[…] George Thomson presided over longer-term IRD activities’. (p. 138) George Thomson, later ennobled as Lord Thomson of Monifieth, was one of the leading pro-EEC members of the Wilson Cabinet and a former Chair of the Labour Committee for Europe. He resigned from the Shadow Cabinet in 1973 when Labour policy shifted into an anti-EEC […]
[…] dissension within the Loyalist ranks, and foment infighting. In the wake of the successful Ulster Worker Council’s strike in May, 1974, the British Government, under Prime Minister Wilson, tried to renew contacts with the Republican movement. It felt that it was still possible to extract concessions from the IRA for a possible peace settlement. […]
[…] annual rate of inflation had risen, seemingly inexorably, from 3 per cent under the Conservative governments of 1951 to 1964, to 4 per cent under the first Wilson administration, to 9 percent under Heath and to 15 percent under the Labour government of 1974 to 1979. By the time Margaret Thatcher became the Prime […]
[…] and 139). Of that group, only Benn mattered at all, and in the period Crozier is writing of, post 1974, he was completely marginalised by Prime Ministers Wilson and Callaghan. Yes, there were Labour MPs — a handful — who were still friendly with the Soviet bloc. Mr Crozier will not be shocked to […]
[…] For more seasoned campaigners however, the book has less to offer. In many of the topics, such as those covering the Calvi murder, the plots against Harold Wilson, the CIA drugs connection etc, anyone who has been following the topics will feel that some of the more obvious and important texts have not been […]
[…] in 1974. And then? Well – not very much, publicly: 18 years on the back-benches during which he called for an enquiry into the plots to destabilise Wilson and voted against the Poll Tax. But privately, it was a different matter. Harding, Leigh and Pallister dive into News of the World territory with a […]
[…] of which he was Secretary. Published in 1968, an A2 format pamphlet, Biafra included some acute insights into the politics of oil, the feeble response of the Wilson Government, and the role of the tame British Africa correspondents recycling the Foreign Office line — almost everything, in fact, except the Harold Smith material. Non-lethal […]
[…] March 2009, p .6 ‘Unearthing Britain’s Cold war nuclear history: the secret Chevaline project’, University of Nottingham press release, 25 June 2008 See also: Kristan Stoddart, ‘The Wilson Government and British responses to anti-ballistic Missiles, 1964-1970’, Contemporary British History, 23 (1), March 2009, pp. 1-33. For further information on Chevaline see James Harkin, ‘Middleman […]
[…] the Ottoman perpetrators at least kept the Russians out of the Balkans) and worked for Irish Home Rule. He has been seen as a forerunner of Woodrow Wilson, whose crusade for national self-determination inspired millions at the end of World War One, and as one of the founders of liberalism. So how can he […]
[…] as an apparently reliable source – indeed, McKittrick (quoting an unidentified Wallace) was one of the first journalists to break the stories of MI5 operations against the Wilson government. Some of the McKittrick material (and the piece by Ware which accompanied it) is very bad journalism, and by a long way the worst thing […]
