96 results found.
... to exaggerate, will be very imprecise at best. Initially, post-war, the major focus of the state's anti-communists seems to have been on the Soviet front groups- the friendship societies etc. Eric Shaw mentions that in 1953 the Labour Party's Proscription List suddenly expanded with information about these groups assumed to come from 'the Foreign Office [i.e. IRD] and Special Branch' run through the International Department of the Party.(163) This focus on the CPGB front groups seems to be attributable to two things. If Bower's recent biography of MI5 head Dick White is accurate, one is the inadequacies of MI5 in the post-war years.(164) The second is the the ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 19 - 01 Jun 1996 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/caucus/lobcc-09.htm
... Liberties, Smythe described how, when he became Director of Mind in 1973, an anonymous document was circulated to some of the charity's most eminent supporters alleging that Smythe was some kind of communist agent. I wrote to Mr Smythe who kindly supplied me with part of the document. The document looks like a pretty obvious bit of state (IRD?) disinformation, doctored with some clumsy spelling errors and typos to make it appear non-official: for example 'legitamate' for legitimate, 'discribed' for described and 'conscious objector' for conscientious objector. What struck me most forcibly re-reading the document is this on page 7. 'Smythe was also involved with the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 01 Jun 1996 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue31/lob31-07.htm
... a Labour-oriented newspaper, The Democrat.... 'worked unofficially on Socialist Commentary"'...and became a founder member of its offshoot, the Socialist Union, 'which served as a think tank for the emerging Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party.... 'liaised, advised, wrote, lectured, published- and helped IRD [the Information Research Department] with the distribution of one of their early publications, The Curtain Falls.'(40) The US post-war penetration of the British Labour Party and wider trade union movement climaxes with Joe Godson, who was Labour Attaché in London from 1953-59. Godson became very close to the Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 01 Jun 1996 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/caucus/lobcc-02.htm
... the Tory government's defence estimates. The Gaitskellites repulsed the unilateralists at the annual conference that year; and in the Labour Party its 'personnel committee', the organisational subcommittee, was dominated by Ray Gunter MP(54) and George Brown, a 'CIA source', and serviced by the Party's National Agent's Department, which received its information from IRD and others. Then things went wrong. Determined upon a final purge of the Parliamentary party, George Brown approached MI5, via the journalist Chapman Pincher, for evidence of Soviet links to Labour MP's believed to be 'fellow travellers'. But MI5 declined, apparently because afraid that to do so would reveal their sources within the PLP; ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 11 - 01 Jun 1996 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/caucus/lobcc-05.htm
... , but that is the outfit he means.) Vialls believes that the shooting was part of the demonization of Libya prior to the bombing of that country by the USA, with British assistance. Vialls' attempt to prove that he committed a murder everyone else thinks done by someone else is unique, as far as I am aware. IRD: new material, old lies Another flurry of newspaper articles about IRD's early years occurred in August based on the release of some hitherto secret government files on the department. The only new piece of information I noticed in the press reports was in the Times August 17 1995, 'Celebrity team used in secret anti-Soviet campaign'. Right at ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 69 - 01 Dec 1995 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue30/lob30-07.htm
... the private sector has to step into the breach. The group was the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, UK counterpart of the US group with the same name. (In the US group was a US General called Stilwell, a member of the Pinay Circle, whose meetings were also attended by Mr Crozier.) Pranks by MI5 and IRD Like their friend? mentor? case officer? Brian Crozier, messrs Lewis, Kerpel and Leigh are really bemoaning the demise of IRD in 1978. For it was IRD's role to combat communism, and the 'problem' of agents of influence. (In the 1980s the 'agents of influence' must be presumed to be CND.) ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 30 - 01 Jun 1995 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue29/lob29-07.htm
... down side there is another endless account of Burgess and Maclean, Philby, Bunt et al, in whom I was never very interested. It might be bulging with new information; I just don't know (or care). There are some striking omissions. Not a word on nuclear weapons, for example, and only one reference to IRD, on page 145: 'On the crazy edge of that effort [to recruit students and trade unionist 'sleepers'] were F Branch's dirty tricks. In co-operation with the Foreign Office's Information Research Department, MI5's agents were encouraged to disrupt subversive organisations, even impregnating lavatory paper with an itching substance at halls hired by communist organisations.' ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 01 Jun 1995 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue29/lob29-12.htm
... go? Something like this? 'Listen old boy. Can't tell you the source, of course- need to know- but take it from me we have evidence, hard concrete evidence, that the KGB is funding the party. It is absolutely solid gold.' Nudge, nudge; wink wink. Thus emboldened by official sources- IRD, I would guess- they took the fact of CPGB influence on the trade unions, and added the assumption of Soviet control. What a thrill to be part of the anti-subversion lobby in 1974 and 5! All their theories were being substantiated! The Russians ran the CPGB, which ran the unions, which ran the Labour Party ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 01 Jun 1995 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue29/lob29-08.htm
... the three parapolitical essays; 36 pages on the Cointelpro, the FBI and the American Indian, for example- appears to be attributed. In the digestion process, bits have got scrambled. On page 67, for example (the first page I tried to read) we are told of a 'merger' between the Information Research Department (IRD) and the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC). A 'merger'? Not as far as I knew. I looked up Bloch and Fitzgerald from whom I guessed this section had been lifted. Yes, there was the material on page 98. Bloch and Fitzgerald had this: 'The staff of IRD was down to ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 37 - 01 Dec 1994 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue28/lob28-18.htm
... for the British and American intelligence services. Crozier would deny that he worked for anybody: 'at all times I remained independent, executing only tasks that were in line with my own objectives.'(pp. xii, xiii) But on p. xii of the preface he tells us he 'worked with' the CIA, MI6 and IRD; on p. 20 he tells that briefings he had been getting from an MI6 officer secured for him the job as editor of the Economist's Foreign Report; on p. 51 he writes of a 'part-time consultancy for IRD'; and on p. 86 that IRD 'put an office at [his] disposal.' He also ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 106 - 01 Dec 1993 - URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue26/lob26-11.htm
