Western Goals Institute

Western Goals Institute was a far-right pressure group and think-tank in Britain, formed in 1989 from Western Goals UK, which was founded in 1985 as an offshoot of the U.S. Western Goals Foundation. It was anti-communist and opposed non-white immigration.

Early aims

The Western Goals Institute was founded in May 1985 as the British branch of the American organisation the Western Goals Foundation. In March 1987, Western Goals UK had filed a complaint with the Charity Commission for England and Wales against three major British charities, Oxfam, War on Want, and Christian Aid stating that they were involved in political campaigning work in support of left-wing organizations due to their campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. The Charities Commission partially upheld the Western Goals complaint, obliging War on Want to halt political campaigning.
In October 1988, Western Goals held a well-attended fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference addressed by their patron, General Sir Walter Walker, former Commander-in-Chief of NATO forces in Northern Europe, Sir Patrick Wall, the MP for Beverley, the Reverend Martin Smyth, Ulster Unionist MP for Belfast South, and others on terrorism, claiming to highlight the links between the African National Congress and the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Western Goals subsequently issued a paper summarising the issues raised at this meeting.
As a result of their expanding activities, membership and organisation, Western Goals UK was relaunched in 1989, becoming the Western Goals Institute, independent of the U.S. foundation. Gregory Lauder-Frost, then a leading member of the Conservative Monday Club, was invited in February to join Thomas J. Bergen, Peter Dally, Professor Antony Flew, Linda Catoe Guell, Dr. Joseph Labia, Tryggvi McDonald, Rev. Martin Smyth, MP, the Lord Sudeley, Dr. Harvey Ward and Rev. Basil Watson, OBE, as vice-presidents of the institute. The institute's stated aims were to "combat the insidious menace of liberalism and Communism within all sectors of British society" and its initial activities included denouncing what it described as "extremist" left-wing Labour Party candidates. The institute was also critical of the United Nations, its Director Andrew Smith stating "western nations have seen fit to submit themselves to the writ of the UN, a body largely composed of regimes hostile to western democratic values."
The institute stated its aims on the BBC in 1991:
Initially, the Western Goals Institute drew some support from Conservative parliamentarians, and the London magazine City Limits stated that "Western Goals is talking the same blunt authoritarian language as many Tory back-benchers and rank and file Tories. It is a group to be reckoned with... having a formidable list of honorary patrons and Vice-Presidents".
With an increasingly public role, Western Goals attracted left-wing hostility. In September 1991, the Campaign Against Fascism demonstrated outside the home of Lord Sudeley, they said, "to expose his involvement in setting up an international network of right-wing extremists". In response, Sudeley refuted the claims and described Western Goals "as being committed to the traditional values of conservatism in England". Mike Whine, Defence Director of the Board of British Jewish Deputies, described the institute as "not fascists or anti-Semitic, but they inhabit the shadowy, nether-world of the far right-wing".

