George Gardiner (politician)

Sir George Arthur Gardiner (3 March 1935 – 16 November 2002) was a British Conservative Party politician and journalist. After he defected to the Referendum Party, he was briefly the only MP it ever had.

The political scientists David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh described Gardiner as "a staunch right-wing Thatcherite".

Born in Waltham Abbey, Essex, Gardiner was the son of Stanley Gardiner, a gasworks manager, and Emma, a bookkeeper. Gardiner's parents divorced when he was 10, at the end of World War II. Gardiner was educated at the Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics in which he obtained a first-class honours degree in 1958.

Before Oxford, Gardiner did his national service, and was a sergeant tester of entrants, posted to the Pioneer Corps.

Gardiner joined the Conservative Party at 15 in 1950, and at Oxford, he organised a petition in support of Anthony Eden's Suez policy. In 1957 he became secretary of the University Conservative Association. During an election for the post of president of the association, Gardiner printed scores of forged ballot papers for a postal vote backing his own candidacy. His deception was discovered and he had to withdraw.

He worked as a journalist and in advertising after he left university. Gardiner was political correspondent for the Western Daily Press from 1961 to 1964 and then was lobby correspondent for Thomson Regional newspapers. He was chief political correspondent for Thomson from 1964 to 1974. There he was mistrusted by some of his colleagues because of his close affiliation with the Conservatives. From 1978 to 1997, Gardiner had a column in the Sunday Express.

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