Pro- China club chief gave thousands to Labour
THE chairman of a lobby group accused of ‘grooming’ British politicians on behalf of the Chinese Communist regime was once a Labour Party donor, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Stephen Perry’s 48 Group Club is a pro-Beijing body whose patrons and fellows include Labour and Tory grandees such as Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw and Michael Heseltine. Its gala events have attracted Tony Blair and former Chancellor George Osborne.
The 48 Group Club says it tries to improve trade relations between Britain and China, but a new book claims it was founded by secret members of the British Communist Party and spreads Beijing’s propaganda in the UK. The MoS has now established that Mr Perry, 71, donated £5,000 to Labour in 1997. The following year he gave a further £5,000 and £25,000 in 1999.
Two years later, Mr Perry was at the centre of a row when it emerged he had become a key adviser on China to the Blair government. But his funding of Labour continued. In August 2016, he donated £22,500 towards the campaign by Owen Smith to become leader of the party. He eventually lost to Jeremy Corbyn.
The accusations about the 48
Group Club’s activities are made in a book, Hidden Hand, by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg. The book, which has been published in Australia and Canada and will soon be available in the UK – claims the club was founded in 1953 by three members of the British Communist Party. It is named after a delegation of 48 British businessmen who visited China on a trade mission. Hidden Hand claims the three founders of the Group – Jack Perry, the father of Stephen Perry, and his two close associates, Roland Berger and Bernard Buckman – were secret British Communist Party members. The authors allege: ‘At the instigation of a member of the standing committee of the Pol i t b u r o , Zhou Enl a i [first Chinese Premier], the 48 Group was the work of three secret members of the Communist Party of Great Britain.’
Hidden Hand accuses Stephen Perry, who runs London Export Corporation, a business set up by his father, of parroting the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda in the UK and praising its authoritarian president, Xi Jinping, as the leader who ‘frees minds’.
In a blog in April last year, Mr Perry wrote: ‘A new world is coming and its conceptual source has a name on it – Xi Jinping. We would be smart to recognise a partner and not turn our backs.’
Last night, Mr Perry did not respond to questions sent by this newspaper. He has previously said: ‘Being an independent body, the 48 Group Club does not have a formal relationship with any other organisation, whether inside or outside China.’
Mr Perry has also said he has written to the publishers of the Hidden Hand to correct factual errors. He also rejects claims that the group targets elites. The 48 Group Club also failed to comment on whether Jack Perry was a member of the British Communist Party.