Demos

NB This essay has been compressed a good deal. The longer version is at < http://www.pertier.com/demos.html >

Ostensibly a left-leaning ‘think tank’, Demos’ initial Advisory Board gathered mostly those who wished to extend ‘Thatcherism’ into the ‘New Labour’ project.

The Advisory Board

• Martin JacquesHis time in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) has been portrayed as one of deception, secret funding, rigged ballots, suspected secret service penetration and lunatic purges.(1) His development of ‘Euro-communism’ and Marxism Today (MT) further undermined the basis of Marxism in the CPGB; offering a blend of middle-class academia and yuppie consumerism. With Nina Temple he formed the Democratic Left (DL), their New Times and Changes were Encounter-like anti-Socialist vehicles for Jacques’ influence with Kinnock’s ‘modernising’ circle. Temple is on the board of New Labour’s Renewal, which was housed in publicist Tim Bell’s offices. Editor Neal Lawson worked for Lowe Bell before starting lobbying company LLM.(2) Jacques was deputy editor of The Independent 1994-96 at the time Mandelson was an advisor. Jim Heartfield describes Geoff Mulgan and Jacques’ relationship as that ‘between the old Central Committee Chair and his propaganda officer’.
• Geoff MulganInitially worked at the Greater London Council, he was a 1986-87 Harkness Fellow (which reinforces Anglo-American links) at MIT, and has led Demos since 1993. Mulgan’s CV doesn’t mention that he joined the British American Project (BAP) in 1996.

  In the 1980s Mulgan was in Comedia which (with Roger Liddle’s Pieda), discreetly advised city administrations, spreading a politicised cultural ‘redevelopment’ purge of ‘old-fashioned’ left-wing people in positions of power in an effort to ‘modernise’. From 1990-92 Mulgan was special adviser to Gordon Brown when he was shadowing the Department of Trade and Industry, and became ‘the Clinton campaign’s link to Labour, which involved lots of telephone calls with the Americans – mainly advising them how not to repeat our mistakes.'(3)

  Demos aimed to transpose the mishmash of Marxism Today’s ‘fetishised’ Thatcherism into Labour policy. Mulgan was part of a 1995 ‘secret committee’ led by Mandelson ‘to examine policy changes’, which met with Blair on alternate Fridays. The group contained no MPs, preferring Roger Liddle and Derek Scott (both former SDP), Patricia Hewitt (not then an MP), and TV producer Michael Wills. Here Mandelson and Liddle urged Blair to use the SDP as a party model.(4)

  As Demos’ ‘policy entrepreneur’ Mulgan was ‘seconded’ to concoct a consensus around key issues. Typically this connected markets and the future as a matter of inevitability, as determinism; or conflated Daniel Bell’s end of ideology dictum with a British (Atlanticist) version of neo-Conservatism.

  His appointment to the PM’s Policy Unit converted Demos’ experiments into new shibboleths surrounding ‘social exclusion’ – largely to coerce NGOs dealing with the poor. He is the first person to go from political adviser to civil servant as Director of the Cabinet Office’s Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) and Forward Strategy Unit.(5)

  The PIU reviewed the UK’s energy policy at a 4 July 2001 seminar: Mulgan introduces, hands over to Chair, Kevin Tebbit (MOD). Then there are presentations by Sian Davies (the Henley Centre, which has several Demos members), Bob Tyrrell (Demos) and Ged Davis (Shell, a Demos funder) and closing comments from Mulgan. Lunch everyone? (6)

  He’s also a trustee of thePolitical Quarterly(with BAP’s Richard Holme) and Prospect magazine. There is an American Demos and an American Prospect (with the Congress for Cultural Freedom’s Daniel Bell on board).

  Mulgan is aTrustee of Crime Concern, the Prudential’s (£750,000 Home Office-funded) adjunct to their ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ initiatives. The board includes: Princess Anne, Lords Brittan, Carr, Hunt and Merlyn-Rees, Sir Geoffrey Mulcahy (Kingfisher plc), Michael Hastings (BBC), Nathaniel Sloane (Accenture), Matt Baggott (Deputy Chief Constable, West Midlands Police), Liz Wicksteed (Home Office) and Sir Stanley Kalms (Treasurer of the Conservative Party).(7)

  Demos brought over several free-market ideologues including Philip Bobbitt (LBJ’s nephew). He was Reagan’s legal counsel from 1980-81, on the Select Committee/cover-up on Iran/Contra and Director for Intelligence at the NSC 1997-98. Demos also advertised an April meeting with George Soros.

