Stuart Millson

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Stuart Millson (c. 1964 - ) is a strongly right-wing British conservative political activist and writer. He has been linked with the far-right and is currently connected with the Conservative Democratic Alliance.

Political career

As a student at the University of Essex (graduating in 1986) he was a member of the Federation of Conservative Students along with the future MP John Bercow. At first a member of the "sound" or libertarian faction he later defected to the so-called "authoritarian" faction connected with the Monday Club after disagreements over economics.

Millson was Chairman of the University of Essex Conservative and Unionist Association, until his publications and pronouncements in the name of the Association (for example via the Association's new publication The Patriot) sufficiently offended some of the libertarian membership for them to hold a vote of 'no confidence' in him; a meeting that he declined to attend. The vote against Millson was unanimous (25-0), and Michael J. J. McDade was voted in as replacement Chairman. Millson's supporters claim that the liberal faction "packed" the meeting, although this has been disputed. In issue 2 of The Patriot (October 1985) Millson wrote an article deriding Britain's growing multiracial society, and in which he backed then Conservative MP Harvey Proctor's proposal of voluntary repatriation with a £7,000 grant, and called Bernie Grant a "despicable creature" and a "purveyor of race hate". Millson's critics would claim that there was an irony in his making such an accusation. He argued that he did not hate other races, but simply did not want them in Britain.

Due to the perceived damage done to their reputation by Millson the Association dropped 'The Patriot' as its publication (which Millson and colleague James Coakley-Boyce continued to publish and distribute independently); the Association then launched 'The Torch', named after the Conservative Party's new logo. Millson then went on to become Vice-Chairman of the University of Essex Monday Club, and led a boycott of the Band Aid campaign. Quoted in the Colchester Evening Gazette (January 28, 1986) Millson said: "The Band Aid stunt has shown how degenerate the youth in Britain has become, by responding to the pseudo-outrage of an opportunist drop-out - Bob Geldof - and giving aid to a squalid Marxist country."

Whilst at university he briefly left the Conservative Party and spent six months as a member of the British National Party led by the late John Tyndall. He was quoted by The Guardian as saying "'I would describe myself as a fascist. My main aim at university has been to drum up as much support as possible for racialism.'". (Guardian, July 5, 1986 and repeated again on February 5, 1997). He subsequently rejoined the Conservative Party and the Monday Club, and was later a member of the latter's Executive Committee into the 1990s.

In early December 1991 he was one of the top-table guests at the Western Goals Institute dinner held in London (see The Mail on Sunday, 8 December 1991) for the popular leader of the French Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who recently came second in the French presidential elections. Millson was a leading figure in the short-lived Revolutionary Conservative Caucus in the mid-1990s.

Stuart Millson is a prolific writer of political Letters-to-Editors. On 30th January 2000, in the Sunday Telegraph, he delivered a scathing attack on the Labour Party, "with its roots in Marxist student unionism, republican sympathy and anti-Britishness geenrally" and several of its policies, and called for demonstrations in Trafalgar Square against the Blair government.

Both The Times and The Independent were forced to print apologies after repeating as fact Michael Ancram's erroneous assertion that he had forged a Conservative membership card in 2001 in a bid to infiltrate the party (The Times, 27 November 2001; Independent, 7 March 2002). Millson had legitimately joined the local association, and left the party of his own accord a few months later.

In the Sunday Telegraph on 19th May 2002, Millson had the leading letter with the headline A Left turn won't set the Tories right. He attacked journalist Matthew d'Ancona's (May 12) "handbagging of the beleaguered Monday Club", arguing that the recent Conservative Party suspension of links with the Club would not achieve anything for the party.

He had another leading letter in Freedom Today (Feb-Mar 2002 edition) headlined Bercow's Britain - confused and confusing in which he accused MP John Bercow of hypocrisy and attacked Bercow's letter published in the same magazine, in the December-January edition.

He is currently on the committee, as Treasurer, of the Conservative Democratic Alliance and is also on the committee of the Traditional Britain Group. He has also been active, as Publications Editor, in the fledgling Freedom Party.

Millson married on 26 April 2003, Miss Patricia Lovering. His best man was Andrew V R Smith, (refer: The Daily Telegraph, Court & Social page, 28 April 2003). Others present included Mr & Mrs Derek Turner and Mr & Mrs Gregory Lauder-Frost, Mr & Mrs Michael Keith Smith, and former Western Goals director Stuart Notholt.

Journalism/activism

With his days as a student politician long behind him, Stuart Millson has earned a reputation as a freelance journalist, contributing numerous pieces on Englishness, British landscape and conservation, cultural politics, film, literature and classical music (a particular passion) to publications such as The Salisbury Review, This England and Right Now!. He has also edited a magazine entitled Kent Writers, and published a small booklet called An Essay on the Meaning of English Nationhood (c1992)(P/B).

He had a major article deconstructing and criticising author Patrick Wright in The Salisbury Review, (Summer 2000 edition), entitled Wright is Wrong.

His letters have also frequently appeared in The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph in recent years. They often contain criticism of the European Union and of the alleged influence of Islam in the United Kingdom, but he also criticises the 2003 invasion of Iraq, globalisation, free-market economics and Tory policies such as railway privatisation, opinions which distinguish him from British exponents of the New Right. He has also condemned Americanisation in the United Kingdom; for example, he wrote a letter published in The Sunday Telegraph of July 17, 2005 criticising the paper for referring to "truck drivers" rather than "lorry drivers".

One of his recent letters to The Times, on the subject of Islam in Britain (July 30, 2005), was criticised by David Aaronovitch in the same newspaper shortly afterwards (August 2, 2005).

He was one of the top-table guests at the Traditional Britain Dinners held at Simpson's-in-the-Strand on 7 November 2003, and on 8 February 2006 when the Guest-of-Honour was Simon Heffer, (Refer: The Daily Telegraph Court & Social pages, 8 November 2003 and 9 February 2006).