[…] began in 1983 there seemed every point in collecting and publishing every available scrap of information on the British security and intelligence services: we had Reagan and Thatcher, a resurgent British imperialism on the coat-tails of America, and a repressive, authoritarian regime at home. Publicising what the British state most wanted kept in the […]
Ronald Gray, founder and owner of The Hammersmith Bookshop (1948-1963) and Hammersmith Books (1963-2000) died on 30 May at the age of 87. He was a most remarkable person, with a passionate interest in everything relating to politics and to recent history. He developed the vast stock of out-of-print books in Hammersmith Books to reflect … Read more
Dave Renton Pluto, London, 1999, £9.99 This book has been touted in some areas as a radical, new contribution to the study of fascism; and it is certainly well-packaged and cheap. To start with the good points which, although few, are important: if you want to know who the current academic theorists on modern … Read more
[…] was quickly moved to one side. Holroyd notes that Stalker’s downfall came after he and Colin Wallace had sent their file of allegations and evidence to Mrs Thatcher in 1984. After which ‘two events took place: the first was the Government’s robust attempt to stop Spycatcher; the second was the attack on the integrity […]
Christopher Harvie Hamish Hamilton, London, 1994 This is nominally the book of the Channel 4 TV series on NSO. TV is an entertainment medium, almost wholly useless for conveying detail or arguments. (An hour’s documentary viewing covers what you might read in ten minutes – or less.) So the TV series was interesting in small … Read more
[…] America attacked the Round Table’s various front organisations in the late 1940s, thinking they were attacking the ‘international communist conspiracy’. (15) More recently both Nixon and Mrs Thatcher have explicitly set themselves up as the enemies of the foreign policy ‘establishment’ without ever showing the slightest signs of understanding who it is they are […]
[…] and journalists. Those who read them could keep in mind a throwaway comment (1997) by Sir Percy Cradock, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee under Prime Ministers Thatcher and Major: ‘The bulk of the records of its outposts, principally JIC (Germany), JIC (Middle East) and JIC (Far East) have disappeared.’ (24) That they have […]
[…] Ministers on what insiders call ‘reality’ as opposed to ‘gossip’ in the Party’s document.” (More Hennessy ‘gossip’ .) 4. Secret Intelligence (Richard Norton-Taylor, G., June 6th 1983) Thatcher Advisers Refuse To Face M.P.’s Questions. (Peter Hennessy T. April 21 1983) The new Select Committees attempted to monitor the intelligence services and question the criteria […]
[…] of the Atlantic the professional diplomats and the rational core of the intelligence community are slowly throwing off some of the vile nonsense perpetrated in the Reagan-Bush- Thatcher years? The release of various official US documents which could easily have been withheld on national security grounds – eg on the CIA’s role in Guatemala […]
[…] it is unclear whether or not the author has interpreted what is going on around him correctly. And yet the parade of the military-political characters from the Thatcher years, an almost palpable smell of the growing British arms industry in the period, not to mention a picture of a world I know a little […]
