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 … Read more
Inside the League Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson (Dodd, Mead and Co., New York 1986) This is the only book I know on the World Anti-Communist League. Most of it is new to me but the few bits I am familiar with look accurate, and it is reasonably well documented. It is really in … Read more
[…] Ray had managed to acquire the identities of four men in Toronto who all looked like him, but omitted any of the subsequent research on the King murder, such as that by John Edginton, the British TV producer, and particularly by Dr William Pepper. Godfrey Hodgson’s obit in the Independent (25 April 1998) was […]
Introduction The mid 1970s was not a good time to be a social democratic ally of the United States. In Britain we had “the Wilson plots’; in Australia Gough Whitlam, Jim Cairns and the Australian Labour Party got Governor Kerr and the CIA; in Germany Willi Brandt resigned after a “security scandal’; in New Zealand … Read more
Political activist Daniel Ellsberg and Professor Alfred McCoy have something special in common. Based on their actions and accomplishments of nearly thirty years ago, they have achieved the status of icons within the subculture of what passes for the New Left. Icon Ellsberg became a celebrity in 1971 after he leaked The Pentagon Papers, an … Read more
[…] followed, a week later, by Simon Edge, ‘Dr Kelly: The questions that just won’t go away’ in The Daily Express, 31 July. My problem with the Kelly murder theory is that it has never been clear to me why anyone would think it necessary to kill him. With a senior British civil servant like […]
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
Miscellaneous Publications Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones’, The CIA and American Democracy, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989, price not stated) is, with Blum’s The CIA: a Forgotten History, the best single volume on the CIA. Of particular interest is the author’s account of the political system’s response to the revelations of CIA archives in the … Read more
[…] 23 by Christina Lamb, ‘Diplomatic Correspondent’ – a title once held by Coughlin – which claimed that Saddam Hussein had sent belly dancing assassins to London to murder his opponents there. Lamb sourced this to ‘a Foreign Office official’.(4) Where are they now? Skimming through the e-newsletter NewsmakingNews of 18 September I had […]
[…] raid on Colonel Gadhafi’s family, President Reagan described the Libyan despot as a ‘unique threat to free peoples’, a ‘rogue regime that advances its goals through the murder and maiming of innocent civilians’. Sanctions followed, but not for Halliburton. As Robert Bryce wrote in the Austin Chronicle: ‘Since the mid-1980s, Gadhafi’s “rogue regime” has […]
