[…] paragraph refutation, the entire briefing is baloney; a poorly argued rationale at best; forelock-tugging at worst. Indeed, the FCO briefing paper is so poor, just as today’s Labour Cabinet members make those of the Wilson-Callaghan generation seem like giants, I wonder if the quality of people going into the Foreign Office hasn’t also declined. […]
Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain: Volume 1 edited by Michael David Kandiah and Anthony Seldon Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1996 £29.50 As the title suggests this really contains two separate though not unrelated areas. The first is a series of shortish essays about so-called think tanks in the UK which follow on from […]
Many thanks to Terry Hanstock for contributions. Comments and contributions to Shayler case and human rights David Shayler went on trial at the Old Bailey in October/ November 2002 for disclosing information and documents relating to security and intelligence, under s1(1) and 4(1) of the Official Secrets Act 1989. During the trial he was […]
[…] Freedom of Information Act, and are not likely to get one from any of the British political parties. Imagine a conversation in the office of the new Labour Prime Minister in a year or three: ‘FOI? Too much trouble, too much aggro with Whitehall. As if we need any more, what with the economy, […]
[…] us that “today, in Wallace’s mind, ‘Clockwork Orange’ has become a more sinister Mark Two which … went beyond destabilising the IRA; it was aimed at mainland Labour politicians – which just happens to dovetail with similar allegations, raised in Parliament from an entirely independent source, namely Peter Wright.” This really is extraordinary. In […]
[…] knowledge of the literature on Africa, Vietnam, Latin America, Middle East, Spanish Civil War, genocide, Balkan conflicts, Ireland, crime and punishment, black writers, the Russian Revolution, communism, Labour Party history, Thatcherism, science and society including nuclear issues, censorship and freedom of speech and of the printed word, feminism, radical working-class authors, human thought, espionage, […]
[…] person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil […]
[…] the agreement. There is considerable opposition to the MAI, especially from environmental and development organisations, amid fears that its provisions could damage environmental quality, social welfare and labour standards, and its progress has been slowed. Currently (May 1998) the MAI has not been signed, and seems likely to be further delayed, largely due to […]
In February this year, unnoticed by the press, a funeral took place in a quiet Sussex village. In attendance were some famous names from London society of the fifties and sixties, and two men in regulation dark suits from an undisclosed department of the Security Services. They had been contacts for the deceased, Maria Novotny, […]
[…] the banality and irrelevance,’ describing them as ‘uniformly nineteenth century minds pretending to relate to the twentieth century’. Another of those who have attended, Christopher Price, then Labour MP for Lewisham West, found it ‘all very fatuous……icing on the cake with nothing to do with the cake.’ (Eringer 1980, p. 26). Denis Healey, on […]
