Adrian Hilton

Adrian Hilton (born in 1964) is an English Conservative politician who gained media attention during the 2005 general election.
Hilton was acting assistant principal and faculty head (Politics & Philosophy) at Slough Grammar School. He has written many magazine articles and The Principality and Power of Europe dealing with the constitutional issues raised by Britain's continuing relationship with the European Union. The book carries a foreword by the former Speaker of the British House of Commons Viscount Tonypandy.
Along with Rodney Atkinson and Norris McWhirter, with whom he often shared political platforms, he has been vocal in his opinion of the European Union's policy of 'ever closer union'. He is a defender of the Act of Settlement 1701. He holds a Guinness World Record for a non-stop recital of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the idea for which came while "having a sauna with Roy Castle during the summer of 1986".
Standing for Parliament
Hilton was selected as a parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party for Slough in the 2005 General Election.
He was asked to resign as a Conservative parliamentary candidate by Andrew MacKay following an article in the Catholic Herald which accused him of promoting anti-Catholic conspiracy theories. The newspaper cited material written by Hilton for The Spectator two years earlier on the role of Catholicism in the EU and its implications for the British constitution, in which he had stated that the EU was "an amphictyony - a confederation of states established around a religious centre" in reaction to "the Pope's recent demand that 'God' be featured in the emerging European constitution" which had "been echoed by many leading Catholic politicians and bishops". Hilton had also said that the implication was that the Vatican "God" was what the Pope sought.
Hilton's article had been commissioned by The Spectator's editor, Boris Johnson, then an MP and vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, in the context of the Pope's demands for 'God' to be featured in the then emerging Constitution for Europe. Its claims were criticised by Austen Ivereigh, spokesman for the Archbishop of Westminster, who opined that "these views are bizarrely unhistorical and fundamentally erroneous. His case rests on an assumption that the English nation came into being only after the Reformation." Theo Hobson described the episode as evidence that "such blatant Romophobia is no longer tolerated", while Boris Johnson considered Hilton to have been "punished for thought-crime" and referred to the deselection as a "purge". In an article for The Times, Lord Rees-Mogg criticised Michael Howard for not apologising to Hilton.
Later political career
In May 2006, Hilton was a candidate in the Slough local elections but failed to win the Cippenham Meadows seat.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu