[…] by two former government ministers and a millionaire friend of Margaret Thatcher. The former Tory ministers are Sir Robert Atkins and Lord Blaker. Their target was the Labour Party’s biggest private contributor in the days of Neil Kinnock’s leadership. Sir Robert Atkins was once John Major’s best friend in the Commons. He was the […]
[…] Press, 2004, £18.99, h/b According to Beckett and Hencke, in the late 1980s Nigel Lawson could never understand why Tony Blair was a member of the Labour Party rather than of the Conservative Party. This question subsequently occurred to a growing number of Labour Party members and the answer they came up with […]
[…] seriousness of the Cecil King coup plot of 1968 to establish what he called a ‘businessman’s government’, a permanent coalition government dominated by the right of the Labour Party but with unelected businessmen and security ‘experts’ also in its ranks. Such a government was also the stated intention of several coup plots in Italy, […]
[…] Cromer and the City One anniversary which has come and gone this year without much comment is the attempted 1968 ‘coup’ orchestrated by Cecil King against the Labour government of Harold Wilson. The plot was provoked by collapse of confidence in Wilson in the media (led by King’s Daily Mirror), finance, industry and 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, […]
[…] easiest question: what do George Robertson, Chris Smith and Marjorie ‘Mo’ Mowlam have in common? They are, of course, all strong Tony Blair supporters in the new Labour Cabinet. And what about Peter Mandelson and Elizabeth Symons? Not yet quite Cabinet members, but both are key figures in the ‘modernising project’ in Blair’s ‘New […]
[…] party to a more serious player. What caused me to fear for civil liberties was the ruthlessness that Blair and his cohorts had shown in fighting old labour. Also, New Labour’s love of money and the elevation of those with money to the high altar made me fear for public services and the gains […]
[…] notes between the two general elections of 1974 and it is the anticipated second election which hangs over them. The central theme is MI5’s claim, that the Labour Party of 1974 was under the influence of the Soviet Union: ‘It is estimated that between 20 and 30 Labour MPs are members of the Communist […]
[…] of the 1973-77 period (whose effects were still felt in the 1980s) when the Tory right, briefed by a section of the British spooks, believed that the Labour Party and the unions were a Communist conspiracy and were thus ‘a legitimate target’. Oborne’s idea of ‘political’ simply does not encompass activities by the state, […]
[…] policies. This appears still to be the basic assumption of most academic teachers of politics, most of the mass media, and, I fear, most of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The importance of Wallace, Holroyd, Peter Wright, Cathy Massiter et al in the 1980s was their falsification of this theory. MI5, the FBI and the […]