International links

The institute and its predecessor were affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League. As Western Goals delegate, Andrew Smith attended the 21st conference of the World Anti-Communist League held in Geneva 27–29 August 1988, which was addressed by one of Western Goals UK's patrons, Major-General John K. Singlaub,. Smith contributed an article on the speech in WACL's Free World Report the following January. In July 1990, WGI sent a delegation to the 22nd WACL Conference in Brussels and from 1991 WGI was the UK chapter of the senior World League.
In line with the 'Reagan doctrine' policies of its American patrons, Western Goals UK had established links with militant, and often violent, anti-Communist groups internationally. These include the Angolan UNITA movement and the Salvadoran Nationalist Republican Alliance party, whose leader, Roberto D'Aubuisson, became one of the group's international patrons. It was also claimed that Western Goals may have been used by its U.S. partners as a conduit for funds to the Nicaraguan Contras following the 'Contragate' scandal.
The institute was reaching out to a variety of robustly conservative associations which were also opposed to communism. In August Lauder-Frost was forging links with Joachim Siegerist of Die Deutschen Konservativen e.V., in Hamburg, and London's Time Out magazine carried a report headlined "Bad Taste" in September saying that the Western Goals hierarchy, in addition to courting Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Franz Schönhuber of the German Republikaner Party, had been dining at Simpsons-in-the-Strand, London, with El Salvador's Arena Party President Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, who subsequently became one of the institute's patrons. This was followed by a letter in The Times signed by Lord Sudeley, Sir Alfred Sherman, Professor Antony Flew and Dr. Harvey Ward, on behalf of the institute, "applauding Alfredo Cristiani's statesmanship" and calling for his government's success in defeating the Cuban and Nicaraguan-backed communist FMLN terrorists. The following year, on 21 February 1990, Lauder-Frost appeared on BBC's Newsnight opposing Labour MP Alice Mahon's support for Communist insurgents in Central America.
File:WGI Dinner.jpg|thumb|250px|left|At the Western Goals Institute 'El Salvador' Presidential Dinner, London, 25 September 1989.
L to R: Denis Walker, Lord Sudeley, José Manuel Pacas, Andrew Smith, Dr Harvey Ward.
The institute's tabloid newspaper European Dawn also reported that in September 1990 that Burkhard Schmidt, executive director of Western Goals Europe e.V., and the American European Strategy Research Institute had contacted the institute urging them to forge links with young people opposing communism in Czechoslovakia, and that the following month an eight-strong delegation from the institute visited Munich for discussions with the German Republikaner Party which at that time had six members in the European Union Parliament.

Front National

In Europe, Western Goals gave their open support to the French Front National, the far-right political party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen. On 12 October 1989, the Western Goals Institute hosted a controversial fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, at which Pierre Ceyrac, a Front National Member of the European Parliament, was the Guest Speaker. Western Goals also hosted a widely reported dinner for Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom they had invited to Britain, at the Charing Cross Hotel in the Strand, London in December 1991. There was a large demonstration against the dinner outside the hotel and some damage to property took place, including the hotel's front doors and surroundings, which were smashed. After the visit by Le Pen, the Western Goals Institute Director Andrew Smith was quoted as saying:
The possibility of founding a new right-wing party, on the model of Le Pen's Front National, appears to have been abandoned by Smith after the Conservative Party's win in the 1992 General Election ensured that proportional representation stayed off the political agenda for the foreseeable future. However even at the time, the gradual defection of the parliamentary advisory committee and the decision of the leadership of the Monday Club and associated MPs to stay away from the Le Pen Dinner made the prospect unlikely. The institute maintained its contacts with the FN and were invited to send delegates to their congress in Strasbourg in March 1997. The Western Goals Newsletter of January 1998 carried an article of praise, reporting on the "FN Successes in France".

Conservative Party of South Africa

WGI supported the continuance of white-dominated government in South Africa, and formed close links with the South African Conservative Party which some years previously broke away from the National Party after P.W. Botha instituted limited reforms to apartheid and which the institute saw as fighting communism in the form of the African National Congress.
WGI hosted a visit to the UK, in June 1989, of the Conservative Party of South Africa's leader Andries Treurnicht, as well as other leading members, with close links continuing for many years. At the time the party held 22 seats in the whites-only chamber of the South African Parliament making them the official opposition. A press conference was held for the delegation in a committee room of the House of Lords on 5 June. Conservative Party of South Africa MP Clive Derby-Lewis, then one of sixty members of the integrated State President's Council, was made an honorary vice-president of the WGI and the following year joined the WGI delegation to the WACL Conference in Brussels. Derby-Lewis was described as a "right-wing extremist" by The Daily Telegraph; and as someone who "even by South African standards...has acquired over the years a reputation as a rabid racist" by journalist and South Africa commentator John Carlin. He later served a life sentence for conspiracy to murder Chris Hani, a leader of the South African Communist Party and of the ANC's Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, who was assassinated in 1993. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees lists the Western Goals Institute as an "impediment" to the elimination of racial discrimination in South Africa, saying of the institute that it "claims to be devoted to protecting the Western way of life by offering self-defence training to white South Africans".