clark argued that the media and government failed to recognize white supremacy against white people and dismissed any racial criticism of white people. John Tyndall, the National Front chairman, was still "a bit of a blockhead" and disapproved his ideas, according to him.

When Clark was Minister of Trade, who was in charge of overseeing arms exports to foreign governments, he was asked by journalist John Pilger.

Clark, a vocal supporter of animal rights, was among activists at Dover against live exportation and outside the House of Commons, as well as Animal Liberation Front hunger-striker Barry Horne.

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