[…] and what they had to tell us about the state’s activities in Northern Ireland and the UK; and related to that are a couple about the wider ‘Wilson plots’. And the basic question which runs through Lobster and this book – how much interference from the secret state, or secret states, has there been? […]
[…] 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. […]
[…] an “Its a Knockout” hostess in England after having an affair with her. (6) Concerning Wallace’s links with Airey Neave rather than a fantasy about destabilising the Wilson government, it is more likely that Wallace was trying to ingratiate himself with Neave in order to get to Neave’s friend Lt.Col. Brush the head of […]
Before he went on the run, in the wake of Ernie Elliot’s murder in 1972, former British soldier and UDA member David Fogel gave an interview to the London Times.(1) In it he denounced sectarianism and said that he hoped that one day ‘the Official IRA and the UDA would work together, because both organisations […]
[…] forgeries were the work of some branch of the British secret state and were part of the attempts in 1974-76 to discredit the Labour governments of Harold Wilson. Ted Knight fits perfectly the role of the ‘deep entryist’ mole who appears to have been ‘expelled’ from or left an extremist group but actually retains […]
Footy and me I did two things with Paul Foot. Over two days, he, Colin Wallace and I copy-edited the manuscript of what became Foot’s Who Framed Colin Wallace? Foot was impressively objective about his own writing, accepting editing suggestions on their merits. During a lunch break he said to me: ‘What’s a bright guy […]
[…] the cold war. Willan’s Puppet Masters shows this process at work in post-war Italy, while the role of J. J. Angleton in fomenting right-wing discontent with the Wilson governments points to a CIA connection with the plots to destabilise the 1964-70 and 1974-79 Labour administrations (see Peter Wright, Spycatcher: the Candid Autobiography of a […]
Colin Crawford. London: Pluto Press, 2003, £14.99, p/back When World-in-Action and Tribune journalist David Boulton published his excellent book, The UVF, 1966-73, (Torc Books, 1974) he bemoaned a near absence of valuable books and journal articles on Loyalism. In contrast to their Republican counterparts, Loyalists do not have a substantive support base overseas; nor […]
[…] Sunday Times. They aren’t. And even on a quick skim those extracts are clearly dubious. Wright’s account of an unwilling MI5 having James Angleton’s paranoia about Harold Wilson thrust upon it wouldn’t withstand an afternoon’s research by any of the journalists who have so enthusiastically recycled Wright’s allegations. And are we really to believe […]
[…] Robin Whittaker (in particular), Rom, Jane Affleck, Terry Hanstock, anon in Dubai, Chris Tame, Robert Henderson, Peter Watson and David Turner for information. Thanks to Chris Gordon- Wilson for a donation of £50. This is a belting good issue, in my view, with a wide variety of top-drawer material – but I tend to […]
