Founded in 1961, in reaction to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's opposition to white minority rule in Southern Rhodesia, the club became embroiled in the decolonisation and immigration debate, inevitably highlighting the controversial issue of race, which has dominated its image ever since.

The club was known for its fierce opposition to non-white immigration to Britain and its support for apartheid-era South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.

In 2001, the Conservative Party formally severed relations with the club, which had ceased to exercise significant influence, with full membership below 600.

[7][8] The 5th Marquess of Salisbury (1893–1972), who had resigned from Macmillan's Cabinet over the Prime Minister's liberal direction, became its first president in January 1962, when he stated "there was never a greater need for true conservatism than there is today".

[12] Oxford political scholar Roger Griffin referred to the club as practicing an anti-socialist and elitist form of conservatism.

These included: Tim Keigwin, who almost unseated the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe at North Devon, Councillor John Pritchard of Bromley London Borough Council, who contested Wrexham and Norwood, and David Clarke, whose personal campaign assistant was the chairman of the club's Young Members' Group, Christopher Horne, and who failed by only 76 votes at Watford.

At the club's Annual General Meeting on 26 April 1971, in Westminster Central Hall, the chairman, George Pole, announced that "our membership, including national, branches and universities is around 10,000.

The September 1984 edition of Monday News carried the headline "Kinnock Talks to Terrorists", quoting Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock's declaration to the African National Congress's Oliver Tambo that the ANC in South Africa could expect financial and material assistance from a future Labour government.

"[35] The playwright David Edgar described the Monday Club, in 1986, as "proselytis[ing] the ancient and venerable conservative traditions of paternalism, imperialism and racism.

Subsequent failed expulsion attempts resulted in huge legal bills, and when Dr. Mark Mayall's term as chairman expired in April 1993 he left the group.

Club officers, including Gregory Lauder-Frost, Denis Walker, and Lord Sudeley, attended a Western Goals Institute dinner in September 1989 in honour of Salvadorian president Alfredo Cristiani, whose military was at the time fighting the FMLN.

In this respect it gave its support to Count Nikolai Tolstoy, historian and author of Victims of Yalta and The Minister and the Massacres, who was then being sued for libel, by holding a dinner for him at London's Charing Cross Hotel on 26 October 1988.

[49] The club opposed what it described as the "premature" independence of Kenya, and the breakup of the Central African Federation, which was the subject of its first major public meeting in September 1961.

During the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) period in Rhodesia, the club strongly backed the White minority government of Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front, being seen as its strongest supporters in Britain.

[51] The government of Franjo Tuđman in Croatia invited the Monday Club to send a delegation to observe its conflict with Serbia, in October 1991, when the war for Croatian independence from the tottering Yugoslavia was at its height, with the armies of both sides engaged in serious fighting.

The club delegation arrived just days after the Yugoslav Air Force bombing of the historic upper city in Zagreb.

In the early days of the European Economic Community (EEC) one of the club's MPs, Geoffrey Rippon, was so pro-EEC that he was known as "Mr. Europe".

The club's Scottish branch's newspaper, The Challenger, carried a further article against the EEC by Taylor in September 1985 entitled "Swallowing the Nation".

Enoch Powell also spoke against the EEC at one of the Monday Club's fringe meetings at the Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool on 8 October 1991, with Lauder-Frost presiding, which was filmed and broadcast on BBC TV's Newsnight that night.

In 1992, the chairman, Dr. Mark Mayall, authored another club booklet entitled: Maastricht: The High Tide of European Federalism, a fierce attack on the EEC.

A resolution was drafted, approved by the meeting, and delivered to the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who replied that "the government had no intention of repealing the Race Relations Act".

When Reginald Maudling resigned from the Cabinet, the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, commented that "Mr. Heath has been left to wrestle with the Monday Club single-handed.

[57] It was claimed by opponents that the National Front had started an active programme of entryism into the organisation, mainly via the growing number of regional branches.

Faction fighting within the club following Lauder-Frost's departure at the end of May 1992 led to a period of instability and a resulting loss of membership.

For this reason, coupled with a declining membership and increasingly straightened finances, the Club's Executive reluctantly came to the decision to disband the organisation in July 2024.