An Honorary Life Member of the MCC, Gilligan served as MCC president from 1967 to 1968. During his tenure, the MCC was involved in controversy over the non-selection of Basil D'Oliveira to tour South Africa. The South African government did not want D'Oliveira in the England team on the grounds of his colour. Gilligan, in his capacity as MCC president, was aware of this having seen a private letter which communicated the explicit threat from the South African prime minister B. J. Vorster that the forthcoming tour would be cancelled if D'Oliveira were selected. However, he and the others who saw the letter, G. O. B. Allen and Billy Griffith, respectively the MCC treasurer and secretary, kept this information to themselves. When the English selectors met to choose the team, Gilligan, Allen and Griffith were present to represent the MCC. A BBC programme in 2004 claimed that Gilligan pressured the selectors to leave out D'Oliveira, but D'Oliveira's biographer Peter Oborne suggests that Allen carried far more influence at the meeting. He writes of Gilligan's part in the affair: "It would be wrong to make too much of Gilligan's embarrassing past. Given that presidents are appointed for only a year, it was a very strong president indeed who could impose his personality on the permanent MCC secretariat of Griffith and Allen, and Gilligan was not a strong president." Initially D'Oliveira was left out of the team, but when a player withdrew with an injury, the selectors added him as a replacement; the South African government barred D'Oliveira from taking part and the MCC cancelled the tour.