The Hon. Wilfrid Denis Walker is a right-wing British politician, known for his monarchist activities and anti-communism; he has been in control of the Conservative Monday Club since late 1992, and is also the Company Secretary and Director of the International Monarchist League and its UK subsidiary, the Constitutional Monarchy Association. He was initially a missionary, and then a government minister in Rhodesia.

Early life

Walker was born in East London and became a Methodist missionary in southern Africa. He left the mission service to settle as a minor industrialist in Bulawayo, Rhodesia.

Political Career in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe

In the Rhodesia general election of 1974, he won the seat of Bulawayo North as a Rhodesian Front candidate, polling 93·4% of the vote among the European-descended electorate. He was re-elected in the 1977 and 1979 elections. Walker served as Minister for Education from 1977 in Ian Smith's government, but was dismissed in April 1978 after mounting criticism. However, he returned to office under Abel Muzorewa in 1979-80.

Following the end of white minority rule and the creation of Zimbabwe he was appointed Deputy Chairman of Parliamentary Committees, but came under pressure from the new government of Robert Mugabe. He was to have been arrested (on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the government) on December 10, 1981 together with the MP for Bulawayo South, but had fortuitously left on a prearranged holiday. When he returned in January 1982, he briefly reattended Parliament before learning that the Mugabe government had stationed police around the building to arrest him on sight. Walker fled the country, hidden in a furniture lorry and returned to Britain.

Return to Britain

On February 10 he delivered a letter to Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street highlighting the political situation in Zimbabwe.

Walker settled in Epping, in a house owned by his brother. He entered into a number of small business concerns, such as (in April 1988) Fax Network International Limited, based in Chingford (in March 1999 this company was renamed Computer Systems UK Ltd).

Monday Club

On 29 September 1986 Denis Walker was the guest-of-honour at a Conservative Monday Club Foreign Affairs Committee Dinner at Bailey's Hotel, Gloucester Road, South Kensington, chaired by Richard Stallabrass, who had previously served in Rhodesia. Walker subsequently joined the Club about 1988 and was introduced by David Storey, then National Club Chairman, to Gregory Lauder-Frost who was the new Chairman of the Club's Foreign Affairs Committee. Lauder-Frost was a firm supporter of the Rhodesian Front and apartheid era South Africa and he and Walker quickly became friends. Walker was subsequently introduced to the Monarchist League, of which Lauder-Frost was then the principal officer. By 1990 Walker was a member of the executives of both organisations. The following year the Monday Club's office was moved, at Walker's behest, to his office opposite Highams Park railway station. In mid-1992 Lauder-Frost, the leading activist of the Monday Club, suddenly resigned for personal reasons, and Denis Walker effectively gained full control of the Monday Club, and, later, the International Monarchist League. Both organisations are currently administered by him.

An ardent anti-communist, Walker was on the guest list on September 25, 1989 at the Western Goals Institute dinner at Simpson's-in-the-Strand given for the President of El Salvador Alfredo Cristiani and his inner cabinet. Others present included Sir Alfred Sherman (policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher), Professor Antony Flew, Andrew V R Smith, Dr. Zigmunt Szkopiak (of the Polish Government in Exile), Colonel Barry Turner, R.E.(Retd)., Sam Swerling, Gregory Lauder-Frost and Dr. Harvey Ward, (Refer: The Daily Telegraph, and Times, Court & Social pages, 26 September, 1989).

On 1 November 1989 Denis Walker produced a paper for the Monday Club's Foreign Affairs Committee on Land Reform in Zimbabwe. In his last paragraph he stated that "once the land has been redistributed, the commercial farms will be broken up, the remaining white farmers reduced by exile or imprisonment; Zimbabwe's government, already morally bankrupt, will decline towards economic collapse."

Other activities

He is also the Director of the South Africa orientated Good Hope Christian Group, and the Rhodesia Christian Group, organisations which were set up to assist European refugees from those countries. He is also General Secretary of The Zimbabwe-Rhodesia Relief Fund, a registered charity, of which the principal patron and Chairman is Sir Nicholas Winterton (Conservative Member of Parliament for Macclesfield).

Denis Walker was appointed in mid-1989 as the Chairman of the Schools Liaison Steering Committee for the British Institute of Management, City of London Branch. His portrait photograph appears on the front page of their Autumn 1989 Newsletter with another in the August/September 2005 Rhodesia Christian Group Newsletter.

He runs the Monarchist League, the Monday Club, and other business activities from an office at Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, and now lives at Woodford Green, Essex.

References

• Fax Network International booklet, London, 1989, company number 2248589.
• Western Goals Institute archives.
• Rhodesia Herald
• Companies House UK http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/
• Rhodesia Christian Group Newsletter.