Major John Prendergast Gouriet (1 June 1935 – 4 September 2010) was a British Army officer, company director and political activist. He was best known as a founder of the National Association for Freedom (now known as The Freedom Association), and for pioneering the use of legal action to oppose actions of trade unions and campaigning groups which he believed interfered with personal liberty, during three years as the Association's director.
Early life
Gouriet was the only son of a Royal Air Force wing commander from Watchet, Somerset. Gouriet was educated at Charterhouse (as a Girdlestoneite), an independent school in Godalming, Surrey, from where he won a place at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1954.
Army career
Gouriet was commissioned as an officer in the 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars on 16 December 1955, after which he joined his regiment in Malaya on active service.
Gouriet became the second in command of a company of the Somaliland Scouts from 1959 until the Scouts were disbanded in late 1960. He was promoted to captain on 16 December 1961, became Adjutant of the Trucial Oman Scouts from 1961 to 1963, and then served as General Staff Officer Grade III Intelligence 1965–66 to the Director of Operations in Borneo. After attending Staff College, Camberley, where he earned a recommendation to return on the Teaching Staff as a Lieutenant Colonel, he was promoted to Major and became a Squadron Leader in 15/19 Hussars, a Chieftain tank regiment in Germany. He finished his Army career as Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General at the Ministry of Defence, responsible for Q Operations and Plans, in 1971 to 1972.
Politics
Leaving the Army with the rank of Major on 8 January 1973, Gouriet went to work as an assistant to Sir Walter Salomon at Rea Brothers merchant bank in the City of London. He later described how, shortly afterwards, on a grouse-shooting trip to Speyside with family and friends, he was discussing the political and economic state of Britain in 1973–1974, he told the assembled party over lunch in the heather that "It's no use complaining and then doing nothing!" That night he resolved to "take up the cudgels" himself. Gouriet then contacted Ralph Harris of the free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs to discuss linking up sympathetic groups and forming a co-ordinated opposition; Harris introduced him to Ross McWhirter. During the Conservative Party conference of 1975, Gouriet and McWhirter placed a copy of a campaign broadsheet called "Majority" on every seat.
P & O legal action
The two had begun work on setting up their new organisation when they heard of an incident which gave them an opportunity to campaign. A P&O ferry crew had been sacked on arriving at Southampton and had responded by impounding all the cars on their ship, which had not been unloaded. Gouriet thought that this action was illegal and agreed with McWhirter to challenge it; they found one of the car owners (John Nundy) who was willing to be a test case and funded him to apply for an injunction to release his car. After a hearing reportedly lasting eight minutes, Nundy was granted an injunction by the High Court against both P & O and the leader of the strike, requiring the release of his car. Gouriet later noted that it turned out that Nundy's car was at the back of the ship and so all other cars had to be offloaded before his could be reached.
Launch of the National Association for Freedom (NAFF) Gouriet then tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Home Secretary to put up a reward of £50,000 for information leading to the conviction of IRA members. When the Secretary refused, Ross McWhirter did so himself; this decision led to his assassination by the IRA Balcombe Street gang. Less than a week after, on 2 December 1975, the National Association for Freedom – described by Harold Walker, the Minister of State for Employment between 1976 and 1979, as an "ultra right wing political organisation" which "sought to interfere in industrial disputes, with harmful consequences" — was launched at the Savoy Hotel, with Gouriet as Campaign Director.