Preface This paper was written for the History Workshop 20 in Leeds, during November 1986. In the workshop which I gave, I introduced the paper by pointing out that the arguments within it were very general and the paper itself entirely polemical. I explained that each of my last three books contain detailed case histories … Read more
In this issue, as in No 3, we are recycling a lot of material from Irish newspapers, and one in particular, the Sunday News. One of our Irish readers describes the Sunday News as ‘almost wholly Catholic..Nationalist … moderately Social Democratic Labour Party rather than moderately Republican.’ We have no way of checking the veracity … Read more
[…] British colony. It implies that IRA terrorists are authentic freedom fighters and in some ways allies of a British working class that they were actually trying to kill in large numbers during this same period. It implies that Loyalists are the stooges of imperialism, and hopelessly reactionary; that democracies do not have the right […]
Counter-insurgency in Rhodesia J. K. Villiers (Croom Helm, London, 1985) An expanded Masters thesis, full of descriptions of psychological operations by the Rhodesian forces (which failed utterly: and no wonder, they were useless), and rather less about pseudo-gang activities which, like their equivalents in the British operations in Kenya, were a success – i.e. they … Read more
Peter Levenda Waterville (Oregon); TrineDay; 2005, h/b, $29.95 This has a foreword by Jim Hougan who describes it as ‘one of the darkest and most provocative books that you are likely to read’. I’m a big fan of Hougan’s but I didn’t get this book. Not that it isn’t an interesting read: it is. … Read more
Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust Ed. David Bankier New York: Enigma Books, 2006. p/b, $23 US Intelligence and the Nazis Richard Breitman et al New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p/b, £16.99 On 11 January 1943, the British intercepted ‘one of the most extraordinary messages’ of the war at Bletchley Park: it referred ‘to … Read more
[…] Murrell was not only under surveillance before her murder but that on the day of the crime she attracted two different hit squads who turned up to kill her and ended up squabbling about who should do the job.’ Except it isn’t Otter’s theory. Laurens Otter comments: ‘Nick Davies’s claim about my “latest theory” […]
[…] was hesitant about the embassy in Saigon because he could not trust his people there. So he called on Torby who … told Diem “They’re going to kill you. You’ve got to get out of there temporarily to seek sanctuary in the American Embassy”. Diem refused. Parmet just drops this into his section on […]
[…] research by an individual? I cannot think of one. Some of this material was presented in greater detail in Pepper’s first book on the case, Orders to Kill (reviewed in Lobster 32). This new account briefly reruns that and adds much new information and an account of the successful civil trial Pepper brought against […]
[…] little to the sum of knowledge on the issue, it could well have been left alone until more was known.’ On the other hand in ‘Shoot to Kill’, the author is convinced. Dorril writes: ‘Those who accuse the British government of a shoot to kill policy in Northern Ireland, in the sense of a […]