• Sir Douglas HagueInstitute for Economic Affairs (IEA) and Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) adviser to Thatcher with the 1981 Policy Unit with Cecil Parkinson, Norman Lamont, Alan Walters and Nigel Lawson which provided the basis for Conservative strategy until 1989.(8) Associate Fellow at Templeton College, where, in 1995 the Labour team were sent ‘to learn about leadership’.(9) Templeton’s faculty includes Mike Harper of the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme, formerly Director of the US Army’s Strategic Planning Group.(10)

  He wrote Taking Tax out of Politics with Mulgan, which advocated widening the tax base and lowering rates. He spoke with Arthur Seldon at the Adam Smith Institute’s (ASI) ‘Open Society’, and alongside Patricia Hewitt and Derek Draper at a ‘Next Generation Group’ (BAP) recruitment meeting in the House of Commons. Hague has long been conference rapporteur of the International Economic Association which organises Anglo-American conferences at Ditchley Park.(11)

• Anita RoddickBody Shop and Common Purpose (CP). CP is an ‘astroturf’ (phoney grass roots) organisation run by Demos’ Julia Middleton. The board has Lord Dahrendorf (Ditchley Foundation) and Laurence Martin (Royal Institute of International Affairs). CP is funded by and composed of representatives of big business including banks, multinationals, the police and the MOD.
• Martin TaylorFormerly Barclays (with Aims of Industry’s Gerald Mobbs) which helped staff Blair’s constituency office. Gordon Brown asked multimillionaire Taylor to drastically reform the benefit systems. Secretary of the Bilderberg conference,now chairman of WH Smith, he joined the IPPR and compiled their notorious Commission on PPPs which insisted there should be ‘no ideological barriers to private sector involvement in “core” public services such as clinical and intermediate health care, the management of education and local government services.'(12)

  Taylor is thought to be involved in setting up the PFI: launched in 1993, when Ministers and Treasury Officials fronted a CBI conference to ‘explore changes in government policy’, after Trafalgar House, Wimpy and big UK and US banks had secretly visited the Treasury earlier to abolish their ‘Ryrie rules’. These had prevented private money going in to public projects stating that it could only be used in place of public spending and that all private sector proposals had to be cheaper than any public sector alternative.(13)

• Gerald HolthamThe first director, with Patricia Hewitt, of the IPPR, set up to help Neil Kinnock ditch Socialism. In 1998 Mandelson eased Matthew Taylor into Holtham’s old IPPR job.(14) Manager of Norwich Union’s £106bn ‘socially responsible investment’ strategy,(15) Holtham took part in the Third Way Nexus debate. He advises: ‘accept the inevitability of free market Capitalism and ask whether and how a shrunken state should use its residual powers to ameliorate the worst effects of the system.’ Connected to the Brookings Institute and a member of ‘Citizens for Europe’ with David Marquand.
• David MarquandPrincipal of Mansfield College Oxford, Ex-SDP and Labour MP, Board of Renewal and Political Quarterly (with Mulgan), he writes for Prospect and was on the Nexus ‘debate’. (16) An IPPR Trustee, he edited ‘The Ideas That Shaped Post-War Britain’ with Arthur Seldon (below), on Citizens for Europe with Holtham. He argues ‘Why should the rich make sacrifices for the poor? If collective provision is not a means of moral improvement why should those who are not in need pay taxes to pay for it?’ Endorsed by Frank Field, this follows Charles Murray in formulating a ‘deserving poor’. He argues in Prospect that it is wrong to see Blair as the continuation of Thatcherism by other means:’The government combines economic continuity with radical political discontinuity.’

  Advisor to Green College Centre for Environmental Policy (board includes Charles Filmer of the Goldsmith Foundation) funded by the Reuter and Goldsmith Foundations. The organisation also has connections with RIIA and Ditchley.(17) In the early 60s he wrote for Encounter arguing against CND and unilateralism. On the board of the Constitution Unit with Lords Howe, Hurd, Jenkins, Alexander etc. and Graham Mather.

• Graham MatherDirector of the IEA who wants ‘to get government out of providing schools and hospitals, cut taxes and give vouchers to the poor.'(18) His resignation in 1992 came after in-fighting with Harris and Seldon following Thatcher’s removal. After claims it covertly acted as a political organisation the Charity Commissioners investigated the IEA’s status.

