[…] a think tank and St Antony’s College (1996-99); and fronted for New Labour via the Foreign Policy Centre (1999 onwards). He is unclear when he left the Communist Party but by 1997 he was sitting next to John Bolton at the American Enterprise Institute talking about New Labour. Prior to his recent resignation, New […]
Introduction Despite their reputation for ’empiricism’, British academics have tended to treat political power by means of abstract concepts rather than empirical information about the actions of determinate individuals and groups (e.g. Giddens, 1984, 1985; Scott, 1986). After a brief efflorescence of empirical studies of the so-called ‘Establishment’ in the early 1960s, sociologists in Britain […]
[…] the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): “Critics of a power elite theory often call it “conspiratorial”, which is the academic equivalent of ending a discussion by yelling Communist. It is difficult to lay this charge to rest once and for all because these critics really mean something much broader than the dictionary definition of […]
Brian Crozier HarperCollins, London, 1993 This is a very interesting book which greatly adds to our knowledge of the clandestine shaping of British politics in the 1970s and 80s. It is also a book which, like Chapman Pincher’s Inside Story, will repay repeated re-reading. But amidst all the new material a surprising amount of these […]
[…] on IRD’s domestic operations takes that contention a good deal further forward. The authors tell us that in 1956 the Conservative MP Douglas Dodds-Parker, a former anti- communist ally of Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin, had been appointed to the Foreign Office as Under-Secretary – and apparently in formal charge of liaison with IRD.(2) Dodds-Parker […]
[…] peace flight to Britain, six weeks before the Germans invaded Russia. Yet outside the pilots’ log books there exists no official record of their mission. In post-war Communist Czechoslovakia, many ex-RAF pilots were picked by the STB secret police and jailed or drafted down the mines. Stories of their exploits could not be published. […]
[…] are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures’. The speech was used to draw financial backing from Congress to Truman’s determination to support anti- Communist regimes in Greece and Turkey. These governments had been propped up by the British but the expense of the operation was by late 1946 too much […]
[…] Vice-President, a post from which I resigned and went back to my course. While living in Sheffield in 1977, I had been briefly a member of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Netherthorpe Branch. Pat had told me that Legg’s job was positively vetted; consequently I asked her whether my political background was […]
[…] Great Betrayal Nicholas Bethel (London 1984) This is either a ‘snow job’, designed to discourage further research in this area (British intelligence attempts to destabilise Soviet and communist influenced regimes), or is just a poor effort on Bethel’s part. One can’t deny that it is useful – after all, it is the first book […]
[…] who theorised and rendered the process possible – in terms of a Gramscian war of position or construction of a hegemony – were former members of the Communist Party or members of the Demos think tank. Names like Peter Mandelson, Stuart Hall, Martin Kettle and Martin Jacques spring to mind immediately What particularly interests […]
