George Gardiner was a combative right wing Thatcher loyalist, although curiously not one that she was at all keen to promote. The journalist Frank Johnson once described him as a "brilliant demagogue who knows how to play on the passions of the dispossessed suburbanites", but he was more articulate on the leader pages of the Daily Express than in the Commons. He was an instinctive plotter, who exercised far more influence than he would have done as a minister as the mastermind behind the right wing's campaign to break the hold that the more moderate Lollards group had exercised over the election of officers for Conservative backbench Committees. He was specifically recruited to Sir Patrick Wall's 92 Group in 1979 to carry out that operation and as its Chairman from 1984 until he stood down in 1996 remained the principal organiser of the "Sound Slate" that secured key chairmanships for members of the group or those it favoured. Although sensible enough to strike deals to ensure that the Tory "wets" had a fair share of the joint Vice Chairmanships, he relished his role in testing out the ideological soundness of new recruits to the Commons and dragging them into his cabals. At one stage, he boasted, every chair was held by a member of his group and when the Whips Office sought to replace him as Chairman of the 92 with Tony Durant, his skills were equal to the challenge. However, he was unable to prevent his defeat in the elections for the executive of the 1922 Committee to the unconcealed delight of No 10. John Major described him as "so convoluted he could have featured in a book of knots"; others were even less complimentary. Certainly he thrived on rebellion and was very good at organising it.
Ironically, although he claimed to be the most principled of the "bastards" excoriated by John Major (he was deselected for his Reigate constituency because of his Eurosceptic views in 1997 and contested the seat unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Referendum party), he had been a founder member of the Conservative Group for Europe and had argued in A Europe for the Regions that they would benefit from entry into the EEC. Like many others, he would claim that he was consistent in his advocacy of a "Europe of Nation States" and that it was the belated recognition that the integrationists had a different political agenda that led him to oppose European Monetary Union and the Maastricht Treaty. In the early months of 1994 it was reported that he had promised Portillo the support of the 92 Group "when the time came" and his last minute vote for Redwood in 1995 was cast explicitly to bring about a second ballot in which Portillo would feel free to run. But while that was true, his final break with Major came surprisingly late and undoubtedly owed much to the whips' efforts to displace him from the chairmanship of the 92 and the executive committee of the 1922, compounded with a carefully staged put down that was leaked to the press to the great glee of those who disliked him in the Commons.
George Arthur Gardiner was the son of the manager of three village gasworks in East Sussex, but after his parents marriage broke up towards the end of the war, his mother moved to Hythe and Gardiner obtained a place at the Harvey Grammar School in Folkestone. It was during the Attlee Government that he developed an abiding dislike of Socialism and at the age of 15 he joined the Young Conservatives. Typically when confronted by a Keynesian economics teacher in the Sixth, he argued for Imperial Preference, an odd stance for a future free marketeer. Somewhat to the surprise of his teachers he won a place at Balliol to read PPE and gained a State Scholarship. Before going up, he completed National Service in the RASC where he became a Sergeant tester of entrants and was posted to the Pioneer Corps. His Oxford career was mainly notable for his organisation of a massive petition in support of Eden's Suez policy and for his effort to defeat Tony Newton for the Presidency of OUCA in which he used forged ballot papers. He was probably lucky not to get sent down, but an enforced sabbatical from politics left him sufficient time to achieve a First. He had already obtained a graduate apprenticeship with the Bristol Evening Post and a successful journalistic career followed. After a spell as political correspondent for the Western Daily Press 1961-4, he became deputy political correspondent of the Sunday Times 1964-70 and chief political correspondent of the Thompson Regional papers, a job which he held until 1974. John Gummer drew him back into politics as his press officer in the Greenwich constituency and a successful application for the candidates list brought him the chance to fight Coventry South in the 1970 election. His deep hatred of union power developed from his experiences of the motor industry in Coventry, but he also built a relationship with the immigrant community that led him to distance himself from Enoch Powell, However it was in his capacity as Jimmy Margach's deputy on the Sunday Times that he was able to alert Heath to the "rivers of blood" speech in 1968 and to forecast correctly, in the light of Heath's reaction, that Powell would face the sack.
