John Carlisle was vice-chairman (1973–74) and chairman (1974–76) of the
Mid Bedfordshire Constituency Conservative Association, and was elected MP for
Luton West in the
1979 general election. For some time after his election he shared an office with future Prime Minister
John Major. In
1983 Carlisle's constituency of Luton West was abolished and he was elected MP for the new constituency of
Luton North. He was chairman of the Conservative Parliamentary Committee on Sport (1981–84), vice-chairman of the All-Party Football Committee, secretary of the Conservative Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee (Africa) 1982–83, and was a member of the International Executive Committee of "Freedom in Sport". He was also treasurer of the Anglo-Gibraltar Group, 1981–82, and was secretary (1983–87), and chairman (1987) of the British-South Africa Group. He was elected vice-president of the Federation of Conservative Students in 1986 and was governor of the Sports Aid Foundation (Eastern Region), 1985–96. He was a member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Agriculture 1985–88. He was an active member of the Conservative
Monday Club and from
c. 1980 to 1982 was chairman of their Foreign Affairs Committee. He was guest-of-honour at the club's Hampshire and Dorset branch Autumn Dinner on 20 October 1989. On 4 April 1991, the London
Evening Standard carried a front-page attack by the Monday Club against the proposed appointment of
Janet Street-Porter for the position of the BBC's Head of Arts and Culture. Ultimately, she did not get the job. During his tenure as a Member of Parliament, John Carlisle regularly hosted Monday Club meetings in Committee Rooms at the
House of Commons. He supported the pro-gun lobby after the
Dunblane massacre. The Almanac of British Politics recorded him as backing hanging and flogging, and opposing
feminism, homosexual law reform and the
European Economic Community.
South Africa and apartheid Carlisle was opposed to the
Gleneagles Agreement of 1977 which discouraged sporting ties to the apartheid regime in South Africa. In 1981 he called it a "worthless treaty" and urged the
International Cricket Council (ICC) to readmit South Africa. Advocating the right of sportsmen to play wherever they wished, he offered his support for the
1982 English rebels tour saying that "many of us will salute the courage that has been shown by these players." After the
Test and County Cricket Board banned players who had featured in the tour he described it as "a sorry day for international cricket." In 1983 he called on the
Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), as a club, to tour South Africa as a means of establishing if contemporary opinion polls approving of reviving sporting links were correct. The suggestion was rejected by MCC members. In July 1982 he urged
Margaret Thatcher to bring
Enoch Powell into her cabinet. But she refused, reiterating what she had previously declared in February 1975 and April 1979, that there would never be a position for Powell in any government of hers. In one of his interventions in a 1987
House of Commons debates, he claimed that "the system of apartheid in South Africa has worked in terms of government", although he claimed not to support it. Nevertheless, this defence of the South African government prompted journalist
Edward Pearce to label him "the member for Bloemfontein West". Of the television screening of the
April 1990 tribute concert in London for the newly freed
Nelson Mandela, the MP said: "The BBC have just gone bananas over this and seem to be joining those who are making Mandela out to be a Christ-like figure." Carlisle observed: "This hero worship is misplaced." He had earlier described Mandela as a terrorist in 1988. ==Later life==