The Bow Group is a UK-based think tank promoting conservative opinion. Founded in 1951, it is the oldest group of its kind, counting many senior Conservative Party MPs and peers among its members. It represents a forum for political debate with its varied programme of events and official journal. Profile Although often associated with the Conservative Party, the group is now perhaps better categorised as a right-wing think tank. The Bow Group exists to publish and promote the research and policy proposals of its members, through policy papers, policy briefs and larger collaborative projects. The group's journal, Crossbow, usually published four times a year, and the group's programme of meetings during the parliamentary year also provide its members and guest speakers and writers with a forum for political debate. The Bow Group accepts applications for membership. It also accepts outside donations, sponsorship and advertising. The chairman of the Bow Group has been Ben Harris-Quinney since 2011. In 2015, he was disowned by four of the Bow Group's patrons and suspended from the Conservative Party. In 2016, he was accused by Andrew Neil on BBC's Daily Politics show of being a "Walter Mitty figure" and dismissed by Lord Heseltine as being "of no account". The commentator Iain Dale has accused him of having turned the Bow Group into an "impotent and irrelevant vehicle for Harris-Quinney to seek airtime for himself". History The Bow Group was founded by a group of students with the aim of providing an effective counter to socialism and the Fabian Society. Since then, it has expanded under chairmen such as Geoffrey Howe, Leon Brittan, Norman Lamont, Michael Howard, Peter Lilley, Sir Christopher Bland, and David Campbell Bannerman. Much of the group's thought can be categorised as conservatism supporting both a market economy and social responsibility. The reputation of the group was founded on the need for innovative conservative thinking to address the pressing problems of the day. In keeping with this trend, it was The Bow Group which promoted the idea of a World Refugee Year in the late 1950s. In the 1960s, the group attracted significant controversy in Conservative circles over its support for Kenyan independence. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the group was closely associated with the development of post-Keynesian economics and policy. The publication in 1973 of Peter Lilley's Alternative Manifesto marked the beginnings of the intellectual shift from the policies of the