He served one term as Member of Parliament (MP) for Belper in Derbyshire[1] after he defeated the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party George Brown.
In 1962, Stewart-Smith founded the Foreign Affairs Circle, the British section of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which published the anti-Soviet East-West Digest, a fortnightly publication sent free of charge to all MP's.
Stewart-Smith was selected as the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Belper, Derbyshire, in 1966, and spent four years actively campaigning in the constituency to build up his profile.
[4] Regarded as a good constituency MP by fellow members, Stewart-Smith demanded that Edward Heath's government raise their pay offer to miners during the crippling strike.
However, his work was not enough to prevent him losing his seat in the February 1974 general election after boundary changes removed a large area of Conservative strength and the national trend favoured Labour.
In 1974, he sought to distance his Foreign Affairs Circle from the World Anti-Communist League because of the latter's perceived strong anti-Semitic element, saying: "We wouldn't touch them with a barge pole".
In March 1975, he was one of the principal speakers at the Club's successful two-day Conference in Birmingham, the theme of being "The Conservative Party and the Crisis in Britain".