In their recent history of the Information Research Department (IRD), Paul Lashmar and James Oliver discuss George Orwell’s decision to collaborate with that organisation’s anti-Communist propaganda operations. They write that ‘George Orwell’s reputation as a left-wing icon took a body blow from which it may never recover when it was revealed in 1996 that he … Read more
Rogue State: A guide to the world’s only superpower William Blum Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $16.95 Globalize This! The battle against the World Trade Organization and corporate rule eds. Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $15.95 I have lumped these together partly because they are both published … Read more
Lundy: The Destruction of Scotland Yard’s Finest Detective Martin Short Grafton, London, 1991 Scotland Yard’s Cocaine Connection Andrew Jennings, Paul Lashmar and Vyv Simson Arrow, London, 1991 The sixties media guru Marshall McLuhan is nowadays generally derided as a fraud.I suspect that most people would found it difficult to accept his statement that television is … Read more
The publication of Frank Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations in 1971 created a storm on the left.(1) An influential British army officer with considerable experience of colonial warfare was advocating that the army prepare for counterinsurgency operations at home. As far as Kitson was concerned there was a serious danger of revolutionary disturbance in Britain in … Read more
A Wapping mystery I noticed with some interest that Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, was described in the Guardian on May 27 as having been labour correspondent of the Economist in the 1970s. Was he, I thought, one of the correspondents recruited by MI5 in the big F branch expansion circa 1973-5? Did that explain … Read more
An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King William Pepper London: Verso, 2003, £17, h/b William Pepper has solved the King assassination. He hasn’t quite got enough to name the shooter but he has laid bare the conspiracy. It has taken him 20 years. Is there a comparable piece of research by … Read more
Leonard Doyle, Guardian 24th February 1984. Sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for illegal surveillance of private citizens, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) settled out of court. LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division were accused of ‘organising a massive spying operation providing right-wing organisations with a sophisticated computer and handing on extensive files … Read more
John Carter. Feral House, Portland (USA), 1999. Available in the UK from Counter Productions, P0 Box 556, London SE5 ORL , £15.99 plus £1.50p pp. The March Fortean Times launched this in some style, aping the book’s 1950s SF cover and giving it a respectful five page review. With the film rights sold and preparations … Read more
Gore Vidal London: Abacus, 2002, £10.99, p/b Once upon a time collections of essays by Gore Vidal would appear every few years or so in this country in those neat little Panther paperbacks: On Our Own Now (1976), Matters of Fact and of Fiction (1978), Pink Triangle and Yellow Star (1982) for example. The … Read more
On Friday 7 August I was told by a journalist at another paper that the Mail on Sunday had a story that Cabinet Minister Peter Mandelson had worked for the spooks – though which branch was not clear. ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ I said, and described Mandelson’s 1978 Foreign Office (or SIS?)-funded trip to Cuba. … Read more
