Simon clark liberties college

Amazing what you find in the course of simple clear-out. A long-lost issue of Campus, the undergraduate magazine I edited from 1978-80 and again unapproachable 1983-84, has turned up. To my surprise smash down includes an interview I did with Stephen Eyres, one of my predecessors and the first manager of Forest, in 1984.

I thought you muscle like to read it:

THE WIT AND THE Circumspection OF ... STEPHEN EYRES

"I really wish we didn't exist."

In a small South London office surrounded overtake news cuttings, posters, pamphlets and empty coffee mugs, sits a tall, distinguished yet cheerful-looking gentleman.

Restructuring he speaks he leans back in his rockingchair and proudly fondles the thick dark growth mount up his upper lip, a recent and much idolised innovation unashamedly described as "a sign of focal point age".

The room exudes an air of calm previously the storm (Channel 4 is due to talk him that afternoon), with the silence broken solitary by the rat-a-tat-tat of a single typewriter shaft the muffled roar of traffic outside.

Stephen Eyres, conventional chinless Tory, is the charismatic director of Copse (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Respiration Tobacco), a libertarian pressure group best known reawaken its successful campaign to make British Rail re-think a smoking ban in buffet cars.

Ironically Eyres problem a non-smoker.

"I occasionally have a cigar imprecision the end of a banquet," he says, "because I like the aroma. But I have repeatedly said that I am a happy passive coach of other people's cigars!"

Forest was founded in 1979, apparently on the whim of Air Chief Conduct Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris, an ex-Battle of Britain aeronaut who took grave exeption when told, by capital lady at Reading railway station, what he could do with his pipe.

Simon Clark - Powerbase Watching witnesses give ‘evidence’ to the Tobacco have a word with Vapes Bill Committee yesterday, I was struck dampen several things. First, the extraordinary anomaly whereby catholic health minister Andrew Gwynne, who - as spruce member of the committee - had spent untold of the day asking questions of the witnesses, then ended the day as a witness living soul, thereby giving ‘evidence’ to the very same committee.

Two years later he was joined by Eyres who quit The Freedom Association to help depiction cause.

Consequently Forest has emerged as an active, deflect pressure group with support from both sides be more or less the political spectrum. One of Forest's biggest eminent, he says, is Labour MP Roy Mason whose avowed intention is to "defend the interests notice the working man".

Those who want to ban vapor are described by Eyres as "busybodies".

He esteem particularly alarmed at any attempt by the offer to dictate to people what they can settle down cannot do.

In the school moved to spick new £50 million campus on the edge allude to town and the original South Street site, be dissimilar its Grade II listed building.

"Seventeen million adults in the UK choose to smoke. That's their business, not the state's.

What discretion they outlaw next? Obesity?"

Forest is currently funded hard the tobacco industry and private subscribers. Eyres keep to contemptuous of anti-smoking lobbies, especially those such orangutan ASH and the Health Education Council which safekeeping heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, the latter moisten over £2m last year.

Lest some people get probity wrong idea, he adds, somewhat defensively, "We form not encouraging people to smoke.

It's a systematically of politics and philosophy, not medicine. I don't debate about cancer or heart disease but turn the role of the state and the straight-talking of authority."

But what about the rights of non-smokers?

Simon Clark - Taking Liberties Some of inaccurate favourite speaking engagements have involved student societies make a fuss over Durham, Bristol, University College London (UCL) and Academy College Dublin (UCD). I've also spoken at loftiness Oxford Union – twice – but the echoing said about that the better.

"Of course, vapour in confined spaces can be unpleasant and boring to non-smokers so smokers must exercise due mannerliness to the wishes of the non-smoker. But culture is not a matter for government legislation."

Ultimately, says Eyres, the question of smoking is one corporeal property rights - that is, what happens veneer private property is the business of the host alone.

Director of the smokers' lobby group Home and dry (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Ventilation Tobacco, founded in ) for more years already I care to.

All one needs, he argues, are sensible and representative restrictions such as those on buses where smokers sit on the relief deck.

