Western Goals Institute (WGI) 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.Labour Research, November 1988, p. 2. It was anti-communist and opposed non-white immigration.
Early aims The Western Goals Institute was founded (as Western Goals UK) 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 (which was then contrary to UK charity law) in support of left-wing organizations due to their campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. The Charities Commission partially upheld the Western Goals complaint,Charity Ads were biased politically – ruling, The Universe, 12 June 1987 obliging War on Want (which at the time was led by George Galloway, later an MP) to halt political campaigning.War on Want rapped for political ads, Sunday Telegraph, 7 June 1987
In October 1988, Western Goals held a well-attended fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference addressed by their patron, Walter Walker, former Commander-in-Chief of NATO forces in Northern Europe, Patrick Wall, the MP for Beverley, 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.IRA/ANC: Partners in terror, a Western Goals UK Briefing Paper, May 1989.
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, Antony Flew, Linda Catoe Guell, Joseph Labia, Tryggvi McDonald, Rev. Martin Smyth, Lord Sudeley, Harvey Ward and Basil Watson, as vice-presidents of the institute.Labour Research, November 1988, p. 2, where Dally is given as leader of the British Freedom Council, UK affiliate to the WACL, and Guell, "number two at the US-based WG Foundation."Western Goals Institute Newsletter Spring, 1989 p. 2. The institute's stated aims were to "combat the insidious menace of liberalism and Communism within all sectors of British society"The Times, 13 October 1989 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 (when dealing with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) have seen fit to submit themselves to the writ of the UN, a body largely composed of regimes hostile to western democratic values."The Sunday Telegraph, 6 January 1991.
The institute stated its aims on the BBC in 1991:
"Western Goals works to establish networks and links with conservative groups dedicated to the preservation of the cultures and identities of western nations. We are conservatives who believe in traditional conservative values. A multicultural society does not work. We wish to protect the way of life we had before immigrants arrived. It was a mistake to permit these people to come here. Politicians must now accept this. Large numbers of immigrants reject European culture and wish to remain alien in religion and culture. We want European culture in European countries. We would seek to have treaties with countries to permit resettlement."BBC Radio 4 interview, 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".City Limits magazine, London, 9–16 August 1990 p. 8.
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".The Jewish Chronicle, 13 September 1991, p. 5.
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, (the other two patrons being General Sir Walter Walker and Major Sir Patrick Wall, M.C.). 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 (in October 1988 Western Goals facilitated the visit to London of UNITA's leader, Jonas Savimbi) and the Salvadoran Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, whose leader, Roberto D'Aubuisson, became one of the group's international patrons.An Introduction to the Western Goals Institute, 1988. 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.Tories linked to Contra-rebel fundraisers, The Scotsman, 10 June 1987
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.Time Out magazine, London, Sept 13–20, 1989, no.995. 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 Times, 29 September 1989.Labour Research, November 1988, p. 2, where Sir Alfred Sherman and his son Gideon, as well as Professor Antony Flew, are mentioned as WG members. 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.
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.The Guardian, 13 & 21 October 1989. 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: "There is scope for a radical right alternative outside the Conservative Party. The Tories have betrayed their principles since Mrs Thatcher fell. With this contact with European leaders we are laying the foundations for a new party.".Observer, 8 December 1991
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 ClubThe Monday Club nevertheless had a letter in the London Evening Standard on 19 November 1991 stating "let us hear what Mr.Le Pen has to say. if it is rubbish he will fade from sight and sound very quickly. and associated MPs to stay away from the Le Pen Dinner made the prospect unlikely.The Guardian, 24 April 1993, "Guns, Goons and Western Goals, David Pallister, David Beresford and Angela Johnson report on the international connections of Clive Derby-Lewis, arrested by Chris Hani murder investigators." 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.