The privatisation of part of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) has been generally reported as a financial scandal. More important is what it tells us about the politics of New Labour. There are two dimensions to this: first there is New Labour’s commitment to big business and in particular to … Read more
[…] the development of the nuclear industry, at the expense of miners’ jobs. This is both an expression of US strategic involvement in British politics (around the cruise missile issue) and Mrs Thatcher’s desire to smash the trade unions.(10) In particular, I make the point that Troy Kennedy-Martin wrote Edge of Darkness after Rob Green […]
[…] to handle those uncouth Yanks, to hold their hands and cool their tempers. For example: There was Penkofsky, who not only saved the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but had been rebuffed by the Yanks; and then there was Gordiefsky on hand to whisper in Mrs Thatcher’s ear that Gorbachev was on the […]
A new royalty? A few weeks before former BBC political editor Andrew Marr received two Broadcasting Press Guild awards – one as ‘best TV performer in a non-acting role’ – his journalistic colleagues were quietly made aware of a little drama in his own life. Typical of the message from editorial lawyers circulated among Britain’s … Read more
One of the benefits of living in the West is the freedom to criticize our politicians. The fact that the electoral system rarely reflects considered criticism is not the point. We have always known that it is centred on political parties that are run by small groups more intent on newspaper opinion, and on that … Read more
[PDF file]: […] sole discretion of the Cuban exiles – but it would be launched from outside the US and directed at Cuban targets only. The near-apocalypse of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) had made the Kennedy White House shy of taking any more potshots at the Soviet troops stationed 90 miles off Florida. On the […]
[PDF file]: […] Thanks to Roger Steer for bringing to my attention an interesting piece in the London Review of Books, a review of two new books about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.74 The books show in some detail that much of the received version of that event in the West – brave JFK stood up […]
[…] Thanks to Roger Steer for bringing to my attention an interesting piece in the London Review of Books, a review of two new books about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.71 The books show in some detail that much of the received version of that event in the West – brave JFK stood up […]
[…] Thanks to Roger Steer for bringing to my attention an interesting piece in the London Review of Books, a review of two new books about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.72 The books show in some detail that much of the received version of that event in the West – brave JFK stood up […]
[PDF file]: […] the President that he must recognise that to accept a communist Cuba would raise ‘the question not only of American prestige but of American survival’.32 The Cuban Missile Crisis began its most dangerous phase later that month, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoing Clare’s invasion policy.33 After the Cuban crisis had receded, Allen […]