  At the Institute of Directors his interests were ‘the advance of markets into government itself’,(19) seeing himself as part of a ‘priesthood of believers in the market’ pushing a libertarian right ideology against the ‘threat…from socialism’. (20) The IPPR’s Patricia Hewitt got together with Mather:

  ‘There is even, between the rival think tanks, agreement on the part of the new agenda… That has reached the point where the IEA and IPPR are planning a joint seminar…’

  It is not Mr Mather said, ‘a consensus on solutions. But there is a consensus on objectives.’ Patricia Hewitt said: ‘We may even be able to agree on some of the methods.’ Their conference was on empowerment, ‘…an attempt to simulate the power of the market mechanism within the public sector…’ (21)

• Arthur SeldonVice president of the Mont Pelerin Society(MPS), whose past presidents include von Hayek and Milton Friedman. The American MPS includes Michael Novak (American Enterprise Institute). Seldon advises The Independent Institute, exposed as a business lobby in the New York Times when leaked documents showed that Microsoft secretly funded their research.(22)

  A member of The Israel Center for Social & Economic Progress (ICSEP) run by Daniel Doran (former Israeli intelligence and special consultant to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv). The US ICSEP board includes Irving Kristol, while the UK ICSEP has Stanley Kalms (Conservative Party Treasurer), Lord Harris (IEA), Lord Young (BT,
  C and W, BAe) and Gerald Ronson, the convicted fraudster.(23)

  With the IEA, he and Harris championed free market ‘principles’. Seldon has further right-wing connections with the ASI and CPS. The AEI and IEA links go back to at least 1993 when the AEI’s Michael Novak gave the IEA’s Hayek Memorial Lecture. As recently as June 2000 the IEA hosted the ‘Aims of Industry Free Enterprise Awards’, with Aims’ Nigel Mobbs.

  Seldon is on the Advisory Council of the Libertarian Alliance, one of whose leaders described Demos as:

  ‘…a cavalry of Trojan horses within the citadel of leftism. The intellectual agenda is served up in a left wing manner, laced with left wing clichés and verbal gestures, but underneath all the agenda is very nearly identical to that of the Thatcherites.'(24 )

  He co-authored Socialism Explained with Brian Crozier for Thatcher as part of their anti-left project. He also edited the Goldsmith-funded Radical Society’s Journal, founded by Stephen Haselerand Neville Sandelson who both took part in attacks against the Labour Party. (25)

  Haseler worked for the ‘left-face’ of the US National Strategy Information Centre (NSIC)one of the funders of Brian Crozier’s Forum World Features, a CIA front. He co-authored Eurocommunism with the NSIC’s Roy Godson, who ‘helped Oliver North channel contributions from private donors to the contras by using the Heritage Foundation to launder the funds’.(26) Haseler has written for Demos.

• Bob Tyrrell‘Futurologist’ former Chairman of the Henley Centre: a ‘marketing consultancy’ owned by WPP Group which also owns the notorious American PR company Hill & Knowlton. Several Demos members have Henley connections and it was used (with Lord Stevenson’s SRU) to sound out New Labour concepts to the City and vice versa. Tyrrell chaired a CPS/Conservative ‘Futures’ committee advising William Hague at an Eastbourne gathering (with Daniel Finkelstien of the Social Market Foundation) and was employed by Mulgan’s PIU in 2001. At the time of Demos’ launch he was advocating the US Communitarian movement, (27) ‘…we are what we own’.(28 ) Has written for Demos with the FPC’sYasmin Brown. Chairman of Sociovision, a Paris-based consultancy studying ‘global socio-cultural change’.
• Lord StevensonMultimillionaire consultant, banking and media magnate, his secretive SRU consultancy advised the BBC governors and Gordon Brown on Labour’s industrial policy when Demos was launched. (29) SRU was taken over by Brunswick PR (whose MD, Alan Parker, is a Demos trustee).