Gardiner's search for safe seat to fight was rewarded with his adoption for the new Reigate seat in 1973 and his election in February 1974 began a long and happy association with the seat that ended in bitter recrimination when he became a Maastricht rebel. From 1972 until 1979, however, he edited the official Conservative News. Initially a Heath loyalist, he rapidly lost confidence in his leader and when Margaret Thatcher decided to stand against him, he offered his services and was drafted on to her leadership team. He was subsequently asked to write her biography and his Margaret Thatcher: From Childhood to Leadership, while superseded by later accounts, remains a readable account of her early career with some value as a source. Although he was an active member of her briefing team for Prime Minister's Questions, wrongly identified as the "Gang of Four" dragging the Tory party to the right, he was not included in her Government. He had perhaps made himself too obnoxious to the Chief Whip by his efforts in organising the Union Flag group campaigning against devolution and still more by the major rebellion that he masterminded against the renewal of economic sanctions on Rhodesia. When the Conservative government came into office he was equally vigorous in his efforts to force the pace on trade union legislation. In all these efforts, it should be added, he was not without encouragement from on high. In return he was quick to expose any efforts, most notably those by Peter Walker, to undermine the economic policies being pursued by the Government. From the mid 1980s he was advocating the privatisation of coal, electricity, the post office and the railways and he was an early and dedicated supporter of the Community Charge.
Other campaigns had varied success. He was unable to secure the return of the death penalty or prevent Prior's plans for a Northern Ireland Assembly from being passed. Nor could he do much to the settlement with Mugabe in Rhodesia. Throughout the '80s he remained a bitter critic of the ANC and an opponent of economic sanctions on South Africa, and he became identified with Bophuthatswana as the "ideal non apartheid state". He waged a successful campaign as an executive member of the Monday Club to remove the repatriation of immigrants from its objectives although in general taking a tough line on immigration. Most successful of all were his efforts to prevent the closure of the Tadworth Court children's hospital. Eventually it was agreed that it would be run as a charitable trust outside the NHS, but with government support for three years. Although he valued his Thatcherite campaigns, it was perhaps the achievement that he treasured most.
He had become secretary of the Conservative backbench European Affairs Committee in 1976 as a known opponent of withdrawal from the Community, but after a year as Vice Chairman, he felt bound to run against the man he described as its "eurofanatic" chairman, Hugh Dykes, in 1980 and he won. He was avowedly a supporter of the single European market, but he wanted it to become "a genuine common market and a full internal market". But he was equally determined that the British approach to Europe should be "Gaullist" and it was inevitable perhaps that he should become a critic of the Maastricht Treaty. However, the intense bitterness that he felt about it sprang from his inability to prevent Mrs Thatcher's fall and still more the thought that he had been deceived about the nature of the proposals that emerged from Maastricht. For this he blamed John Major, whom he felt had misled his supporters at the time of his election as leader and who had obtained his vote for the second reading of the bill under false pretences. When the Danes rejected the Treaty in June 1992, he signed the "Fresh Start" early day motion and supported the formation of the Group that coalesced around that cry. But, to his ultimate regret, when, in defiance of his pleas, Major made the next vote on Maastricht a matter of confidence, Gardiner gave him his support fearing that Major might resign and Clarke succeed him. Although he was one of the rebels who fought against the Maastricht bill throughout the committee stage and, in spite Major's personal blandishments, voted against the third reading, he remained a supporter of the Prime Minister, hard though it was for Major to believe it. After the party's shattering defeat in the European elections and the loss of the Eastleigh by-election, it was rumoured incorrectly that he was seeking the 34 signatures to trigger a leadership election in the autumn. However, he was undoubtedly privy to the efforts that others were making and may well have held back because his own calculations suggested that they would not succeed.
Gardiner had become increasingly impatient with the way Major managed the party by balancing the factions rather than giving a eurosceptic lead. Although the Upstairs Club, which he formed to influence policy, was explicitly not seeking a change, Gardiner finally concluded shortly before Major put his leadership to the test in 1995 that a new leader was essential. He was one of those who encouraged Redwood to run, although he made it clear that his eventual support would go to Portillo. His first reaction to Major's victory was to renew his support and that of the 92 for Major, but as battle lines in the party hardened over Europe, with sizeable revolts on Duncan Smith's bill to limit the powers of the European Court and proposals for a referendum, Gardiner became a key figure in the eurosceptic IGC monitoring group and eventually, together with John Townend, sought with considerable success in the autumn of 1996 to engineer a commitment from all Conservative candidates against the single currency. When in December, Major let the Daily Telegraph know that he too was in favour of retaining the pound and then denied it, Gardiner was outraged. He had beaten off a challenge to his continued membership of the House of Commons the previous June, but he now let fly in the Sunday Express with the charge that Clarke was now effectively Prime Minister and Major his puppet. It cost him his seat. His constituency association carried a motion of no confidence in him followed by another deselecting him and his legal challenge to the moves was turned down by the courts. Instead he ran as a referendum candidate and lost heavily, taking only 7% of the vote. When Hague became leader, he rejoined the Conservative party, but he knew his political career was at an end. He wrote his political memoirs, A Bastard's Tale, and it gave him some satisfaction that his own stance was now the policy of his party and that a referendum would act as a road block to further British integration in Europe. Dismaying though the result of the 2001 election was, he retained the hope that the Government's inevitable defeat over the single currency would pave the way to a renegotiation of Britain's position in Europe.