Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the quest for legitimacy Nigel Copsey Palgrave/Macmillan 2004, £47.50, h/b The Radical Right in Britain Alan Sykes Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005, £16.99, p/b Modern British fascism has been poorly served by academic research, especially when it comes to coverage of the last two decades. These books attempt to … Read more
From: David Renton I am grateful to Lobster for printing Larry O’Hara’s review of my book. It is always a pleasure to see your ideas considered in detail. However, your reviewer devoted a great deal of energy to criticising an argument which he has not fully grasped, and I suspect that readers of this magazine … Read more
Policing (a) and the miners 3 page overview in Labour Research (September) Officers being sent straight from training school (Guardian 20 November) Police installing alarms in homes of (some) working miners. (Guardian 27 November) Police officers being charged a ‘fee’ of a bottle of whisky to get on lucrative picket duty. (Daily Telegraph 25 October) … Read more
Donovan Pedelty Prometheus Press, Builth Wells, Powys, £13.50 This is a fascinating book. As the Labour Party approaches its 100th birthday, Donovan Pedelty critically assesses the extent to which it has realised its aim. In a detailed and well-argued account, he shows that whereas Labour always espoused equality, nevertheless the gulf between rich and poor … 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
Mark Urban Faber and Faber London 1996 £16.99 The first sentence of Urban’s conclusion to this very interesting and rather important book is: ‘More than anything else, British intelligence is a system for repackaging information gathered by the USA.’ He might have added, ‘information gathered in large part at US bases in Britain’. Urban has … Read more
See note (1) James ‘Bo’ Gritz, linked to the US Army Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), was detained with Lance Corp. Edward Trimmer whilst trying to enter Thailand. (Guardian 23rd September 1983) They were apparently on another mission looking for American POWs. In December, for the first time since 1975, American troops were in Laos investigating … Read more
Suffer the innocents? The Stevens inquiry into Britain’s state assassination policy in Northern Ireland in the 1980s began in September 1989. The police officers who signed up for it didn’t think it would take long to do. ‘We thought it was going to be a fairly routine investigation. We didn’t expect to find that there … Read more
Maurice Tugwell/Centre For Conflict Studies More on the good Mr Tugwell and the Centre for Conflict Studies mentioned in issue 16. An article in the Canadian magazine New Maritimes (June 1986) describes CCS as ‘on the edge of the campus of the University of New Brunswick … the Centre staff is not, however University faculty, … Read more
Responsibilities, old boy The Big Breach Richard Tomlinson Cutting Edge, Edinburgh, 2000, £9.99 I found it hard to ‘see’ this because so much of its contents have been published in the media. There have been some changes – names altered – since the newspaper versions; and I am told that the original hardback version … Read more
