Conservative Democratic Alliance

The Conservative Democratic Alliance (CDA) is a United Kingdom pressure group. The CDA refers to itself as the "authentic voice of conservatism".^[1]

The CDA was formed mostly by disaffected members of the Conservative Monday Club, another pressure group, who disagreed with the club's response to the Conservative Party's severing of links with the Club in 2001. The Daily Telegraph described the CDA as "a hardline offshoot of the Monday Club".^[2]

The group has been described as "ultra-right" by opponents.^[3][4]

The group's Chairman is Mike Smith, who has been a member of the Conservative Monday Club since the early 1970s,^[5] and served on its Executive Council, 1986 - 1993.

In some ways Smith is an unusual figure for this role. Formerly associated with the "Libertarian" wing of the Tories he has admitted to experimenting with "soft" drugs in his youth. He also claims African-American family connections and has recently championed a "Barry Goldwater" approach to gay rights.

More resently, as a "Born Again Christian", on the Liberal wing of the Anglican Church he has moved the CDA closer to the centre ground, warmly endorsingly party leader David Cameron's "Agenda for Change"

Original members of the CDA's steering committee included Sam Swerling, a former Monday Club chairman (1980-1982), founder of the Monday Club's Philosophy Group, member of the Campaign for an Independent Britain, former Conservative Party parliamentary candidate and councillor on Westminster City Council, and Stuart Millson, a former editor of Kent Writers and founder of the short-lived Revolutionary Conservative Caucus in 1992, and Gregory Lauder-Frost.

Millson and Lauder-Frost are both former members of the Conservative Party, the Monday Club and its Executive, as well as the Western Goals Institute, and both are now also members of the council of the Traditional Britain Group.^[6]

On 27 June 2002, The Daily Telegraph carried a letter from the CDA, signed by Mike Smith, attacking the Conservative Party and its Chairman Francis Maude for "the sleaze, double-dealing, arrogance, incompetence, Europhilia, indifference and drift with which the party is still associated. "Voters", he said, "deserve a real alternative to Blairism and his 'straight kinda guy' chicanery. Mr. Maude and his C-Changing Tories are incapable of providing it."

The CDA often criticises free-market economics and Americanisation in the United Kingdom, both of which it perceives to be after-effects of Thatcherism. This may be seen as distinguishing it from the modern Conservative Party leadership, which CDA members often criticise as neoconservative (Michael Gove is often singled out for criticism on this front)^{[citation needed]}. The CDA is also fervently opposed to the European Union.

The CDA fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in October 2002 was addressed by Roger Knapman, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party; Ashley Mote, prominent UKIP MEP and author of "Overcrowded Britain - Our Immigration Crisis Exposed" (2004); John Gouriet, a founder with Norris McWhirter of the Freedom Association alongside Derek Turner, editor of Right Now! magazine; and Adrian Davies, chairman of the fledgling Freedom Party a barrister and prominent critic of the British National PartyLink title.

On 6 October 2004, the Conservative Democratic Alliance held a rally in tribute to Enoch Powell as a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth.

The CDA planned to field its own candidates against Conservative MPs with small majorities at the 2005 General Election^[7], concentrating on Oliver Letwin, the then Shadow Treasury Spokesman, and MP for West Dorset, whom they describe as "simply not a Conservative at all". No candidates actually stood for the CDA at the 2005 General Election, and Letwin held his seat. However, CDA Chairman Michael Keith Smith stood as the United Kingdom Independence Party candidate for Portsmouth North. Both unsuccessful Tory candidate Penny Mordaunt and political commentator Richard North blamed Smith's intervention for the Tories' failure to win back the seat.^[8][9]

The CDA's June 2005 Summer Dinner in Fleet Street, London, was addressed by the 'metric martyr', Neil Herron, who is leading the campaign against the adoption of the metric system in the UK.

The CDA produce a regular bulletin, and have a website with discussion forums^[10].

An anti-Conservative Party advertisement for the CDA was published in Right Now!, containing the statement that the CDA was "horrified by Tory frontbench spokesmen advocating gay lifestyles and New Labour ideas". Andrew Hunter MP withdrew his patronage from the magazine due to the appearance of the advert, saying that he was 'appalled' by the "antics" of the CDA and that he no longer wanted to be associated with the magazine "in any way"^[11][12].

Michael Keith Smith afterwards described the advertisement, penned by former CDA supporter Peter Gibbs, as "regrettably homophobic". Smith branded the incident "an untoward event".

In 2002, Iain Duncan Smith expelled CDA Chairman Michael Keith Smith from the Conservative Party^[13] for threatening to stand candidates against Conservatives^[14].

Smith sued the Conservative Party on his expulsion and the party was obliged to re-admit him to membership. ^[15]

Smith later left the Conservative Party, and stood as a parliamentary candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party in Portsmouth North where the Labour victory was claimed by the Conservative candidate to be a result of the UKIP candidacy^[16], a claim also made by Richard North of the Bruges Group.^[17]

• New CDA Website