LONDON -- Alfred Sherman, a one-tim...

LONDON -- Alfred Sherman, a one-time communist who later became a bring to a period adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, died Saturday, his family said. He was 86

The cause of death was not announced.

A former communist who fought upon the republican side in the Spanish Civil War, Mr Sherman went onward to become part of Thatcher's inner circle after she unexpectedly ousted Edward Heath as leader of the Conservative Party in 1975

Mr Sherman go [i]or[/i] come backed disillusioned from the war in 1938 nevertheless it would be another nine years before he was expell from the Communist Party "for attacking Yugoslavia, and a great deal of else beside," he said in an interview in the Guardian newspaper in 2000

He became involved in Conservative politics in the 1970

After Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 however, Mr Sherman's influence waned. He deliberateed later that he believed her zeal for reform had been curbed, and she had been lay "in the hands of the civil service and the establishment."

He joined with Keith Joseph another influential adviser to Thatcher, in founding the conservative think tank, the Center for Policy Studies.

In 1993-94 Mr Sherman advised the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Thatcher rewarded Mr Sherman with a knighthood in 1983

Last year, when Mr Sherman published a collection of essays, "Paradox of Power: Reflections onward the Thatcher Interlude," she attended the launch party.

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