[…] because Obama won the election). We need that America and the contest over America’s history is part of the wider struggle. The fact that after the Cuban missile crisis Kruschev and Kennedy were trying to reduce the influence of their military-industrial complexes and both failed (Kruschev’s fall caused by JFK’s death and the change […]
Ivor Crewe and Anthony King Oxford University Press, 1995, £25 Few who lived through the launch of the Social Democratic Party are likely to forget the impact of the creation of the Gang of Four in 1981. The avowed intention of the four former Cabinet ministers was to offer Britain a fresh alternative – a … Read more
[…] Whitaker and Adrian Shaw, ‘Camilla cheats death in car crash…’ The Mirror 12 June 1997; Sean O’Neill and Tom Leonard, ‘”Camilla’s car came at me like a missile”‘ The Daily Telegraph 13 June 1997; James Whitaker, ‘Camilla: I feared hitman’ Daily Record 13 June 1997; Mary-Anne Toy, ‘Camilla ran away. She fled crash scene […]
[…] where Kennedy stepped back publicly from his position as a reckless cold warrior who had marched the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Douglass goes from there into great detail, not only on negotiations with the Russians, and the test-ban treaty, or on opening a back-channel of communication […]
The Diana inquest – the people’s verdict? Well we now know who didn’t do it. It wasn’t the Royals. Not that they and their associates don’t have past form when it comes to helping family members into the next world. George V was given a fatal injection on his deathbed in order that news of … Read more
This is a slightly abridged version of part of chapter four of Mark Curtis’s book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945 (Zed Press, 1995) reviewed below. In August 1953 a coup overthrew Iran’s nationalist government of Mohammed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture … Read more
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 […]
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
[…] 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 […]
