Introduction While researching the Rhodesia chapters of our book, I came across the Anglo-Rhodesian Society, and discovered that, as usual with the British right, there was no substantial account of it. Here is the result of an initial trawl. Future historians of the Conservative Party may discover that upon its heart in the 1960s “Rhodesia” … Read more
In its Supplement ‘Corporate Security’, the Financial Times (11 April 2002) provided private security companies with a five page ‘advertorial’. If they are thought of as a service industry, the puff may have done the companies some favours. If they are thought of as consultancies, however, it merely reinforced the emerging superiority of specialist boutiques, … Read more
American Friends: the Anti-CND Groups Steve Dorril In a memo leaked to the Washington Post (9th May 1982) on opposition to President Reagan’s defence policy, Eugene V. Rostow, Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, stated “there is participation on an increasing scale in the US of three groups whose potential impact should be … Read more
The incompetence which has been the hallmark of the world’s ‘most powerful man’ has left the world with a legacy we can only begin to rub our eyes at: George W. Bush’s successful derailing of concerted action on climate change; an energy crisis; a $3 trillion war (that’s just the cost to the Americans of … Read more
Pat Daly was the prime prosecution witness at the trial of two Irish National Liberation Army men at the Old Bailey in 1993. They were accused of conspiracy to steal explosives, conspiracy to cause explosions and possession of firearms with intent to endanger life. Daly lived in Bristol at Southmead from 1969 to 1989. Before … Read more
Jackboots and Sporran: the strange world of Robert Gayre Kevin Koogan in ANARCHY No.38 (Box A 84b Whitechapel High St., London E1 7QX) This is fascinating stuff, the history of some of the more obscure corners in the neo-nazi American/European right-wing since WW2. But it has an odd feel to it, as if it were … Read more
The publication of Frank Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations in 1971 created a storm on the left.(1) An influential British army officer with considerable experience of colonial warfare was advocating that the army prepare for counterinsurgency operations at home. As far as Kitson was concerned there was a serious danger of revolutionary disturbance in Britain in … Read more
The demise of Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London on 1 May was preceded by the publication of the latest account of his political career, Andrew Hosken’s Ken – The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone.(1) Although it contains some new and interesting material (but has no index), it is similar in many ways to … Read more
It is a difficult time for Britain’s security and intelligence agencies. Not only have the old certainties collapsed with the Berlin Wall, Britain’s economy is in increasingly dire shape, and current levels of government funding for the agencies can no longer be taken for granted. (1) As a result, both the major agencies, MI5 and … Read more
Peter Oborne London: The Free Press (Simon and Schuster), 2005, £7.99, p/b Before his minutely detailed account of some of New Labour’s lies Oborne gives us a potted history of lying in the past 25 years to show us how relatively truthful New Labour’s predecessors were. This old nag won’t run. For example, he … Read more
