The Freedom Association at 50

Further to my previous post, I arrived at Heathrow from Gibraltar on Wednesday afternoon and drove straight to Tunbridge Wells.

Why? Well, I had been invited to attend a dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of The Freedom Association and the location – Penshurst Place and Gardens – was six miles from Tunbridge Wells where I had arranged to stay overnight.

I checked-in to the hotel at 5.00pm, ordered a taxi for 6.00, and arrived at Penshurst in good time for pre-dinner drinks in the Inner Courtyard Garden. Dinner was in the impressive Baron’s Hall and I was on a table with Neil and Christine Hamilton. In fact, I was sat directly next to Christine.

The Hamiltons were great friends of the late Lord Harris of High Cross, who was chairman of Forest from 1987 until his death in 2006, so we had that in common. But they were good company as well, and fun to talk to.

Other familiar faces among the 70+ guests included Gerald Hartup, Simon Richards, and Rory Broomfield, all former TFA directors; Andrew Rosindell MP, who attended the recent Forest lunch at Boisdale and is a member of TFA Council; and fellow Council members Mark Francois MP and former MP Sir Gerald Howarth.

Also present was Dan Lewis, son of the late Russell Lewis who was a non-executive director of Forest for 30 years until his death in 2022; and Colin Smith, another TFA Council member who has worked for my old boss, Sir Julian Lewis MP, for the best part of 35 years.

For those unfamiliar with the history of The Freedom Association, it was founded as the National Association for Freedom (NAFF) in 1975 by William Sidney (aka the 1st Viscount De L'Isle), Norris McWhirter (founder of the Guinness Book of Records), and former British Army officer John Gouriet.

Penshurst, I should explain, has been owned by the Sidney family since 1552 and the current owner, Philip Sidney, the 2nd Viscount De L'Isle, is the son of William who died in 1991. But I digress.

NAFF was launched a week after the murder of Ross McWhirter, Norris’s twin brother, by the Provisional IRA. I don’t remember the exact story but according to Gouriet’s Wikipedia entry Ross had offered a reward of £50,000 for information leading to the conviction of IRA members. Poignantly, another guest at last week’s dinner was Rosemary McWhirter, Ross’s widow.

NAFF was renamed The Freedom Association in 1978 and that was when it began to appear on my radar, fighting the trade unions. The Eighties were arguably its heyday (I remember visiting their office close to Oxford Street on several occasions) and when I was director of the Media Monitoring Unit from 1985 to 1990 I was invited to address TFA members at several well attended events, including one at Chiswick Town Hall where I delivered my best ever speech!

It certainly got the best response but a few weeks later I gave the same speech to a different audience and bombed!

In 2002 I was invited by Norris McWhirter to edit the association’s bi-monthly magazine Freedom Today. Norris was one of the nicest men I have ever met and I edited the magazine for two years before Norris stood down as chairman and after two more issues I was sacked by his successor, the Conservative MP Christopher Gill. (I’ve written about this before so I won’t repeat myself, but if you’re interested you can read about it here.)

I was very proud of ‘my’ Freedom Today but I didn’t take my dismissal to heart, and if there were any differences we put them aside when Forest and The Freedom Association launched the two-day Freedom Zone at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham in 2008.

Today it’s probably fair to say the organisation is enduring one of the most difficult moments in its 50 year history. Credit therefore to current chairman David Campbell Bannerman and executive director Tim Scott for keeping it afloat.

If I may add my possibly unwelcome tuppence ha’penny, I think what The Freedom Association currently lacks is a clear, identifiable identity (or campaign) because it’s not enough to say you’re on the side of freedom because ‘freedom’ means different things to different people.

The last TFA campaign that enjoyed significant traction was Better Off Out which was launched almost 20 years ago, long before the term ‘Brexit’ was coined, and years before a referendum was on the cards.

Since 2016 The Freedom Association has struggled to find a new issue it can really get its teeth into. There is an ongoing campaign to axe the BBC licence fee, and a few years ago there was a short-lived attempt to support vaping as an alternative to smoking, but without a clear identity or purpose I think it will struggle to remain relevant. (I speak from experience!)

Certainly, listening to the speakers last week, it was difficult to work out exactly what The Freedom Association currently stands for, apart from freedom of speech which is a crowded field. To stand out they need a campaign, or an identity, that is uniquely theirs.

The other issue The Freedom Association faces is an ageing membership. At the Penshurst dinner you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who were under 30. Most were my age or older, and that’s a serious problem.

Forest has faced a similar issue and the way we have addressed it is by developing links with groups such as Students for Liberty, and inviting younger people to attend our events.

Following the Forest lunch at Boisdale in May a top political consultant wrote to me and said, “I was surprised/fascinated to see the number of young attendees”. The reality is, you have to develop connections with the next generation otherwise you and your message will be consigned to history.

Ten to 15 years ago The Freedom Association established a number of Freedom Societies at universities around the country. That was an excellent initiative but it seems to have died a death. I don’t underestimate how difficult it is to maintain student societies from one year to the next because undergraduates come and go, but it’s a pity those Freedom Societies no longer exist.

Anyway, given the advanced age of most guests, the medieval Baron’s Hall at Penshurst Place was without doubt the perfect venue for The Freedom Association’s 50th anniversary dinner. Either that or a meeting of the Knights Templar!