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Focus on Bercow
My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Last October, in a display deliberately and cynically timed to coincide with the Tory Party conference, the Monday Club was MUGGED.
In an unprecedented display of treachery and cowardice the Club was subjected to unprovoked verbal assaults by a number of senior party members seeking to bolster their liberal credentials. That assault was personally approved and endorsed by Iain Duncan Smith, that faceless, talentless candidate WE the traditional right of the Party chose as Leader but who, without the support of the Monday Club and the rest of the right wing of the Conservative Party would have returned to the place where he belongs - firmly on the backbenches. WE made Duncan Smith. Never forget that.
The chief promoter of the assault on the Monday Club was John Bercow, a former member of the Club, and once the enthusiastic secretary of the Club's Race and Repatriation Committee. Once described by the Prime Minister as 'Nasty and ineffectual in equal measure' Bercow long ago acquired an unenviable reputation not only for racism but also for baiting homosexuals, lesbians and feminists. Just as Bill Clinton sought to smokescreen his sex life and his lies by declaring war on Yugoslavia, so Bercow seeks to cover his trail of slime by smearing the Club.
This, we shall not permit him to do.
As reported by The Guardian's Nicholas Watt on Friday July 28, 2000, Bercow actually wrote up the minutes of a committee meeting which called for voluntary repatriation.
He wrote: 'It was formally agreed that the policy of the committee should be: an end to New Commonwealth and Pakistan immigration, a properly financed system of voluntary repatriation, the repeal of the Race Relations Act and the abolition of the commission for racial equality. Particular emphasis on repatriation.'
In the circumstances, it comes as no surprise to learn that when Bercow attempted to secure election to the Club's Executive Council he personally chose to issue a Political Statement which included the following; 'THE STRENGTHENING OF OUR NATIONAL IDENTITY DEMANDS A PROGRAMME OF ASSISTED REPATRIATION'
A plea for inclusivity? Oh yes!
But past indiscretions should not be allowed to dog a man forever. That is why we must treat with indulgence the caustic sarcasm and scorn which the then Chairman of the Essex University Conservative Association regularly deployed at Student Union debates, way back in the heady Thatcherite days of the 80s. Campus feminists, CND supporters, and members of the Gay and Lesbian Society - none were safe from the verbal onslaughts and patronising chauvinistic and homophobic put-downs unleashed by - surely not the same John Bercow who last year hailed the Tories as the party most likely to produce Britain's first gay Prime Minister?
Sadly, yes. But the future advocate of 'inclusiveness' met his match when he attempted to denounce an NUM visitor to the campus and was promptly told to 'Sod off back to Fascist land'. On another occasion an enraged feminist tipped an entire pint of beer over Bercow's head. The dripping little figure slunk off like a scolded schoolboy.
During 1986 Bercow's mug shot appeared in The Guardian alongside that of BNP leader John Tyndall. At Essex University, by the way, the remarkably unphotogenic - not to say ill-favoured - Bercow gained the nickname 'Pizza-face' after a well-trodden example of the delicacy was pinned to a noticeboard above the caption 'Portrait of John Bercow'.
To return to the Club. I shall not dwell on the regrettable fact that the response of our Executive Council to the false and deceitful claim to have suspended the Club was anything but robust. Long months ago I wrote to Lord Massereene pointing out that the emergency that had arisen demanded the immediate summoning of a Special General Meeting open to all members. His Lordship wrote promptly and courteously to say that it had been decided that no such meeting would be called. I do not blame His Lordship for that reprehensible decision. I do most certainly blame those who were responsible for a sorry saga of drift and inaction. There are a number of members of our Executive Council who are clearly unfit to serve a day longer.
That period of drift came to a close when several of your most experienced colleagues came together to form the Conservative Democratic Alliance, which has since grown enormously. We carefully plotted the first stage of the fightback, planning its climax to coincide with this meeting. Even as the ludicrous Theresa May screeched a tirade of hot air in a vain attempt to gain political capital out of the unintelligible and nationally insignificant Byers/Sixsmith affair, two of her senior colleagues, Letwin and Maude, were facing me on radio and television to defend their indefensible actions against the Monday Club. CDA set the agenda. We shall do so again.
Unlike Club spokesman Martin Pritchard we have no wish to 'embrace' today's Conservative Party, not even with pegs on our noses: nor have we any intention of apologising for what we are. The Conservative Party may choose to work with us, or not as the case may be. This is the party that threw two elections away by recklessly gaining a reputation for incompetence and sleaze. My Lord: if apologies are in order, they are due from the Party to us - not the reverse.
Remember this fact: what remains of the Tory Party is weaker and more vulnerable than it has ever been in its modern existence, led, if that is an appropriate term, by a faceless and untalented individual who coughs, splutters and shuffles like a pitiful dwarf in the shadow of such mighty predecessors as Margaret Thatcher. 'Look' as Hamlet says 'upon this picture - and on this' and we know instantly that the arch-mediocrity Iain Duncan Smith is doomed to electoral oblivion.
Throughout Europe the forces of the Right are on the march. Of course we cannot endorse the most extreme manifestations of popular dissent, but it is up to true Conservatives such as ourselves to prevent any possibility of a spiral into fascism. On asylum, on Europe, on patriotism, the people are with us. Never forget that fact.
The time has come to seize the levers of power and to confront our careerist accusers before the bar of public opinion. We have nothing to lose. They have everything to lose: their ambitions, their jobs, their prestige, their future knighthoods. Davis, the Chairman of our Party nurses a slim majority of only 1900, and if that is snatched from him at the Tories'next election defeat his hopes of succeeding the already-doomed Duncan Smith will be shattered. Mark my words: they will listen to us, or they will be damned for it.
What is at stake today is not the future of The Monday Club, nor indeed merely the future of the Conservative Party. It is the very future of our nation which is at stake. We will fight, and in fighting we will fight for the greatness of Britain. As for those fainthearts who have no stomach for the conflict, it were better that they retire now rather than face future shame and dishonour. LET THEM GO. WE SHALL REMAIN!
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