[…] I have no way of knowing how many of these existed before Blunkett became Home Secretary; nor, indeed, how many of these preceded the arrival of the Labour government in 1997. But if he didn’t create them, Blunkett hasn’t scrapped them and it is hard to disagree with Jenkins’ comment: ‘This is bureaucracy gone […]
[…] provides the best opportunity to investigate the origins of what Ambush calls ‘the shoot to kill legend’ and SAS involvement in ‘dirty tricks’ operations. As soon as Labour won the February 1974 election, MI5 began destabilising Harold Wilson and his policies in Northern Ireland. In May 1974, the Power-sharing Executive was brought down by […]
[…] 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 […]
Policing (a) and the miners 3 page overview in Labour Research (September) Officers being sent straight from training school (Guardian 20 November) Police installing alarms in homes of (some) working miners. (Guardian 27 November) Police officers being charged a ‘fee’ of a bottle of whisky to get on lucrative picket duty. (Daily Telegraph 25 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] and 1 former Conservative Cabinet Minister’ as KGB agents. (Daily Telegraph 24 and 27 September 1984) What, only 7? According to Frederick Forsyth’s ‘sources’ in the British labour movement there are 20. (See Times 31 August 1984). And doesn’t Chapman Pincher talk of 60 plus in his various books? Confirmation – if any were […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] prospective candidates were insufficiently robust on this issue. The Goldsmith effect By 1995 it seemed clear to many observers of UK politics that Tony Blair and the Labour Party, now packaged as the ‘New Labour project’, were likely to do very well at the forthcoming general election. For a range of reasons, notably the […]
[…] 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 […]