  Chairman of recruitment company Manpower (which runs the New Deal’s ‘Working Links’), directors include Rozanne Ridgwaya career diplomat and President of the Atlantic Council, director of Boeing, the Brookings Institution and George Marshall Foundation. Recruitment is a key aspect to Stevenson’s work. Chairman of Pearson he controls the Financial Times and the Economist, into which he introduced the Atlantic Council of the US’s director Marjorie Scardino as chief executive. He first met Mulgan when he was giving a talk to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

  ‘They’re very high-powered, I’m very busy, and I wanted some help. Somebody pointed me in Geoff’s direction – he was still working for Gordon Brown then, as his researcher – and he was wholly wonderful, incredibly widely read… and he came up with new thoughts, interesting angles.'(30)

  At age 26 Heath sent him to negotiate with top Japanese bankers and afterwards he ‘was used by the British government for all direct investment’.(31) He joined the ‘Re-branding Britain’ ‘Task Force’ organised by Mulgan and Mark Leonard and ran the British Council’s Palestine-based psy-op ‘Connecting Futures’ which influenced Ramallah’s children so that (post 9/11) ‘63% continue to place the UK high on their list of favourite nations…. while 18% actually look at us more favourably.’ (32)

  Having funded the ‘Stevenson Commission’, examining the role of IT in schools, he was appointed as the PM’s adviser on IT and education. Then SRU got together an anti-BBC alliance to attack their free digital plans. The put-up pressure group ‘The Digital Learning Alliance’ brought together financially interested companies, including Stevenson’s Pearson Education.

  He was supposedly ‘recruited’ by Blair in 1996, ‘after an approach by Mandelson……who Stevenson met years ago when both were involved in youth movements.'(33) Stevenson was briefly a Labour Party member and treasurer of the Peckham Young Socialists.(34) He describes himself as a liberal; for others he is ‘openly arrogant and elitist’.(35) Mandelson is ‘a close friend, but it has nothing to do with politics.’ He recruited Mandelson for SRU in 1990 before he was an MP. (36) Blair made Stevenson responsible for vetting and choosing all ‘reformed’ members of the House of Lords.

  He joined English Partnerships who bought the Dome site and worked closely with Mandelson in the lobbying frenzy: Manpower pledged £12m.

  He became a gateway for big business into Labour, saying that Blair:

  ‘…always wanted to make Labour into an alternative party of business. There were some big businessmen who were always pro-Labour: Lord Hollick and Chris Haskins for instance. Blair wanted to meet the others, so I organised evenings where he could meet friends of mine. People running FTSE companies… Blair has involved businessmen to a huge extent… In fact he has almost delegated power to them, I think there is a legitimate question about the extent to which that is actually right.’ (37)

  This Sunday Time’s report adds that Stevenson ‘helped to fill the posts’ and suggests that the ‘Rebranding Britain’ escapade was a distraction from the influx of big business onto government ‘Taskforces’. Stevenson attended the 1995 Bilderberg meeting and moves between the areas of corporate power broking and social policy think tanks that exploit the ambiguous terrain between state and private sector.

• Stuart HallA close associate of Jacques in the MT project, promoting post-modernism. He developed cultural studies to the point where one could imagine that ‘culture’ takes place in an economic vacuum. The MT crowd were savaged by the left for implicitly celebrating the Thatcher project and for positing as inevitable both the empirical shifts it identified and the neo-liberal response. Hall is a leading ineffectual critic, suggesting that ‘Mrs Thatcher had a Project. Blair’s historic project is adjusting us to it.’
• Ian HargreavesFormerly Deputy Editor of Stevenson’s Financial Times and the Independent (with Martin Jacques). Oversees UnLtd, Ashoka, CAN and other Mezzanine ‘charities’ (below). Attended the Ditchley Foundation on 7 November 1998, writes for Prospect and is involved in the IPPR. Recently appointed (post 9/11) to British Airports Authority. A member of the Centre for European Reform (CER), a lobby group associated with the American Enterprise Initiative and Atlantic Council.

  CER’s board includes Carl Bildt (International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) which has Bruce Jackson of the Project for the New American Century, Antonio Borges (Atlantic Council), Nick Butler (BP), Lord Dahrendorf (St. Antony’s College and Ditchley with ties to MI6 and CCF), Lord Hannay (Ambassador to UN and EU), Lord Haskins (Northern Foods, Demos), Catherine Kelleher (US Naval War College), John Monks (TUC), Dame Pauline Neville-Jones (Career Diplomat, QinetiQ, which, with the Carlyle Group runs the UK’s secret military laboratories; former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Political Director FCO, IISS, Harkness Fellow, Governor Ditchley Foundation and BBC), Adair Turner (Forward Strategy Unit) (38) and Baroness Smith, wife of the late Labour leader, at the time a director of the Hakluyt Foundation, the intelligence firm connected to MI6, who spied on environmental groups for oil companies including BP. Smith is an advisor for BP Scotland. Hargreaves is on the board of Greenpeace and Hakluyt spied on Greenpeace. BP are well represented on CER’s board. Shell fund Demos. BP’s Andrew Mackenzie is Demos’ Treasurer. Hakluyt also spied on Demos’ Anita Roddick’s Body Shop.(39)

