[…] simply is not sourced; and sometimes the source can be inferred from the context. For example, there is this paragraph on p. 76. ‘Clement Attlee, Britain’s new Labour prime minister, and particularly his more socialist colleagues, influenced by their wartime encounters with MI5 officers, suspected the service’s activities were uncontrolled. MI5, they complained, was […]
[…] this was the first conference raising issues of national security and freedom of expression and asked why no-one from the authorities was present. Many members of the Labour government had been very critical of, and voted against the OSA 1989 because it allowed the prosecution of whistleblowers, but a Labour Attorney General consented to […]
[…] about his own writing, accepting editing suggestions on their merits. During a lunch break he said to me: ‘What’s a bright guy like you doing in the Labour Party?’ I replied: ‘What’s a bright guy like you doing in the SWP?’ We laughed. The second time we worked together was during our most minor […]
[…] he brought his brand of clever, witty and vigorous exposure to bear on the Blair government in 1998. For detailing the corruption at the heart of New Labour in his Lobbygate reports in The Observer (see Lobsters 36 and 38), Palast was branded a liar on the front page of the then Blair-backing Daily […]
[…] through a phone intercept at my end or his? (3) Searchlight smears O’Hara The Gable-Searchlight controversy resurfaced last year in the columns of the London left magazine Labour Briefing in the context of splits in the ranks of London anti-racists.(4) In October 1991 Larry O’Hara joined in the debate and reminded Labour Briefing readers […]
[…] Sometimes chronology implies causality and sometimes not. Consider the following sequence of events: in January 1994 Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary and career-long member of the Labour Friends of Israel, took a four day freebie trip to Israel, with his wife, at the expense of the Israeli government. Two months later Tony Blair […]
[…] Whistleblowers: Shirley Porter, homes for votes and twenty years of scandal in Britain’s rottenest borough Paul Dimoldenberg London: Politicos, 2006, £12.99, p/b The author was a Labour councillor in Westminster during Porter’s ‘reign of terror’ and was instrumental in eventually bringing her down. With an insider’s view he has written an immensely detailed […]
[…] This point was again made by Holroyd himself, in evidence given to the Barron Inquiry in Dublin in 2003. At its simplest, and to paraphrase what Irish Labour Leader Pat Rabbitte recently said about Jonty Brown’s disclosures, in the Irish Dail in October 2005: when credible allegations as serious as this are made, they […]
[…] the Communist Party and the IRA. And here is the core of my complaint: it wasn’t just a plot against Wilson; it was a plot against the Labour and Liberal parties and the Heath wing of the Tories. And it wasn’t just MI5 doing it, either.(1) It did contain two significant new pieces of […]
[…] politics, but rather toward scholarly and long-term ideological endeavour. Moreover, while we are happy to speak to and, we hope, influence Conservative groups, we speak to the Labour Party, trade unions or anyone open to some aspect of the libertarian position. The radicalism of our civil libertarian position on immigration, victimless crimes, sexual freedom […]
