Books
High Times: the life and times of Howard Marks
David Leigh (London 1984)
Howard Marks was – who knows? maybe still is – a major British dope dealer who got famous, not for importing huge quantities of dope (15 tons of grass in one venture) but because he became embroiled with MI6.
Having said that, almost nothing else is certain. High Times ends with Marks getting away with a series of stupendous perjuries in an English court: there is no compelling reason to believe most of this book. In particular there is no good reason to accept Leigh’s (Mark’s) account of his dealings with MI6. It may be true, as they tell us, that Marks simply had the lightest of exploratory talks with an old university friend who had been recruited by MI6, talks which came to nothing in the end but which Marks subsequently used to con the police/legal authorities of Europe. But then this could be baloney.
It doesn’t really matter. This is a very interesting and entertaining little book, as much a memoire of the British cultural/political ‘underground’ of the late sixties and early seventies as it is anything else; and it is certainly the best account of the dope-dealing life since Snowblind.
The contacts with MI6 give Leigh the excuse to throw in one or two sharp little sections on the recent history of our very own spooks – especially their experiences in Northern Ireland. This could hardly be bettered as a thumb-nail sketch of British state policy there:
“Heath’s men set about dealing with the unrest among the natives by the classic Imperial methods which had worked so well in Malaya against the Communist guerillas – a co-ordinated intelligence drive, a big propaganda campaign, mass round-ups of suspects, attacks on guerillas’ arms-supplies and cross-border sanctuaries – and then, if all else failed, negotiations from strength.
None of these grand political designs worked very well. This was because the basic colonialist method of extracting intelligence as refined by the army in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden, consisted of subjecting prisoners to various forms of near-torture, until they went to pieces. This caused a row when done so close to home in Ireland. The basic colonialist method of dealing with violent rioters – by shooting them – did not work well in Ireland either. The killing of 13 civilians in Derry by British paratroopers caused just as big a row.” (p107)
RR
Obbligato
William H. Sullivan
(Norton and Co. London 1984)
This is a pleasant – if somewhat blind – memoire by a US career diplomat who ended up as the US Ambassador to Iran when the Shah fell. There are lots of little bits and pieces in the earlier chapters which may interest students of the history of US involvement in S.E. Asia. But for me the one memorable section is on pp 178/9 where Sullivan describes a wargame on Vietnam organised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late 1962: “an effort to project how the Vietnam situation might unfold over a span of ten years.” (Sullivan played General Giap!)
“By the end of the week, at a time frame representing the winter of 1972 … red team (North Vietnam) forces were everywhere on the map of Indochina … had overrun most of Laos, and controlled the countryside of South Vietnam and the cordillera extending into Cambodia … had extended and demoralized the forces of South Vietnam. But most of all had bogged down 500,000 American troops in the quagmire of Indochina …. and provoked great agitation and unrest in the American population.”
That is pretty well what happened. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has come across this wargame before. It doesn’t appear to be in the Pentagon Papers, for example. (Or did I miss it?)
RR
The Lemming Folk
James Gibb Stuart
(William McClellan, Glasgow, 1980)
This isn’t a new book but is new to me and, perhaps, to most Lobster readers. It is worthy of note as a splendid example of that relatively rare species, the British global conspiracy theory. Quite what Stuart’s ‘theory’ is, however, is less than clear. He writes variously of ‘International Finance-power capitalism”, “One World Monopolists”, “a World Federalist State”, the (US) “Eastern Liberal Establishment” the “Fabian oligarchy and the CFR boys of the perpetual hidden government”, and – best of all – “super-rich, capitalist, monopolist Fabian, gradualist Marxist collectivists, global state internationalists” – which includes just about everybody of note.
It is, in short, utter gibberish, constantly on the edge of self – parody and littered with that trade-mark of the genuine conspiracy theorist loony, the exclamation mark(!).
The author’s heroes, to judge by the photographs he includes, are Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society), Major Douglas (founder of the 1930s Social Credit Movement) and two economists I’ve never heard of (messers Robertson and Albus).
File under conspiracy theories/epiphenomena. People like Gary Allen have done it much better.
RR
Directors of Industry: The British Corporate Sector 1904-76
John Scott and Catherine Griff (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1984)
A brief mention for a new and welcome publishing venture. Polity Press in Cambridge (and that’s Cambridge, England, for our overseas readers) have just published a couple of books which go some way towards filling the gap on the library shelves where studies of the British corporate networks should be.
