Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark was a British Conservative Member of Parliament , author and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade and Defence, and became a privy counsellor in 1991.
He was the author of several books of military history, including his controversial work The Donkeys , which is considered to have inspired the musical satire Oh, What a Lovely War!
Clark became known for his flamboyance, wit and irreverence. Norman Lamont called him "the most politically incorrect, outspoken, iconoclastic and reckless politician of our times". He is particularly remembered for his three-volume diary, a candid account of political life under Thatcher and a moving description of the weeks preceding his death, when he continued to write until he could no longer focus on the page.
Clark was a passionate supporter of animal rights, joining activists in demonstrations at Dover against live export, and outside the House of Commons in support of Animal Liberation Front hunger-striker Barry Horne. When he died after radiation therapy for a brain tumour, his family said Clark wanted it to be stated that he had "gone to join Tom and the other dogs."
“I am not a fascist. Fascists are shopkeepers, I am a Nazi.”
William Donaldson (ed.), Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics (London 2002), p. 152.
Letter to the Guardian.
“You cannot come here because you are not white.”
Quoted in his obituary in The Guardian, September 8, 1999 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,3899666-103684,00.html.
In 1971 Clark said this should be the message given to refugees expelled by Idi Amin from Uganda who held residence rights in the UK.
“The trouble with Michael [Heseltine] is that he had to buy his own furniture”
Attributed by Clark in his diaries to Michael Jopling. The full quote is "An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing." https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/aug/07/bbc.politicsandthemedia
Misattributed
January 30, 1991; page 395.
On the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Diaries: In Power (1993)
January 29, 1988; page 198.
Diaries: In Power (1993)
Interviewed by John Pilger in the documentary Death of a Nation, broadcast on ITV February 22, 1994.
The interview was transcribed in New Statesman and Society, February 18, 1994 http://www.hamline.edu/apakabar/basisdata/1994/02/21/0009.html.
December 17, 1985; page 125.
Diaries: In Power (1993)
May 15, 1983; page 5.
On the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War.
Diaries: In Power (1993)
April 3, 1990; page 291.
On reform of the General Staff, while he was Minister of Defence Procurement.
Diaries: In Power (1993)
“The only solution for dealing with the IRA is to kill 600 people in one night.”
Spoken at a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference, October 7, 1997. Reported in The Guardian, October 8, 1997 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,451799,00.html
