Peter Oborne London: The Free Press (Simon and Schuster), 2005, £7.99, p/b Before his minutely detailed account of some of New Labour’s lies Oborne gives us a potted history of lying in the past 25 years to show us how relatively truthful New Labour’s predecessors were. This old nag won’t run. For example, he … Read more
George McT. Kahin London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, £17.95, p/b The late George Kahin was a pioneering US scholar of Southeast Asia in the post WW2 era. This memoir describes some of his travels in the 1945-70 period, when he behaved rather like a CIA officer (for which he was occasionally mistaken), talking to the rising … Read more
The Triumph of the Political Class Peter Oborne London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, £18.99 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller London: Pluto, 2007, £15.99 End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair CounterPunch and AK Press, Oakland … Read more
From Mark Hollingsworth As the journalist, along with Nick Fielding, who first reported David Shayler’s revelations about MI5 in the Mail on Sunday in 1997, I would like to set the record straight on your piece in Lobster 36 (‘Peter’s Friends’?) I have remained close to David Shayler and Annie Machon, his girlfriend and also … Read more
Publications Origins of the Vigilant State: the London Metropolitan Special Branch Before the First World War Bernard Porter (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1987) Porter is an academic historian working an interesting new seam, and this is really very good indeed. If anything his account of the SB’s fabrication of an ‘anarchist’ and ‘Irish threat’ in … Read more
All four of Tony Blair’s new political appointees at the Ministry of Defence are part of Labour’s Atlanticist network. Three of them, George Robertson, Lord John Gilbert and John Speller, are members of two interrelated bodies, the Atlantic Council and its labour movement wing, the Trades Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding (TUCETU). The … Read more
The discussion of conspiracy in the mainstream media tends towards a very specific formula. The writer first notes with shock and disappointment the growing popularity of conspiracy theories and then goes on to provide explanations for this new popularity. This explanation almost always assumes that these theories about the ‘true’ nature of social reality exist … Read more
I was a student here (1) from 1971-74 doing a social science degree; but more importantly, between 1976 and 1982 I was on the dole much of the time and spent most of my days in the library here, educating myself in post-war history, American history, what was available then about the intelligence services – … Read more
ed. ‘Nigel West’ Faber and Faber, London, 1993 The title isn’t to be taken seriously. This is 610 pages of short extracts from some of the books written by British MI5 and MI6 personnel, with short biographical sections by ‘West’. Some of this is quite interesting — lots of it was new to me — … Read more
The origins of Civil Assistance? In the UK in 1974-75 a number of ‘private armies’ appeared, linked to retired senior military and intelligence figures. There were General Sir Walter Walker’s Civil Assistance, Colonel David Stirling’s GB75, and George Young’s Unison. (1) These groups formed in order to frustrate the impact of strike action in the … Read more