  The CER work with political lobbyists APCO (set up by cigarette giant Philip Morris) whose clients include Shell, Exxon, Boeing, Monsanto (fabricating ‘grass roots activism’) and WorldCom (‘European crisis work’).(40)

  Mandelson speaks frequently at CER meetings, they are funded by WPP, The Economist, Pearson, German Marshall Fund and the director’s banks and arms companies.(41)

  CER’s Charles Grant, former Defence Editor of The Economist, writes on UK/US intelligence and works closely with the FCO, collaborating with Roger Liddle and Mark Leonard. Grant was on the secret list of approved Labour Candidates leaked to The Independent.(42) He joins Stevenson on the British Council (he wrote Economist articles on the Blue Arrow affair). He writes with Prospect‘s David Goodhart and attended a 2 November 2002 ‘informal group of businessmen and politicians’ initiated by Lord Weidenfeld which included Mandelson, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and Micheal McLay, an early member of BAP, also in Hakluyt, who worked at LWT under John Birt and Mandelson. Sir Anthony Hammond, who conducted the Hinduja inquiry (and let Mandelson off the hook) is legal adviser to Hakluyt.(43)

  The Atlantic Council was formed when the British Atlantic Committee and Peace Through NATO (PTN)joined forces. PTN was the group used by Micheal Heseltine to undermine CND. The Hukluytand Demos connections with the CER (which is a partner with the Atlantic Council of the AEI) are a slight indication that there are continuities with anti-Left operations dating back to Heseltine and Crozier’s days.

  CER’s office is 29 Tufton Street, Westminster, which they share with the Tory Reform Group which contains Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke, Lord Hurd, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and a host of other top Conservatives. The office is also used by the Action Centre for Europe which has Lords Carrington, Howe, Brittan, Kenneth Clarke, Stephen Dorrell and so on. The Conservative Group for Europe (much the same line-up) are also tucked in there. At number 11 is the European Movement and down the road is the Social Market Foundation.

• Sue RichardsProfessor of Public Management, Birmingham University, formerly Specialist Adviser to the Cabinet Office, Treasury, Civil Service and the Modernising Government Board. Founded management consultancy ‘Office for Public Management’. Chaired the 1998 Nexus ‘debate’ and has joined Mulgan at various conferences.
• John AshworthDirector of the LSE, described as ‘Thatcher’s favourite academic’, Central Policy Review staff (1976-81), formerly Vice Chancellor, University of London (1991-92), Director Economic and Social Reseach Council, Governor of the Ditchley Foundation and the American International University in London .
• Yve NewboldA corporate lawyer, formerly company secretary of Hanson and Legal Counsel for Disney. Heads the Ethical Trading Initiative keeping an eye on Oxfam and War on Want, formerly of recruitment firm Heidrick & Struggles (hired by the CIA to find a CEO for their research division), BT, Coutts & Co, London Business School and ‘Sweet Charity’ withStella Rimington.(44 )
• Chris HamBirmingham University, professor of health policy involved in NHS reform. He served as an adviser to the World Bank and WHO. Criticised by the British Medical Journal for denying that government policies ‘are guided by a……. hidden agenda which, through a series of incremental steps, will result in more private involvement in the financing and delivery of health services.’ Spoke at IPPR conference on the benefits of privatisation. (45)

The Office

Demos’ policy entrepreneurs operate from a Mezzanine office through ‘charities’ engaging in ‘social entrepreneurialism’. These exchange personnel, with funding mostly pirated from the Lottery and put under the control of New Labour ‘place men’ working unaccountably. ‘Individual entrepreneurialism’ backed by big business becomes ‘venture philanthropy’ not ‘lobbying’. Those ‘charities’ include the following.

