[…] produced a radical local monthly magazine. I stayed involved for about 20 issues, none of which sold more than 500 copies. At that time, four years into Thatcher, her big recession in full swing, local radical mags were springing up all over Britain. I remember attending a conference in 1984 at which we all […]
[…] that they were going to be pro-American, pro-NATO, pro-business, anti-union and media conscious. What we did not know then was just how completely they had internalised the Thatcher ethos, how hostile they were going to be the public sector and, as a result, what a complete bunch of schmucks they were going to be […]
Kevin Coogan is the author of the study of the American fascist Francis Parker Yockey, Dreamer of the Day, reviewed in Lobster 39. He sent me an essay primarily about the American far-right group the Defenders of the American Constitution. The essay, while fascinating, is too big (about 20 pages) for these columns. However within […]
[…] the Heritage Foundation for 11 FCS activists. Although there are still libertarian strands within the Tory Party, David Hoile and his colleagues were on the good ship Thatcher, and when she went down, so did they. (For a while they seemed to genuinely believe that Mrs Thatcher was a libertarian; a bit like believing […]
[…] community which was threatened by immigration. GKY’s aims But who was he trying to impress? The ‘correspondents’ themselves, the party leaders or both? Or the ‘anti- Thatcher’ element in the party? He claimed that pro-Heath elements wanted to stage a comeback through the constituencies. GKY did not want people to join the National […]
[…] to identify his politics. Three years ago David Aaronovitch wrote about him. (14)Aaronovitch noted that Laughland is European Director of the European Foundation whose patron is Margaret Thatcher, and concluded by describing Laughland (and his associates) as ‘right-wing anti-state libertarians and isolationists, suspicious of any foreign entanglements’. Aaronovitch’s description above isn’t entirely inaccurate, though […]
[…] Mother, after all. Before he died, Andrew Boyle, whose book finally exposing Blunt came soon after her election in 1979, expressed to me his opinion that Margaret Thatcher had withdrawn Blunt’s immunity from publicity rather than let him successfully sue Boyle for libel, only to have the truth emerge when Blunt died of old […]
[…] Madrid he was appointed permanent secretary to the European Community in 1978 during Roy Jenkins’ presidency and then ran the Foreign Office news operation during the middle Thatcher years. John Major made him press secretary at No 10 and then Blair sent him to Washington in 1997. Diplomat and upmarket spin merchant Meyer, who […]
[…] shamefully corrupt and racist and openly sided with capital against the working class in major industrial disputes. As Reiner tells us, the Police Federation overtly campaigned for Thatcher before the 1979 election. Then came the riots in 1981 followed by Scarman, and a forced policy of reform and change that was initially resisted by […]
[…] only from 1978 to 87, and for officers only, not civilians and officers, the figures were: 1978 -72 1987 -164 This doubling over the period of the Thatcher years is very interesting. For while the South and Midlands has voted Tory, Scotland has been moving leftwards throughout the Thatcher period – the Tories now […]
