[…] the Persians could effectively resist the comparatively small number of troops which could be brought in quickly’.(24) The Foreign Secretary and the Defence Minister of the then Labour government both favoured the use of military force to seize the oil installations. The option of military intervention was kept open until September 1951, when the […]
[…] Smith picked up the Fabian version of the white man’s burden concept and went to Nigeria in the early 1950s for the Colonial Office. Working in the Labour Ministry, he drafted some of Nigeria’s labour and factory legislation. His memoir is a fascinating insight into the underbelly of British colonial administration. Smith not only […]
[…] fount of information on the B-sides of pop singles of the 1960s. Well, pop-pickers, our civil liberties are safe in his hands then. Or not. As New Labour prepares to cut back on the already pretty limited freedom of information legislation in this country, Falconer came out with a classic in the New Labour’s […]
[…] 14th February 1988, front page story in the Sunday Express based on leak from MI5 – complete with surveillance photograph – on alleged contact between the then Labour MP John Diamond and two Yugoslav women. The article contained the women’s passport numbers and the flights they came into Vienna on. The point of this […]
[…] up to the spook problem and turns away again. Of Harold Wilson’s second term he writes: ‘There was, too, a trace of paranoia, not this time about Labour rivals but about something far more sinister. It’s impossible for outsiders – and, indeed, for most insiders – to reach an informed judgement about the alleged […]
[…] indeed, even the Mosley of the 1930 Manifesto or the New party. The majority of the Blair quotes date from after 1990; approximately half since he became Labour leader. I have left each quote unidentified except by a number. The reader may thus speculate on who said or wrote what. (Readers seeking clues should […]
[…] borrowing against the value of houses in a striking innovation in the annals of `Keynesian’ demand management. In 1976 Prime Minister James Callaghan became notorious on the Labour left for his speech to the Labour Party conference in which he stated that it was no longer possible to spend your way out of a […]
[…] door.()At least McDonald and Cusack acknowledge that there was sectarian violence on both sides and that the failure of the Civil Rights movement to root itself in labour politics and distance itself from Republican goals enabled a self-serving rabble-rouser like Ian Paisley to contribute to the biggest example of self-fulfilling prophecy in […]
[…] in the essential services, and were linked to rumours that elements in the military and intelligence establishment were contemplating some kind of coup to overthrow the minority Labour government which had taken up office in March 1974. This view was expressed at the time by Tony Benn (2) and supported by the later publications […]
[…] identified as part of the capitalist segment of the conspiracy leading to an ‘authoritarian world government’. (5) Far from contemplating a role in the overthrow of the Labour government, in 1974 the NF had only just been rebuffed by the Monday Club and seen the break-down of ‘the bridge’ between the racists in the […]
