Right-wing activity

Brown was involved in the right-wing Conservative circles including the Monday Club and the Eldon League. Brown was a founding member of the No Turning Back group which included Michael Portillo, Peter Lilley and Neil Hamilton.^{[citation needed]} Brown regarded Portillo as one of his closest friends in the early years of the 1980s claiming, "we hit it off right away." He accompanied Portillo on holidays with other friends including Laud.^[4]

Southern Africa

Brown was a supporter of South Africa's ruling National Party during apartheid and visited that country with Neil Hamilton on a trip financed by the South African authorities in February 1988. Hamilton went on more than one tour of South Africa.^[1]

In 1990, Brown's protégé Derek Laud became active in support of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), a political party in Namibia backed by the South African government. Laud formed a lobbying group known as Strategy Network International, which lobbied vigorously on behalf of the DTA and later, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).^[1]

Cash for questions affair

During his parliamentary career, Andrew Roth's Parliamentary Profiles described Brown as "an assiduous free tripper who repays his hosts".^[5] During the Cash for Questions parliamentary scandal, Brown admitted to, and apologised for, accepting money to lobby on behalf of US Tobacco without declaring it.^{[citation needed]} He was alleged to have received £6,000 from Ian Greer Associates to lobby on behalf of US Tobacco, and to have failed to declare it in the Register of Members' Interests or to ministers.^{[citation needed]}

He was further alleged to have not declared the income from Ian Greer Associates until the payments became publicly known.^{[citation needed]}

The Parliamentary investigation found that Brown failed to register an introduction payment from Mr Greer on behalf of US Tobacco and that he "persistently and deliberately" failed to declare an interest in Skoal Bandits in his dealings with ministers over the issue. He did not immediately declare the payment to the Inland Revenue. Mr Brown also received a free flight to Connecticut to be briefed by the company, which he did record in the Register of Members' Interests.^[6][7]

Resignation

Brown resigned in May 1994 after The News of the World published pictures of him on holiday in Barbados with a 20-year-old gay man. At the time, the age of consent for homosexual activity was 21, so the paper ran the story under the headline "Lawmaker as lawbreaker".^[8] After resigning, Brown subsequently acknowledged his homosexuality.^[9] The media linked Brown's resignation to Prime Minister John Major's ill-fated Back to Basics campaign.^[10]