A small section of this appeared in Lobster 12. Although this is incomplete and under researched, we thought it worth putting out now. The origins of IRD 1947 saw the creation of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD). It is generally accepted that IRD was the brain-child of the then Labour M.P. Christopher Mayhew, […]
[…] In Britain antipathy to Israel is not confined to radical Muslims and the ‘far left’. Rubinstein says: ‘One of the most egregious and dangerous examples is the BBC’, and he identifies two its reporters, Orla Guerin – ‘little better than an anti-Israeli propagandist’ – and Barbara Plett for particular criticism. John Pilger and former […]
[…] BBC2 in October/ November devoted to Special Branch accounts of their work against British ‘subversives’ in the 1970s and 80s. There was a rich irony about the BBC broadcasting the first two episodes while David Shayler was on trial. A group of Special Branch officers – assisted by the BBC – broke the Official […]
Ken Livingstone MP, has been putting dozens and dozens of questions to our state about the cases and allegations of Fred Holroyd and Colin Wallace, those bits of the secret state you are allowed to ask questions about, Northern Ireland, psy ops and so on. Putting down such questions is a fairly dispiriting business. Some […]
[…] 1991 he had secured on tape, a confession by Ken Barrett that he killed Finucane. (7) That Barrett killed Finucane has been common knowledge only since a BBC Panorama programme in 2001. In contrast to Adair however, Jonty Brown claims that his efforts to secure a conviction against Barrett were blocked and that he […]
Are raw prawns pink? Fun and games Down Under where a great brouhaha developed over allegations that Australia’s most famous – and left-wing historian, the late Manning Clark, was a Soviet agent. It started when the Australian poet Sid Murray reported that 26 years before he had seen Clark at a dinner wearing the Order […]
Gone but not forgotten: a further update on Di Terry Hanstock This update follows on from my earlier articles in Lobster 38 and Lobster 39 Never was the old adage ‘She’s dead but she won’t lie down’ more apt than when applied to the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Although she died almost nine years … Read more
[…] Robertson of Port Ellen. Beams and motes A splendid riposte was handed to Robertson’s old chum, Denis MacShane, in the letters column of The Guardian. The former BBC reporter turned international trade union official and then Foreign Office minister, had taken issue with former Washington ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer. He claimed the man who […]
[…] book is the large number of people interviewed by him who are careful not to be named when making comments about his subject. Andrew Hosken is a BBC TV journalist who became quite well known in the 1990s covering London local government. At that time he seemed to be working closely with associates of […]
[…] of staff, Jonathan Powell. Both are close to an earlier editor of The Independent who is also strongly pro-Euro: Andrew Marr is now political editor of the BBC. Mandelson has long been a leading figure in the European Movement, but its fortunes seem to be as popular as those of Leo Gillen, the businessman […]