• The Community Action Network (CAN)Another astroturf organisation, CAN’s ‘Strategic Adviser’ was the late Geoffrey Tucker, a notorious lobbyist for British Gas (BG), McDonald’s (trying to squeeze them into school dinners) and British Nuclear Fuels. He ‘brokered the marriage’ between De La Rue and GTech to create Camelot and CAN was part of his operation: GTech gave them £130,000. Tucker advised Thatcher on PR and had connections with the IRD. (46)

  CAN’s other funder is BG. This chimes in with Greg Palast’s work on lobbying in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He has Derek Draper and Roger Liddle boasting that they can put a BG chairman on a government task force and that they were hired to do so. Palast also writes about scandal-ridden GTech’s connections with Draper and Mandelson as GTech lobbied to sell Lottery tickets.(47)

  CAN also has BG’s John Wybrew, a member with David Marquand of the Regional Policy Forum. Advisor to Thatcher’s Policy Unit on energy policies, he is now on the Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies and Chair of the newly formed Gas Industry Emergency Committee in partnership with the Government.(48)

  BG’s Richard Giordano is a member of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and worked with Shearman & Sterling which has close ties with the CIA, Stella Rimington is also on the board of BG’s Transco. Demos also receives core funding from BG, NatWest, Shell, Northern Foods and Tesco.(49)

  Quietly slipped into the New Deal Task Force and DTI Competitiveness Council is CAN’s Amelia Fawcett (who has US/UK citizenship). She worked for the US law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, the Dulles brothers’ firm.(50) Fawcett stated : ‘Morgan Stanley asked me to set up a government coverage function to monitor UK and EU governmental initiatives, support the privatisation effort and look for business opportunities with government.'(51)

  The lobbying is pretty obvious. For example:

  ‘Ten young social entrepreneurs, sponsored by the Coca-Cola Youth Foundation, were recently taken by CAN to 10 Downing Street. This is part of a programme of activities which CAN is implementing to inspire and encourage them to develop their social entrepreneurial skills further. They met Geoff Mulgan of the Policy Unit and discussed ideas and issues that concern them. Geoff has given the group and all CAN members e-mail access via CAN HQ into the Policy Unit so the dialogue with government can continue.'(52)

  Christopher Banks, of Coca-Cola Great Britain is on the board of CAN which is run by Demos’ Ian Hargreaves’ wife Adele Blakebrough and Demos’ Tom Bentley. Their vetting work is done by Andrew Mawson and Peter Thomson, Blair’s religion ‘guru’ at Oxford, who wrote the foreword for Corporate Christ which:

  ‘…..provides a new look and a new perspective on the life of Christ: how he built awareness of his message; the unique PR techniques he adopted; the 7 sales principles used to win converts; the management techniques used to turn 12 ordinary men into a crack team of disciples; how he sowed the seed for the creation of the most powerful and important movement the world has known…’ (53)

  CAN is ‘a network created by social entrepreneurs for social entrepreneurs’. They say they ‘attack deprivation in the UK’ yet they want to turn themselves into a bank. Their ethos has no real connection with the poor: they seek to ‘increase the number of social entrepreneurs, raise their profile and to help improve the quality of their work.’

  Part funded by a Home Office grant they also have Alun Michael MP, Deputy Home Secretary 1997-98 (during the Tucker, GTech and BG deal), now Minister of State at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He was parachuted into the National Assembly for Wales but the fix didn’t hold. CAN’s other New Labour connections include Baroness Ashton, Under Secretary of State for School Standards and Early Years, Department for Education and Skills. New to the Government and the Lords, she was an administrative officer for CND in 1977. (54)

  CAN was set up by Helen Taylor Thompson whoserved in SOE during WWII, and is responsible for developing international links for CAN with the Ashoka organisation. (55)

• AshokaAmerican ‘social entrepreneurs’ founded by McKinsey & Co’s Bill Drayton of the US Environmental Protection Agency. He successfully ‘intrapreneured’ the introduction of emissions trading and served briefly in the White House.Ashoka Fellows operate through partnerships with professionals from McKinsey and Hill & Knowlton. It places selected volunteers around the world and has ties to the Carnegie Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation.(56)

  It operates PR for big organisations (power companies in Indonesia etc.) to adjust the public to their needs and procedures through ‘propaganda philanthropy’. It also helps control public forums, organises ‘independent’ groups as pro-corporate spokespeople and tries to divide critics. In Turkey it works with George Soros’ Open Society Institute.(57)

• Foreign Policy Centre (FPC)This has direct connections to the intelligence services through former MI6 officer Baroness Meta Ramsay. With the IPPR the FPC was named as offering access for cash.(58) Rowena Young (FPC and School for Social Entrepreneurs) is married to Geoff Mulgan and was Director of ‘Kaleidoscope’, a project in which CAN’s Blakebrough and Mawson worked on their first ventures.
• Carnegie Youth TrustThe board includes Millie Banerjee, NHS Modernisation action team member, Commissioner for Judicial Appointments, OFCOM (with Ian Hargreaves), Cabinet Office Management Board, Strategic Rail Authority, BT, Prisons board, Centrica and ICONET, a high tech communications company which works with Boeing.

