Sir Jack Stewart-Clark, Bt, businessman and MEP who transformed Dundas Castle into a thriving venue

Sir Jack Stewart-Clark, 3rd Baronet, who has died aged 96, left a successful career in industry to become one of the first elected Conservative members of the European Parliament. In the Tory mainstream over the EC when he arrived at Strasbourg in 1979, by the time he stood down 20 years later he was the most pro-European of the contingent.

Business took Stewart-Clark, always known as Jack, to the Netherlands and Pakistan, and his parliamentary duties kept him shuttling between Sussex, Brussels and Strasbourg. But his roots were in Scotland as a descendant of Stewart Clark, the Victorian Paisley thread magnate (briefly a Liberal Party MP, and kinsman of the Tory Alan Clark). Clark’s son, John, who took the name “Stewart-Clark” in honour of his father, was made a baronet in 1918.

In 1999 Jack Stewart-Clark inherited from his mother Dundas Castle at South Queensferry, west of Edinburgh, and began totally restoring a building whose asymmetrical keep had stood unoccupied for three centuries. The castle, occupied by the RAF as the headquarters for their Balloon Barrage Operations, had fallen into a state of severe disrepair.

Stewart-Clark’s wife Lydia refurbished the interior, with original silks replaced in the library and original baths retained where possible.

They not only restored the castle – in his family since 1899 – but turned it into a business. The family moved into the south wing, and the rest opened as a wedding venue, couples having the choice of the Armoury, the Great Hall, the Stag Chamber or the grounds. They could arrive in Sir Jack’s maroon Flying Spur Mulliner Bentley and spend the night in the secluded Boat House.

Within five years the castle employed 25 staff and its turnover exceeded £1 million; it was voted Scotland’s best wedding venue for two years running. When “right to roam” legislation was mooted in the Scottish Parliament, Stewart-Clark warned that it would destroy the privacy of 90 weddings a year at Dundas Castle.

The grounds hosted golf tournaments, helicopter tours, ballooning, archery and powerboat trips, and an annual re-enactment of the life of Christ, co-produced by Stewart-Clark, which attracted thousands.

In 2016 he gained the Vatican’s approval to take a Passion Play to the Opera Prison in Milan. “Prisoners can become redeemed in prison, even if you’re never getting out,” he said.

Stewart-Clark’s other great interest, developed as an MEP, was the battle against drugs; from 1999 to 2006 he chaired the European Drugs Monitoring Centre, and he spoke regularly at conferences across Europe.

He was particularly concerned at suggestions from some politicians and judges that hard drugs, including crack cocaine, be decriminalised or even legalised. Crack, he said, was even more addictive than heroin or cocaine and could “ensnare a young person after only a very short time of indulging”.

John Stewart-Clark was born at Dalmeny on September 17 1929, the elder son of Sir Stewart Stewart-Clark, 2nd Baronet, and the former Jane Clarke. He would inherit the baronetcy, created in 1918, in 1971. After following his father into Eton he went into the Coldstream Guards, serving in Tripoli, then in 1949 went up to Balliol College, Oxford. He later studied at Harvard Business School.

He joined the family firm of fine-thread manufacturers, J & P Coats, in 1952, becoming managing director of its operation in Pakistan in 1961 and of its Dutch subsidiary six years later. In 1971 he moved to Philips as its managing director in London, then in 1975 took charge of Pye of Cambridge.

Stewart-Clark fought Aberdeen North in 1959, knowing he had no chance. But as direct elections to the European Parliament neared, he decided to go seriously into politics. His speeches caught the attention of Harold Macmillan, who remarked: “We’ll be seeing more of that young man.”

In 1979, shortly after Margaret Thatcher came to power, he was elected MEP for Sussex East; five years later his constituency was redrawn as East Sussex and Kent South. His colleagues were mainly younger, and for the most part enthusiasts for Europe, but the balance changed as the party lost seats and Euroscepticism took over. Yet he remained positive, being targeted by the infant Ukip when he last sought re-election in 1994.

At the outset Stewart-Clark was elected treasurer of the Conservative-dominated European Democratic Group. He chaired the Parliament’s delegation to Canada and the European Parliamentarians and Industrialists Council, and from 1992 to 1997 was a vice-president of the Parliament. He also specialised in Japanese relations.

When Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s Stewart-Clark, chairing the European Action Council for Peace in the Balkans, campaigned for action to check the Serbs. In March 1994 he warned that despite the West securing their withdrawal from around Sarajevo, they remained as intent as ever on creating a Greater Serbia.

When Douglas Hurd produced an abortive peace plan that July, Stewart-Clark said that the division of Bosnia into two sectors must not amount to partition – as that would reward aggression – and the rights of minorities must be respected.

He was deeply affected by the Bosnian War, which led him to focus on conflict resolution and practical support, including providing educational resources for young people in the province of Široki Brijeg. On one of his trips, he encountered a Bosnian monk, Father Jozo Zovko, who had been the parish priest at Medjugorje, the village where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to four young girls.

Stewart-Clark’s interactions with Fr Zovko, who had recently suffered torture during the war, were profoundly significant for him and reinforced his Christian faith.

The convulsions at Westminster over the Maastricht Treaty limited John Major’s room for manoeuvre in Europe, though his government secured opt-outs over the euro, the Social Chapter and other matters. In 1994, when the Parliament overwhelmingly condemned such opt-outs, Stewart-Clark was the only Tory to concur.

The next year he proposed tough new powers for the EU ombudsman, and a consular service to represent EU citizens in third countries. But he stressed that Europe should only take on new powers where national governments were not proving effective. Thus he favoured joint action against drugs, but not on immigration because the EU’s external frontiers had “pathetically inadequate” controls.

Before the 2016 Brexit referendum, Stewart-Clark said: “We absolutely have to stay in... It would be dreadful if we didn’t. It’s a plunge into the unknown.” After the vote to come out, he and Linlithgow’s former Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, proposed that Parliament should override the result.

Stewart-Clark was at various times president of the European Institute for Security, chairman of the Conference of Regions of North-Western Europe, a director of the European Centre for Work and Society, and a council member of the Royal United Services Institute.

He was a member of the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen’s Body Guard for Scotland, and had been a devoted advocate of the Edinburgh Festival since its inception.

Jack Stewart-Clark married Lydia Loudon in 1958. She died in 2025, and he is survived by their four daughters, and a son, Alexander, who succeeds him as 4th Baronet.

Sir Jack Stewart-Clark, Bt, born September 17 1929, died June 22 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]