“The anomaly of going to war in your own country was not lost on Harry.” (Harry’s Game, Gerald Seymour, Fontana, London 1975) Airey Neave was killed in March 1979 by a bomb planted beneath his car just outside the Houses of Parliament. The then little known Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) soon claimed responsibility. The … Read more
The unspeakable Martin Kettle of The Guardian is a political journalist who has been pretty close to, and supportive of, New Labour since the 1990s. His article ‘The special relationship that squandered a noble cause’ (27 May 2006) opened with this: ‘The long arc of Tony Blair’s rise and decline has been punctuated by journeys … Read more
Down Under David Lange may have come and gone and the New Zealand Labour Party may have blazed a rightwards trail for Tony Blair et al to follow, but the New Zealand anti-military, anti-spook campaigns continue. The latest journal to document the activities of the spooks and military in that part of the Pacific is … Read more
Some reflections on the life, times and politics of Sir James Goldsmith The Clermont Set The Clermont Club was opened in 1962 by John Aspinall after the gaming laws had been liberalised by the MacMillan government.(1)During the 1950s Aspinall built up a personal fortune providing premises for exclusive gambling sessions in London, much of which … Read more
Those who remember my case will be aware that in 1992/93 I was portrayed as a major KGB spy, featuring on the front pages of several national newspapers. My name later appeared in The Mitrokhin Archive, as did Melita Norwood – the ‘Granny Spy’ – but unlike her I have been largely ignored by those … Read more
It is impossible to ignore the continuing Iraq story but difficult to decide to what, of the mountain of information we are being presented with, we should pay attention. The general drift of the British state’s policy has been clear: concede a little; maintain what’s left of the cover-up; concede a little more; maintain what’s … Read more
Peter Gill Frank Cass, London, 1993 Academia’s a swine. Writing an essay on International Relations (the ideological version of Foreign Office ‘realism’) for my Politics MA, I managed to smuggle in a few references to actual politics — European Nuclear Nuclear Disarmament, the SNP, and ‘independence within Europe’, that kind of thing. Flushed with success, … Read more
Given a WTO-driven free trade regime in a world without enforceable international law and with large accumulations of capital emerging from the supply of consumer wants (including guns, sex, labour, drugs, untaxed goods and unregulated financial services), the lifting of capital controls by the Reagan-Thatcher generation also meant the globalisation of criminality in all its … Read more
Ex-British intelligence officer Richard Winch said KGB defectors regularly named 7 ‘MPs, trade union leaders and 1 former Conservative Cabinet Minister’ as KGB agents. (Daily Telegraph 24 and 27 September 1984) What, only 7? According to Frederick Forsyth’s ‘sources’ in the British labour movement there are 20. (See Times 31 August 1984). And doesn’t Chapman … Read more
The idea that the Security Service, MI5, colluded with British fascism in the inter-war years is not to be found in the existing literature on the subject. On the contrary the fascists are depicted as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries of MI5’s attentions. MI5, it is generally argued, viewed fascism as a potential danger … Read more
