Hess: A Tale of Two Murders Hugh Thomas Hodder and Stoughton, London 1988 This is an update of Thomas’ 1979, The Murder of Rudolf Hess. Thomas argues (a) that the ‘Hess’ in Spandau prison wasn’t Hess at all but a double; and (b) that both the real and false Hess were murdered. The first proposition … Read more
Tons of documents and tape recordings recovered from an old manor house in Lancashire reveal the true depths of corruption in English provincial life at the end of the twentieth century. Owen Oyston was the British Labour Party’s biggest private financial contributor in the Thatcher years. The millionaire owner of radio stations and glossy magazines … Read more
Operation Paget, the investigation by the team led by Sir John Stevens into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, briefly tried to investigate a collision between a white Fiat Uno and Princess Diana’s BMW. The head-on collision happened on 22 March 1996, on Cromwell Road, Kensington, when a casino employee lost control of a … 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
Unfree press A recent release of previously undisclosed documents reveals that J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to carry out the illegal surveillance of newspaper labour activists during the 1940s. Also revealed is the fact that informants included journalists who wanted Communists removing from the leadership of the Newspaper Guild.(1) Only following orders Psychologist Stanley … Read more
The Dirty War Martin Dillon, Hutchinson, London, 1990. The SAS in Ireland Raymond Murray, Mercier Press, Cork and Dublin, 1991 Martin Dillon is a freelance journalist in Northern Ireland with a long career behind him: editor and radio presenter for the BBC in Northern Ireland, co-author of the Penguin Special, Political Murder In Northern Ireland … Read more
Organisation, History and Politics In the early years of the Thatcher decade, the radical or ‘new’ right was generally treated as though it was a united palace guard for libertarian Conservatism. More recently it has become clearer that the radical right in Britain was, at best, an ‘anti wet’ alliance between authoritarian/ nationalist and libertarian/radical … Read more
Crime fighting? There must many candidates for the title ‘The most damaging thing I have read about this government’. My current candidate is a piece by Simon Jenkins, ‘A Keep Police off the Streets Strategy Unit’ (The Times 2 February 2002). After reminding the reader that in the UK the police are a local service, … Read more
Gecas and Special Branch A wonderful example of the reach and power of intelligence connections was provided in January. Why did the British state refuse to extradite Anton Gecas, the WW2 Lithuanian war criminal, to the Soviet Union in 1976? Turns out not only had Gecas worked for SIS at the end of WW2, he’d … Read more
The other Bilderberg Between 1964 and 1966 there was a little-known attempt to establish a new Commonwealth conference modelled on the Bilderberg Group, with Prince Philip lined up to take a leading role. Nothing ever came of it, mainly because of the impact that Rhodesia’s UDI had on Commonwealth affairs. Newly released documents from The … Read more