As well as the above, Scott and Griff have a chapter on the UK banks in Networks of Corporate Power (ed. Stokman, Ziegler and Scott, Polity 1985), an international survey.
I can’t ‘review’ this in any sense: its outside my present competence to do so. However it does seem to me to be a valuable opening move even if, as always with groundbreaking work, the authors seem pretty preoccupied with theoretical perspectives and their antecedents (and would, no doubt, argue that conceptual clarity is essential at the outset).
Directors of Industry is particularly useful in carrying a huge list of source material. (And it is striking what a large proportion of the British material was published in the 1970s and 80s). Why this kind of analysis has taken so long to get established in this country is one of those interesting minor questions. Scott is inclined to attribute this to Britain’s lack of a thorough-going Marxist tradition. I wonder if this is true. It is certainly curious, is it not, that in the home of ‘mere British empiricism’, mere empirical studies are so thin on the ground. It certainly isn’t obvious to me why a lack of Marxist theoretical work in this country should have influenced this.
Write for a catalogue to: Polity Press, PO Box 202, Cambridge, CBI 2BT, UK
RR
Police Authorities During the Miners’ Strike
Sarah Spencer (Cobden Trust Working Paper No l)
(£1.95 from Cobden Trust, 21 Tabard Street, London SEI 4LA)
Excellent, short (23 A5 pages) pamphlet from current acting head of National Council for Civil Liberties which, as the cover blurb says, “gives a detailed account of the relationship between the local councils, police authorities, chief constables and the Home Secretary during the (miners’) dispute”.
Chiefly what it documents is the inability of local authority police committees to exercise even financial control over the police as (apparently) laid down in the 1964 Police Act. So, such authorities found “that even the financial powers which they thought they possessed could be undermined by their chief constable on the one hand and by the Home Secretary on the other …. the Home Secretary interpreted the law in favour of the chief constables, allowing them to spend with impunity … County Councils (found themselves) accountable to the ratepayers for expenditure over which they had no control.” (conclusion).
The somewhat dry text is enlivened by the occasional feisty remark from local councillors involved in this dispute.
“It’d take a hundred years to investigate all the complaints against that bunch of yobbos … I don’t see why I should pay people to come in here and knock around the people that I represent.”
Thus, Clr. George Moores, on why South Yorkshire wouldn’t pay the bill sent them by the Metropolitan Police.
RR
Technocop: New Police Technologies
BSSRS Technology of Political Control Group with RAMPET
Free Association Books (London 1985) £3.50.
Useful, but not essential, run through some of the recent changes in police methods. It suffers, as many such overviews do, from not being long enough or detailed enough. So, for example, the 20 pages or so on police computers isn’t a patch on the Pounder/GLC publication on the same subject, and the section an policing the miners, at 13 pages, is way too short to do more than skim the surface.
I hate to carp: we need as many books like this as possible, but I do like indexes and documentation, both of which are missing here.
Should really have been called ‘An Introduction to Some New Police Technologies’. For beginners only.
RR
Journals
Covert Action Information Bulletin No 23
Disconnecting the “Bulgarian Connection.”
An entire issue devoted to the destruction of said ‘connection’. And a very impressive and thorough job is made of it, too. This is, by far, the best account of this case I have come across, pretty well predicting the farce that the Agca trial has turned out to be.
The item that struck me is the authors’ reproduction of an early interview on the subject of the assassination attempt on the Pope given by Claire Sterling, in which the ‘Bulgarian connection’ is described as ‘crazy’.
Getting CAIB isn’t easy in the UK. It used to be stocked by a couple of London bookshops – Housmans and Compendium. For details of how to order it see the display ad in this issue.
The Third Decade
is a new journal devoted to the research into the assassination of President Kennedy.
It is said occasionally that the JFK assassination research industry has long since turned into a fully-fledged academic subject with its own specialisms and sub-sets. This isn’t really quite true but has become a more plausible claim with the appearance of The Third Decade. For of all the extant magazines/newsletters on the subject, this is the first of them which does, truly, resemble an academic journal.
