Media Monitoring Unit
This looks like another case of the British Right imitating its American counter-parts, in this case AIM (Accuracy in Media – analysed in great detail in Covert Action Information Bulletin No 21, available from PO Box 50272 Washington DC 20004 $3.00). The main people behind MMU appear to be Julian Lewis and the ubiquitous Lord Chalfont (The Independent November 11 1986). Lewis, one of the founders of the Coalition for Peace Through Security, is a member of something called Policy Research Associates, with Chalfont and Norris McWhirter said to be its patrons. (Daily Telegraph 19 November 1986). MMU seems to have come out of Policy Research Associates. Funds for MMU were raised by Sir Peter Tennant. His Who’s Who entry makes interesting reading.
Institute for the Study of Terrorism
Its existence was announced in the Times letters column (22 September 1986). Chair is Lord Chalfont, and Jilian Becker, author of books on the Bader-Meinhoff gang and the PLO, is its Director. (I’m not sure why but I associate Becker with the British Libertarian Right.) No information on its funding, size, or purpose is available yet, but to judge by the contributions by Chalfont and Becker at the 1984 Jonathan Institute conference on terrorism (see book reviews in this issue) its purpose will be to spread misinformation and propaganda. The name reminds me of the Institute for the Study of Conflict and this may turn out to be another in the evolving sequence of intelligence fronts which includes ISC, Forum World Features and Control Risks.
Moral Re-armament
MRA last appeared on the fringes of the miners’ strike. Now Manchester Chief Constable James Anderton is revealed as a member. (Observer 5 October 1986.) I believe, though can’t prove yet, that MRA was one of the hundreds of groups funded by the CIA after WW2 – Tom Driberg suggested this in his 1961(?) The Mystery of Moral Rearmament. Thus far the mass media in this country seem unaware that Anderton’s now notorious remarks on being in touch with God merely reflects MRA thinking. Mrs Mary Whitehouse is another MRA alumnus.
The Institute For European Defence and Strategic Studies
Subject of a useful profile in City Limits (14 August 1986). Formed in 1979, apparently as part of the response to the British peace movement. Reproduced here is its Board of Management of a couple of years ago.(1984) Feulner is Heritage Foundation, Haseler is rumoured to be straight CIA these days, and Allen was NSC advisor to Reagan until he got caught (or set up) taking a bribe. IEDSS appears to be run by Gerald Frost whose perambulations around the British Right go back to the early 1970s when he was in the Thatcher/Joseph Centre for Policy Studies. Groups like the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and IEDSS are current examples of the endless, self-reproducing groups on the Right: the same small group of people, many of them probably intelligence agents of one kind or another, play musical chairs.
Council of Management
- Dr Edwin J Feulner Jr (Chairman)
- Dr Stephen Haseler (Secretary)
- Richard V Allen
- Rt Hon Sir Peter Blaker KCMG MP
- Baroness Cox
- Dr Iain Elliot
- Professor Antonio Martino
Advisory Council
- Dr Robert Conquest
- Rt Hon Lord George-Brown
- Brian Key
- Leopold Labedz
- Melvin J Lasky
- Rt Hon Reginald Prentice JP MP
- Professor Pedro Schwartz
- Frank Shakespeare
- Dr Philip Towle
- Dr G R Urban
Director
- Gerald Frost