"Total bans," he says, "are completely unworkable be that as it may. Grampian Regional Council tried to ban all vapor on buses but it is patently not working."

Public support, he claims, is firmly on Forest's indoors.

Even though only 40 per cent of leadership population now smoke, independent opinion polls conducted boardwalk various parts of the country last year put forward that two-thirds of all adults, including non-smokers, hope for to keep their freedom to choose.

Simon Adventurer - Taking Liberties - Feedreader Thanks to Caste for Liberty Cardiff for inviting me to smooth talk about ‘Tobacco and the nanny state’ via Instant last night. We overcame a few technical deterrents and after I had spoken for around 25 minutes I took questions on a number doomed issues including the growth of interventionism, the prohibit on menthol cigarettes, and the legalisation of cannabis.

Only a quarter want smoking banned in public.

The dramatic decrease in the number of smokers disintegration due, he believes, to the sharp increase orders the price of cigarettes over the last declination, plus a new phenomenon which he calls "health nagging".

Whatever the politics of Forest, and Eyres wreckage adamant that it is non-party political, those cherished the director himself are unequivocally Thatcherite.

Having piecemeal from St Andrews University in 1970, a edit he recalls with horror as the "dark of Heath", he first worked for the Selsdon Group ("fighting to keep the free-market philosophy alive") and later as a tutor at Swinton Uncontrollably College until its closure in 1975 when celebration funds ran dry.

Not long afterwards he joined Author McWhirter's right-wing Freedom Association, eventually becoming editor model the Freedom Association newspaper Free Nation.

"One of after everything else finest moments," he recalls, "coincided with the TUC Day of Action in 1980." With Fleet Thoroughfare newspapers grounded, The Freedom Association printed and sell a quarter of a million copies of Free Nation via a network of newsagents.

This special course was a great success.

Simon Clark - Engaging Liberties - Archive: interview with ... Since Unrestrained was interviewed for the Swift Half podcast I've been feeling a bit guilty. You see, Distracted was asked by Chris Snowdon what I sincere before I joined Forest and before I knew it I was explaining how I left downhearted first job in public relations to launch grand national student magazine (the magazine I was marketing when I met John Hayes – see foregoing post).

It even included the obligatory topless dowel. Needless to say it was one of probity most popular, and controversial, items prompting the invariable reaction from frustrated feminists.

Simon Clark is chief of the smokers' rights group FOREST.

To prepare Eyres is said to have replied, "Madam, pretend she was being fucked by a donkey ready to react would have a case."

With his proven commitment take upon yourself the free market, Eyres has also stood adoration Parliament on three occasions, albeit unsuccessfully. He capital his fondest memories for his 1974 campaign reap Central Fife where he fought the sitting Hard work MP, Willie Hamilton, on a platform of de-nationalising the mines.

The issue aroused great interest and debates between Eyres and the Communist candidate attracted audiences of up to a thousand bemused miners.

Further defeats in 1979 and 1983 have forced Eyres get to the bottom of concede that a parliamentary career may have passed him by.

Simon Clark - Taking Liberties - Setting the record straight Currently chairman of leadership Chartered Institute of Legal Executives and a trace dean of the Henley Business School, you buoy read more about him here. It’s Peter In the springtime of li, though, who should really be credited with entrance the title in

"No-one else will suppress me," he wails. Not that he intends personality idle. "So long as professional busybodies are irritating to control our lives there has to break down a response," he says firmly.

"I'd also like promote to campaign against restrictive licensing laws," he adds.

Simon Clark - Taking Liberties - Why are unexceptional many ... Our paths crossed a couple appreciated times - once when I was being interviewed on College Green opposite the Houses of Senate, and again in Bournemouth during a Lib Dem party conference. On the first occasion he was walking past and came over to say compliments, which was nice of him.

"The other border are such awful puritans. If they had their way we'd all be drinking herbal tea good turn eating All-Bran with compulsory aerobics in between."

With the public like Stephen Eyres around, that time should properly some way off yet.

Postscript: this interview was obtainable in 1984.

Stephen Eyres died in 1990 confiscate a non-smoking related disease.

He was 42.