To describe something as ‘academic’ can be a term of abuse. I don’t mean it to be so. Third Decade is ‘academic’ in that its contributors (and its editor) adhere to the conventions of academic writing: chiefly, that claims and assertions are to be documented. That is to be applauded, and Third Decade is excellent. Subs in the US seem to be $15 but there is no information on UK subs, so, in the first instance, write and enquire to:
Jerry Rose
State University College
Fredonia
NY 14063
Intelligence Quarterly
(‘A quarterly journal devoted to the review of books and events in the intelligence field.’)
We’ve seen the first issue, April 1985. Nigel West, well known author in the UK, is the Commonwealth Editor.
IQ is 8 A4 pages (of which one and a half are devoted to advertisements), for which subscribers are expected to pay £35 per year for four issues.
Anyone reviewing Lobster on the basis of issue 1 would have not said much good about it. So we will wait until a later issue. But it has to be said that at £4 per page, IQ – if it continues at the present size – is absurdly expensive.
IQ, 310 Fulham Road, London SW10 9UG.
Second report from GLC Police Committee on
Policing the Miners
23pages.
Very good documentation of police behaviour in mining villages plus useful background pieces on National Reporting Centre and the development of the police/government strategy.
Is free: ask for Item 4 PC267
GLC Police Committee report, its submission to Parliamentary Select Committee on Special Branch. A 10 page survey of what (little) is known. The paucity of the information is striking.
Is free: ask for Item 7 PC294
Police Computers and the Metropolitan Police
Chris Pounder’s report for the GLC Police Committee, previously published as a typescript has now been type-set and bound. This is the best available source work on the police use of computers.
Is free: ask for it by title.
All of these from GLC Police Committee Support Unit, GLC, County Hall, London SE17
Public Order Research Group
Produce a bulletin – we’ve seen April’s – which appears to be free. Is reminiscent in intention of State Research but smaller. Write to PORG, 9 Poland St, London W1V 3DG
Libertarian Research and Education Trust
has now produced a number of papers on the development of Neighbourhood Watch schemes in London.
No 1 The Background to NW
No 2 Community Crime Prevention and Attitudes Towards the Community
eg “Community is neither defined in terms of actual population living in a specific area, nor even in terms of actual criminality (nor even anti-social behaviour) but on police notions of respectability…”community” in this sense is a police creation for police purposes.”
No 3 Neighbourhood Watch and Crime
No 4 Police Evaluations of NW
Plus an annotated bibliography of NW.
These all appear to be free from LRET 9 Poland Street, London W1 (as is a summary, Information Pack on NW).
Articles
“An improper use of broadcasting … The British Government and clandestine radio propaganda operations against Germany during the Munich Crisis and after”
Nicholas Pronay and Philip Taylor in Journal of Contemporary History Volume 19 (1984)
The title is pretty self-explanatory, but this is chiefly of interest here because the authors include a biographical sketch of Joseph Ball, one of the really important covert political operators of the inter-war era. Most usefully the authors cite the available information sources on Ball which we have reproduced below.
Face to face with the colonel accused of plotting to kill the Pope
Tana de Zulueta and Peter Godwin Sunday Times Magazine May 26 1985
Long, detailed account – essentially a refutation – of the ‘Bulgarian connection’, it includes the first interview with the Bulgarian Vassiliev, said to be the ‘mastermind’.
Zulueta was the author of a series of articles on Sindona some years ago in the Sunday Times. See January 6,13,20 1980.
Insuring against terror
Peter McHugh
Sunday Telegraph Magazine 9 June 1985
Profile of Control Risks, the intelligence/anti-terrorist/kidnapping specialists, and its founder, Julian Radcliffe.
A watershed in policing
Robert Reiner
Political Quarterly April 1985
Interesting analysis of post-miners, post-Scarman policing. Reiner tries to delineate a middle way between the radical critiques of the likes of the GLC’s Police Committee Support Unit and the ‘law and order’ lobby.
“The more fundamental problem is that ‘community policing’ cannot flourish in the face of economic and social policies which ruthlessly divide the community. As the history of the achievement of consensus policing in England indicates, the police strategies could be effective only in the wider context of the incorporation of the working class into the political order.”
Blowing the gaffers
Paul Demetriou
Leveller/Monochrome April 1985
Interview with unnamed MI5 officer: details tapping, break-ins, surveillance (some of them included in the Clippings Digest). This is an important companion piece to the Massiter revelations.