Researching the European State: a critical guide
Edited by Tony Bunyan
Statewatch
PO Box 1516, London N16 0EW
£7.00
With sixty A4 pages plus a six page index, this is, as the title suggests, an annotated bibliography. The flyer which came with it accurately described it thus:
‘This is the first bibliography on the European state, its working methods and policies, and its effect on the civil liberties of the citizen. It covers all the areas under the “third pillar” of the European Union covering policing, Europol, immigration and asylum, the Schengen agreements, the European courts, legal cooperation, internal security agencies, prisons, the military, Northern Ireland, racism and fascism, plus listings of the debates and resolutions of the European Parliament. With 24 contributors from 12 European countries the Guide gives special emphasis to alternative sources [“grey literature”] drawing on the work of voluntary and community groups.’
Hard to know what more to say about this beyond that it’s an invaluable source of information. Tony Bunyan’s been doing this work for over twenty years, a long time to be pissing into the wind.
In Defence of The Party: The Secret State, the Conservative Party and dirty tricks
Colin Challen and Mike Hughes
£3.95 from Medium Publishing, 1 Main Street, East Ardsley, Wakefield WF3 2AE
This is a sixty-five page, A5 pamphlet – 53 pages of text, plus index and appendix – containing five essays by occasional Lobster contributors Challen and Hughes. The Challen essays bring together a good deal of what is known about the post-war Tory Party and its links with the secret state – in this case, almost exclusively MI5 – and various disinformation and smear campaigns against Labour Party politicians and union leaders. Some of this will be familiar to anyone who has read Smear!, say, but there is quite a bit of information on break-ins and smears in the last decade which I haven’t seen pulled together before.
The Hughes essays are more disparate. One contains extracts from his account of the Economic League and an essay of his on Admiral ‘Blinker’ Hall; the second is an account of some of the activities of David Hart, chiefly his role in British Briefing; and the third a short note on the financing of the Tory Party. As the flyer says, ‘an introductory history of one of the least palatable aspects of Conservatism’ – and rather a good one.
Oliver’s Work
Jim Arnison
£4.50 from the author at 7 Wentworth Avenue, Salford M6 8BG
I saw this advertised in Tribune as ‘A glimpse at the role of spies and agents inside the progressive movement from the Chartists to the destruction of the CPGB’. It sounded interesting, and though it has been nicely produced – perfect (glue) bound – these 71 pages, alas, just aren’t of much interest to those old fuddy-duddy modernists like me who want facts, and the source of said facts. There are no sources and no index, relatively few facts, and lots of those are wrong.
- It isn’t true that the ‘Anglo-German Friendship Society [was] centred round Lady Astor and the Cliveden Set’ (p. 14).
- The Committee for Transatlantic Understanding was actually the Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding (p. 28); and its chair, Lane Kirkland, was certainly pro-NATO, but where is the evidence he was a ‘former CIA agent’?
- The Economic League did not come after Moral Re-armament (p. 28).
- Common Cause did not come after IRIS (p. 29).
Other unsourced assertions include the funding for the Movement for True Industrial Democracy (Truemid) coming from the Engineering Employers (p. 29), which is plausible but unsupported by the extant evidence I know of; and Harry Newton being recruited by MI5 in 1950 while a member of the CPGB (p. 48). Both would be interesting – if true.
I would guess the author wrote this straight from his memory. Which is a pity. The only section that struck me comes towards the end when the author rails against the importing of women’s, gay, peace and race issues into the CPGB and wider Labour Movement. ‘There was nothing Marxist about any of this. These issues were used quite deliberately to undermine the Communist Party and the Labour Movement in general.’ (emphasis added) This is an interesting claim which I have heard before; but, like the rest of the book, it is wholly unsubstantiated. And do we really believe that, say, MI5 are that sophisticated?
Open Secrets
is the newsletter of the Coalition on Political Assassinations. Vol. 1 number 6, for example, is 40 pages of new material on the assassination of the sixties and related events. It contains pieces on William Pepper’s excellent book Orders to Kill (reviewed above); Garrison; military intelligence in Dallas; Cuban intelligence and JFK – the Cubans’ viewpoint; a report on the Coalition’s annual conference; updates on material generated by FOIA requests and by the Assassination Archives Review Board; press reviews, videos etc etc.
If you want to keep up to date with the massive explosion of information on the assassinations now underway in the USA, this is the place to try. This is the best magazine on the assassinations I have yet seen.
Open Secrets is sent to members of the Coalition, annual membership is $35, and outside the USA send ‘postal money orders or checks in U.S. dollars drawn on American branches of foreign banks’.
