Maurice Tugwell/Centre For Conflict Studies
More on the good Mr Tugwell and the Centre for Conflict Studies mentioned in issue 16. An article in the Canadian magazine New Maritimes (June 1986) describes CCS as
‘on the edge of the campus of the University of New Brunswick … the Centre staff is not, however University faculty, and (it) does not accept students for study in courses … it is more a private company operating as an idiosyncratic kind of university protectorate.’
New Maritimes says CCS was set up by Tugwell and David Charters in 1980 since when they have received ‘research contracts’ from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Department of National Defence, the Canadian Police College, the US Department of Defence and NATO. The 1984 CCS Annual Report claimed it had made more than 100 ‘media contributions’ each year since its inception.
All of which fits; diversified funding for ‘reports’ and ‘independent expertise’ which is used by the media. Pretty much the same thing is happening here with the Institute for the Study of Terrorism. Psy ops in the 1980s, in short, (like psy ops in the 1970s only with better cover).
In October this year Tugwell had a book out in Canada, Peace With Freedom in which he discusses (according to the blurb)
- how and why peace with freedom is threatened
- the real meaning of perestroika, glasnost, and the ‘new thinking’ in terms of the Soviet propaganda machine
- the role of the mainstream peace movements and the Churches in Canada
- the crucial role of deterrence in maintaining peace with freedom
- the one-sided and often emotional “peace education” being taught in Canadian schools.
This has a familiar ring to it, as does the Canadian Coalition for Peace through Strength which Tugwell addressed on ‘Researching a Sacred Cow – the Canadian Peace Movement.’ In June last year Tugwell was speaking with our very own Baroness Cox (she of Campaign for a Free Britain) in Toronto. Tugwell spoke on the ‘connections between the “peace” movement, defence and national security and the educational system in Canada’. (Phoenix (Toronto) April 1987)
One of the things Tugwell presumably won’t discuss in his book is his support for apartheid expressed by his directorship in the Canada-South Africa Society. (NOW (Canada) May 14 1987)
CCS, meanwhile, the Tugwell/ Charters project now run by Charters, has a Washington office. The publishers Facts on File have announced a forthcoming book, Combating the Terrorists, edited by H. H. Tucker and ‘Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Conflict, London; and the Centre for Conflict Studies, Washington.’ (Presumably sponsored means paid for by.) It includes a paper by ex ISC Peter Janke, now Director of Research for the MI6 operation, Control Risks. Editor Tucker is a former Deputy Head of IRD. No team like the old team. (Thanks to H. G. in Canada for the clippings,)
Tugwell is a contributor to Contemporary Research on Terrorism edited by Paul Wilkinson and Alasdair M. Stewart (Aberdeen University Press, 1987), some of the papers from a big conference on terrorism held in Aberdeen a couple of years ago. This is a thoroughly dishonest piece of work in which only one essay in the 550 or so pages even hints at the uncomfortable fact that most of the world’s terrorism is a part of American foreign policy. Wilkinson is important enough to have found himself in the diary of one Oliver North in 1984. How long can Independent Television News go on paying this man to be their ‘consultant’ on terrorism?