[5] On 14 January 1975 he wrote to The Times newspaper defending the conviction of Ricky Tomlinson and Des Warren over the Shrewsbury building strike.

[citation needed] Howarth was General Secretary of the Society for Individual Freedom, a right-wing pressure group, from 1969 to 1971 after leaving university.

According to John Mann, Howarth and Francis Bennion set up an organisation to counter the anti-apartheid movement called "Freedom Under Law".

Howarth and his close friend Neil Hamilton both successfully sued the BBC and were each awarded £20,000 damages for libel in October 1986, with their court costs paid.

[14] In 2001, Howarth was one of several famous faces duped into appearing on the Channel Four Brass Eye television programme; this was the "Paedogeddon" spoof episode, where he agreed to read out anti-paedophile warnings.

[citation needed] At the 2015 general election Howarth was joined in the Commons by his son-in-law, James Cartlidge, the Conservative MP for South Suffolk.

[2] In 1999, Howarth questioned the conclusion of the Macpherson report (into Stephen Lawrence's death) that the Metropolitan police are "institutionally racist" as "a grotesque over-reaction.

[20] In 2000, he described the lifting of the ban on homosexuals in the military as "appalling" and went on to state that the "decision will be greeted with dismay, particularly by "ordinary" soldiers in Her Majesty's forces, many of whom joined the services precisely because they wished to turn their backs on some of the values of modern society".

[21] In 2005 he criticised the gay Labour Minister Peter Mandelson because his life-partner, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, a Brazilian translator who had been living in the UK for seven years, had received British citizenship.

[22] On 20 May 2013, whilst debating the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, Howarth warned of "the aggressive homosexual community who see this as but a stepping stone to something even further."