Open Secrets, Coalition on Political Assassinations Newsletter, PO Box 772, Washington DC 20044, USA. (tel. US code plus 202 785 5299)
The Cold War International History Project
has been mentioned before in these columns. It produces a Bulletin which is free on request. Issue 6/7, a double issue, is now out. It consists of 292 A4 pages of material on the Cold War in Asia, most of it from former Soviet bloc government archives, including: Stalin’s conversations with Chinese leaders; new evidence on the Korean War; new evidence on Sino-Soviet and Sino-American relations, the Vietnam War, the war in Cambodia, the uprising in Hungary etc, etc, etc
These are not fields I know much about, but opening it at random while writing this note, on p. 275 there is evidence from a Chinese Communist Party intelligence officer from the pre WW2 era whose 1988 memoir claims (a) that the American author, Agnes Smedley, was a Comintern agent, and (b) that Owen Lattimore of the Institute of Pacific Relations was not..
The scale of this project is absolutely mind-boggling and these bulletins are free on request from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1000 Jefferson Drive SW, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
E-mail –
Unclassified
is the journal of the Association of National Security Alumni, mentioned before in these columns, most recently by Alex Cox in his ‘Letter from America’ in the last Lobster. Cox referred there to the many typos in a then recent issue. The succeeding issue, no. 33, explains this. Losing funding, the magazine lost the services of the person who did the lay-out and the editor produced said issue having learned desk-topping etc from scratch, in a hurry. I have now received issues 33-37 and repeat what Cox said: this is a valuable source of information on US intelligence in particular, and the post-war US empire in general, with contributors such as John Kelly, former editor of Counter Spy, Ralph McGehee, Lester Coleman and David McMichael. With Covert Action Quarterly now with a much wider agenda than covert action, (1) Unclassified is now one of the primary sources of information and critical comment on current and recent US intelligence operations.
Association of National Security Alumni, 921 Pleasant Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50309, USA. Four issues of Unclassified are $20 in USA, outside USA $30.
Flatland
– the magazine, not the catalogue – continues to expand and improve. Issue 12 is mostly devoted to Wilhelm Reich, with pieces on Reich’s later experiments and contributions from American actor Orson Bean – author, once upon a time, of the book The Orgone and Me – and Harvey Matusow, who was in the cell next to Reich when he died in prison. With his interest in pollution, paranoia and UFO’s, not to mention his persecution by the FDA, Reich may be just about to come into his own. (If only…)
Issue 13 is back to the usual fascinating, eclectic mixture including essays on Linbergh Snr. and Lenin, the Militias, Reich in Tucson, and Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press on using the Freedom of Information Act. It also includes a piece by the UK’s Stewart Home on the Neoist Alliance nonsense. Why does Home interest some Americans?
Subs in the US are $16 for four issues (two per year) and in the absence of information on overseas subscriptions, best to either ring (US code) plus 707 964 8326 or E-mail, , for further information.
In the UK it is being distributed by AK press, which should mean it will be in what’s left of Britain’s radical/alternative bookshop network.
Mae Brussel
The late Mae Brussel‘s collection of material – thousands of books and 40 file cabinets of clippings etc – is now once again available to researchers. It is being managed by Virginia McCullough at PO Box 589, Sunol, CA 94586; tel. US code plus 510-862-2362; fax 510-862-0145
Squall
Two new (to me) magazines worth noting. Squall is now up to issue 14, which was 70 not quite A3-sized pages. Squall is, roughly, the journal of the loose alliance of green/radical/eco groups now operating in the UK – lots of news and features on free festivals, anti-roads protests, squatting and the conflicts they engender with the law. But issue 14 also includes former New Statesman editor Steve Platt on the machinations which led to his ouster. Very nicely and professionally produced, with lots of pictures, Squall reminds me a bit of International Times/ Split in its final incarnation.
PO Box 8959, London N19 5HW; e-mail . Four issues for £10.
Peace and Society
is the magazine of Trade Union CND. It is up to issue 5, and appears when its publishers have the money to produce one. Issue 5 contains articles on Saudia Arabia arms and dissent, Shell in Nigeria, the Kurds, trade unions in Pakistan, the Western Sahara, Vanunu etc. Among the authors of these pieces are Anita Roddick and George Galloway MP. I suppose it represents the internationalism of the pre-Blair Labour party, and though its subject matter didn’t ring any bells for me, its appearance is welcome. £12 for 12 issues, cheques made payable to TUCND, to Peace and Society, 65 Bishops Rd., Newcastle on Tyne, NE15 6RY
Anyone interested in Armen Victorian’s piece in Lobster 31 on remote viewing and the US intelligence community should read Edwin May’s ‘The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defence’s Star Gate Program: a Commentary’ in the Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 60, March 1996, pp. 3-23. May was part of the program and this is about as complete a destruction of a piece of pseudo-academic work as I have ever read. Absolutely devastating.
Mark Curtis, an extract from whose important study of British foreign policy, The Ambiguities of Power, was in Lobster 30, has a 3-page essay on Britain’s role in the US-led genocide in Indonesia in 1965, in The Ecologist September/October 1996.
Notes
- The Fall 1996 issue contains essays on AIDS, toxic pollution, racism in America, the politics of Burma (by John Pilger), and only one essay, on the uses of ‘counter-terrorism’ by Christopher Simpson, which has much to do with ‘covert action’. It’s still a very good magazine, it’s just not the one it used to be. CAQ, 1500 Massachusetts Avenue, NW #732, Washington, DC 20005, USA