Bloody Monday

Britain's ultraconservative Monday Club is not really to the right of Genghis Khan. On the other hand, it is not too far to the left either. The loud and unmistakable voice of British reaction, the club was organized in 1961 as a Monday luncheon klatsch by a small group of Tory bluebloods who were upset by the changes they felt were sweeping through Harold Macmillan's government. Today the group is chaired by Merchant Banker Jonathan Guinness, 43, member of the famed brewing family and a stepson of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of Britain's fascists in the 1930s. Monday Clubbers in 30 chapters throughout Britain are now actively engaged in trying to beat back all sorts of permissive schemes and to return the land to the old ways of imperial certitude.

Monday Club opinions at their most outrageous were clearly heard during a recent, unsuccessful parliamentary campaign to restore capital punishment in Britain. By way of soothing those who might think the gallows cruel, Guinness proposed a more creative method of disposing of the condemned: give them razor blades in the hope that they would not use them merely to shave. Alternatively, he suggested dispensing anesthetic pills, to be followed by old-fashioned beheading. Never a man to shirk his public duty, Guinness even offered to wield the ax himself.

The Guinness prescription was, of course, clearly put forward more to provoke public outcry than as a concrete proposal. At the same time, it understandably put a wistful thought into the minds of the moderate Tory establishment: Wouldn't it be nice if the Monday Club could somehow be disposed of with equally quick and painless dispatch? The club, however, shows no signs of going away. As a party within a party and a kind of Loyal Opposition of the right, it represents a genuine strain of conservative opinion, with the active support, nationwide, of at least 7,000 zealots.

In trying to fulfill their self-assigned task of "arousing the nation," Monday Clubbers have, among other causes, protested the dropping of Rule, Britannia from BBC concerts in London's Royal Albert Hall and ardently supported the loyalists of Ulster. But the club's warmest concerns have been to rally support for Ian Smith's breakaway white-supremacist regime in Rhodesia and to argue against immigration of blacks and Asians to Britain from Commonwealth countries.

When the Tories came to power in 1970, the club found itself with 35 M.P.s--double its previous parliamentary representation--plus 33 peers in the House of Lords. Nonetheless the Monday Club has become Wednesday's child, full of woe. The size of the Conservative victory meant that moderate Tories no longer needed to woo clubbers for support. More recently the Monday Club has been torn by internal rebellion; there is some evidence that members of Britain's small, neo-fascist National Front are moving to take over some of the club's branches.

Complicating the club's problems still further is the fact that its leader is being challenged for, of all things, not being far right enough. The man who yearns to succeed Guinness is another merchant banker, George Young, 61, a former deputy director of M16, the British Secret Intelligence Service. Where Young says emphatically that "for me, Ulster is as much a part of Britain as Birmingham," Guinness is more open to compromise. And the blacks? Guinness wants voluntary repatriation; Young says they should all be deported forthwith.

Club elections are coming up at the end of this month; both Guinness and Young claim enough support for victory. One thing is certain. Whoever wins will lead a shaken and perhaps changed organization, which even its kinder critics call the "Yesterday Club."

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