Sam Swerling 1939-2023

H&D learned with great sadness of the death of one of our oldest regular readers, retired law lecturer and former Westminster city councillor Sam Swerling, yesterday at the age of 83.

In an era when Conservatives have been among the worst traitors in our political life, Sam Swerling was a rare example of fearless loyalty and commitment to patriotic principles: a stout defender of the Union, race and nation.

Nor was he a ‘Little Englander’: Sam had many connections to European nationalists, especially in France.

Educated at Repton and Trinity College, Dublin, Sam Swerling spent most of his career as a partner in a firm of solicitors in the City of London, and as a law lecturer and teacher at City University, London.

Sam became a Conservative Party activist in the late 1950s, and fought his first election campaign in 1959 as Conservative candidate for Newham North-West, in what was then the London County Council.

In February 1974 he was parliamentary candidate for Stalybridge & Hyde (coincidentally close to the home of H&D’s assistant editor, who was only 7 years old at the time and not yet politically active!). Sam polled 16,854 votes (32%). And in 1978 he was elected councillor for the Marylebone ward on Westminster City Council.

In 1965 Sam Swerling joined the Monday Club, which was then becoming the main vehicle for traditional patriotism inside the Conservative Party, and from 1972-1993 he was a member of the Monday Club’s Executive Council, editing several of its publications. Sam was chairman of the Monday Club from 1980-82.

After the Monday Club’s demise, Sam Swerling became an active member of three organisations which sought to carry on the fight for traditional conservatism, in both domestic and foreign policy: the Western Goals Institute, Conservative Democratic Alliance, and Traditional Britain Group.

The last of these is still flourishing, under the leadership of Gregory Lauder-Frost, and Sam was Vice-President of TBG until his death.

In 2017 he published his political memoir Sam Swerling – Nation, Tradition & Liberty, reviewed by Adrian Davies in Issue 82 of H&D.

A tribute to Sam will appear in the next edition of our magazine.