  It sounds innocent, butthe first specialists in international studies were sponsored by the OSS/CIA, with funding laundered by the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations to rubber-stamp the Cold War. The first OSS Secret intelligence chief in London, Whitney Shepardson, was director of the Carnegie Corporation’s British Fund and president of the CIA-funded Free Europe Committee.

  The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was once led by John Dulles and has ties to the CFR and US elite. Its Massachusetts Avenue address is shared by BAP, the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, CFR, Brookings Institute, British Embassy etc.(59)

• UnLtdBrings together: Ashoka, CAN, the Scarman Trust, SSE, Senscot, the Scottish network for social entrepreneurs and Comic Relief. It was given a £100m endowment to fund pet projects and aid in the privatising of public services.(60)

  Their board includes:Jeremy Oppenheim: Ashoka, McKinsey, World Bank. Christopher Smallwood: Constitution Unit, Economic Adviser to the Treasury 1976-81, formerly BP, TSB, Economics Editor Sunday Times, formerly Brunswick Group now Barclays and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Kate Kirkland: Oxfam, SSE and Family Welfare Association. Andrew Mawson:CAN.

  UnLtd wanted to turn itself into a bank (also the ambition of CAN) and lend the money rather than give it away (61) Now run by John Rafferty, once ‘Tony Blair’s most trusted ally in Scotland’, who was briefly a spin doctor to the late Donald Dewar. Rafferty ran Labour’s campaign in Scotland with no reference to the Scottish party and he was tipped to be Dewar’s chief of staff.(62 ) After being ‘controversially dismissed’, he was ‘pulled in’ from TimeBank (also in the Mezzanine) as UnLtd’s chief executive. Rafferty was head of the National Lottery Charities Board in Scotland (UnLtd’s money comes from the Lottery via the Millennium Commission).(63)

• The Policy NetworkMandelson’s ‘think tank’ which has links to US ‘third-way’ organisations. Trustees include Lord Levy, Philip Gould, Anthony Giddens and Andrew Adonis (a senior figure in the Downing Street policy unit). The Network’s journal is edited by Andrew Hood, adviser to Geoff Hoon. Sidney Blumenthal, former special adviser to Bill Clinton, is on the board.
• CivitasSupposedly independent of the IEA, but the advisory board of IEA stalwarts Sir Peter Walters, Lord Harris of High Cross (Bruges group with Norris McWhirter etc.), Patrick Barbour and Kenneth Minogue contradicts this. Director (ex-Labour councillor) David Green has been IEA since 1984. It focuses on race, health and welfare reform promoting Charles Murray and the ‘underclass’.
• ERAAlthough pretending to be a charity it’s more of an expensive consultancy working with Demos to gain access to Lottery and European Social Fund money. The board includes: Baroness Ashton, Anthony Giddens, Ian Hargreaves, Will Hutton, Lord Stevenson and Linda Tarr-Whelan, a US Ambassador who runs the US Demos (funded by the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation.(64)

Notes

1 Francis Beckett, The Enemy Within, London: Merlin, 1995, especially chapter 12.

2 Private Eye 889

3 Independent On Sunday 24 January 1993

4 Guardian 15 July 1995

5 < http://www.shef.ac.uk/~perc/Polpaps/MULGAN.pdf >

6 < http://www.strategy.gov.uk/2001/futures/attachments/agenda/ Agenda%20Strategic%20Futures.pdf >

