[…] adds to our knowledge of the clandestine shaping of British politics in the 1970s and 80s. It is also a book which, like Chapman Pincher’s Inside S tory, will repay repeated re-reading. But amidst all the new material a surprising amount of these putative ‘unseen’ activities have already been identified. It confirms that, from […]
[…] indication that there are continuities with anti-Left operations dating back to Heseltine and Crozier’s days. CER’s office is 29 Tufton Street, Westminster, which they share with the Tory Reform Group which contains Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke, Lord Hurd, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and a host of other top Conservatives. The office is also used by the […]
Larry O’Hara See also: Part 1: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23) Part 2: British Fascism 1974-92 (II) (Lobster 24) Part 3: British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25) The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29) A left turn for the NF? Having described some of the multiple policy initiatives undertaken by the National Front in part 3 … Read more
[…] The British Lion “Letters to the Editor”, from Maxwell Knight. ‘Opium, tungsten, and the Search for National Security, 1940-52’, by Jonathan Marshall, in Journal of Policy His tory, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1991. (Published at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.) Marshall is the former producer of the wonderful Parapolitics USA, and, […]
[…] if their countries had a bad record, or if the individuals concerned were training for paramilitary or security branch work. This system was overturned by the incoming Tory administration. In April 1984, Douglas Hurd, then a Minister of State at the Home Office, listed the countries whose police personnel had been trained in the […]
[…] which he refers, not organised labour. An eminently fair-minded man he may be, but has he produced an interesting book? Yes he has, both in the s tory that he is aware that he is telling and, perhaps more importantly, for the extraordinary sidelights that, consciously or not, he sheds on official and semi-official […]
[…] And a new blockbuster is on the way from Anthony Summers, he of File on the Czar and Conspiracy fame. Friends in High Places: the Bechtel S tory by McCartney. (See Mother Jones, June 1984) for Bechtel’s relevance to the Reagan regime, and earlier periods in the Middle East … and Citizen Hughes: how […]
Stephen Dorril London: Viking, 2006, £30 In his 1975 biography of Oswald Mosley, Robert (now Lord) Skidelsky very much celebrated the old fascist on his own terms, contributing, wittingly or not, to his attempted rehabilitation. Mosley, we were told in all seriousness, was always driven by his concern for ordinary people and a desire … Read more
Patriots not sneaks After a year of New Labour I feel beholden to write something on this subject, but what is there worth saying that isn’t blindingly and depressingly obvious and predictable? Jack Straw, who took over as Home Secretary, and thus formally as the boss of MI5, is determined to sedate any sleeping dogs … Read more
[…] in general and the secret state in particular in the 1980s in Britain, but the author is simply wrong to attribute this to the arrival of the Tory Party in 1979. On the British non-Trotskyist Left its origins lie in the 1975-78 period, and the ‘national security’ scares that were run against the Labour […]
