[…] time to be a social democratic ally of the United States. In Britain we had “the Wilson plots’; in Australia Gough Whitlam, Jim Cairns and the Australian Labour Party got Governor Kerr and the CIA; in Germany Willi Brandt resigned after a “security scandal’; in New Zealand a series of domestic scandals blighted the […]
[…] was augmented by several others. Foreign Office official Gladwyn Jebb was instrumental in forming the Common Market Campaign, with Roy Jenkins as deputy, which aimed to recruit Labour intellectuals and trade unionists to its cause. Other campaigns were launched by the Conservative and Liberal parties, Federal Union (assisted by a number of former civil […]
[…] belief in the market rather then the state, the individual rather than the social – exercised a hegemonic influence over British politics, with the creation of New Labour signalling an abject surrender to the new orthodoxy.’ (1) As if he had nothing to do with it!’ Two of the recipients, Tim Pendry and William […]
[…] the siting of a new generation of nuclear weapons in Britain, a rising trade union official was invited to the west London home of a former US labour attaché. On the recommendation of a colleague who was active in the Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding, he had been proposed for a trip to Washington […]
[…] Margaret Thatcher, and later with John Major. This material is extremely interesting, providing, among other things, an insider’s account of Murdoch’s embrace of Tony Blair and New Labour. In a country with a more robust democratic tradition what Wyatt reveals would be a scandal, in Britain we have become so used to governments courting […]
[…] the spook Since the last issue I have skimmed Paddy Ashdown’s two volumes of diaries. While dominated by his attempt to do a deal with the Blair-led Labour Party, there are some other interesting snippets; and, through Ashdown’s eyes, there is a detailed portrait of Tony Blair which suggests that Rory Bremner’s impersonation of […]
Horses for courses? Labour MP Denis MacShane used the hospitality of The Observer extended by his old Oxford pal, editor Roger Alton, to proclaim the virtues of Nicolas Sarkozy and confide, a week before the second vote, that his success in the French presidential election was greatly desired in Downing Street. The prospect of […]
Peter Jones I.B. Tauris, London, 1997, £39.50 hb This is a dull run through the conventional post-war history of the Labour Party in relation to the USA. Jones takes as a given that the Labour Party in the post-war years should be pro-American, and therefore does not think it worth explaining how this came […]
[…] the politicians. Palast’s concerns are the main agenda: America, the power of the corporations; the institutions of the new world order – and, almost a sideshow, New Labour. In the last few years he has exposed the nature of the New Labour government in the ‘cash for access’ affair; discovered how the Republicans stole […]
[…] the Pinay Circle, Interdoc etc. etc. far too many even for a list. But here are some fairly typical snippets. He tells us (p. 108) that when Labour won the election in 1974, IRD dropped its briefings on subversion in Britain. This may explain why Colin Wallace was in such demand post February 1974. […]