7 < http://www.crimeconcern.org.uk/pages/newstext.asp?newsID=4.1.79 >

8 < http://library-2.lse.ac.uk/archives/handlists/CentreforPS/m.html >

9 Private Eye 884

10 < http://www.templeton.ox.ac.uk/leadership/docs/leadfaculty.pdf >

11 < http://www.adamsmith.org/policy/bulletin/b18.htm >

12 < http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/ippr-j06.shtml >

13 Evening Standard 5 April 1993

14 The Guardian 1 June 2001

15 Norwich Union funded Taylor’s IPPR report.

16 In 1998 at the direction of the Government, an ‘on-line think tank’ called Nexus initiated (within ‘on-side’ academic circles) a series of debates on the Third Way, involving Anthony Giddens; David Marquand, Julian Le Grand, Professor of Social Policy at the LSE; and the Directors of the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Fabian Society. The whole sad little gang: but no academic backing was given to the practical meaning or legitimacy of the Third Way. Nexus was held up as providing a ‘tested model of how intellectuals, academics, social entrepreneurs and policy experts would assist the development of the public policy of centre-left governments.’ It soon deteriorated to extinction. One more confirmation of the vacuum in Third Way thinking, and the inability of its proponents to apply its ideas to concrete social realities. For more details see < http://www.variant.ndtilda. co.uk/13texts/William_Clark.html >

17 < http://www.green.ox.ac.uk/cepu-info.htm >

18 The Guardian 4 May 1999

19 Financial Times 16 March 1992

20 The Independent 12 December 1990

21 The Financial Times 26 March 1991

22 < http://www.urielw.com/deception2.htm >

23 < http://www.icsep.org.il/about/organization.shtml#uk-

friends >

24 < http://www.btinternet.com/~old.whig/freelife/fl23etzi.htm >

25 < http://library-2.lse.ac.uk/archives/handlists/Sandelson/m.html >

26 < http://www.namebase.org/books77.html >

27 Financial Times 17 November 1993

28 The Times 22 January 1995

29 Independent on Sunday 5 September 1993

30 Independent on Sunday 24 January 1993

31 < http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/intview/0128dy28.htm >

32 < http://www.britishcouncil.org/connectingfutures/ reports /pakistan.pdf >
< http://www.ej.britishcouncil.org/newsflash.htm#Lord >

33 Sunday Times 20 October 1996. Their connections date from the British Youth Council.

34 Independent on Sunday 5 September 1993

35 Sunday Times 20 October 1996

36 Sunday Business 2 May 1999

37 Sunday Times 21 June 1998

38 < http://www.iiss.org/biogs.php?staffID=93 >
< http://www.expandnato.org/brucejackson.html >

< http://www.labournet.net/ukunion/0207/pcs2.html >

39 < http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0617-01.htm > < http://www.burkes-scotland.com/sites/Contents/book/scotland/FHP/other/fhp-SMITH-AZ-737.asp?filename=SMITH-AZ-737.asp >

40 < http://www.apcouk.com/mac/news_content.asp?ID=37 >

41 < www.cer.org.uk/pdf/annual_report_2002.pdf >

42 < http://www.candidlist.demon.co.uk/oldlist/listlab/grantch.htm > < http://www.cer.org.uk/about/grant.html >

43 < http://www.iwm.at/publ-nl/nl-75.pdf > < http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story= 3D118828 >

44 < http://www.bizforward.com/wdc/issues/1999-12/firstforward/page02.shtml >

45 < http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/309/6956/739 > < http://www.ippr.org/research/index.php?current=21=99 >

46 Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War 1948-1977 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998) pp. 148-9.

47 The Observer 21 January 2001

48 < http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/news_events/ member_news/BEA_WS_0402.asp >

49 < http://www.shearman.com/lawyers/of_counsel/carswell.html >

< http://prop1.org/park/pave/rev4.htm >

50 < http://www.twf.org/News/Y2001/0215-CIAfunds.htm >

51 < http://www.justpeople.com/contentnew/People/Interviews/ Financial/AmeliaFawcett.asp >

52 < http://www.can-online.org.uk/activity/1999-05.htm#num10 >

53 < http://www.mb2000.com/Corpchri.htm >

54 < http://www.ghl-intelligence.com/parliament/des.htm >

55 < http://www.can-online.org.uk/aboutus/biogcvs/bioght.htm > < http://www.huron.ac.uk/internships/AmbassadorEve2002.html >

56 < http://www.youthventure.org/home.asp >

57 < http://cornerhouse.icaap.org/briefings/7.html >

58 The Observer 30 June 2002

59 < http://www.ceip.org/files/publications/ProliferationBrief324.asp > < http://www.namebase.org/books01.html >

60 < http://www.enterprising-communities.org.uk/ members.shtml #biog1 >

61 < http://www.newstartmag.co.uk/unltd.html >

62 < http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/20-5-1999-23-41-15.html >

63 < http://www.newstartmag.co.uk/unltd.html >

64 < http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0306-10.htm >