[…] decade after the 1991 Congress voted to dissolve the CPGB after seventy-one years of political life and to reconstitute itself as the Democratic Left, more than one MI5 officer could be heard to claim (a) that the British Security Service “had been virtually running the CPGB at the end….”, Assuming this claim about MI5 […]
[…] Ulster Political Research Group by John MacMichael, then head of the UFF, who used it in his power struggle against Andy Tyrie. That MacMichael might have had MI5 links was revealed when he himself recycled the UCA smear, this time against Colin Wallace, to Independent journalist David McKittrick, formerly of BBC Northern Ireland. (With […]
[…] particularly thin if limited to British examples. Then there is official disinformation, another area in which Britain excels. As Home Secretary, Leon Brittan spent two weeks investigating MI5, concluding that ‘the Security Service has carried out no operation, investigation, surveillance or action against any individual otherwise than for the purposes laid down in its […]
[…] as in no publication that I know of since David Miller’s Queen’s Rebels (Dublin, 1978).() While the authors are right not to accredit the 1974 strike to MI5 conspiracies, and to differentiate it from Paisley’s 1977 strike, they omit all reference to the activities of the secret state during this critical period. McDonald and […]
[…] such quarters by reference to other views, even when readily available. For example he recounts (p. 67) the highly questionable Searchlight/World in Action view of the C18- MI5 relationship as though it was the only one. Importing into academic discourse the propaganda output of Searchlight magazine gravely hampers what at first sight seems the […]
[…] Information-wise, it is almost useless, though there were one or two nice pictures. It was mostly bits and bobs of spy- or intelligenceish news, recycled from newspapers. MI5 lost laptops! Le Carre was a spy! ETA are bad! Star Wars hack Donald Rumsford has ‘vast political experience’ and his credibility is ‘sky high!’ FBI […]
[…] on Public Records in 24 th Annual Report of Public Records Office. (Guardian 1 July 1983.) Thatcher personally stops publication of two books: official histories of war-time MI5 and war-time counter intelligence operations. (Guardian 25 November and 8 December 1983) Anthony Lester QC lecture states UK increasingly isolated from Europe and Commonwealth by refusal […]
What our pols read on their hols This summer it was hard to avoid laudatory pieces about or extracts from the Drew Weston’s book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.(1) Here, it was said, was the explanation of how George Bush beat the Democrats and – by […]
[…] criminals and demanding, effectively, a political show-trial. At the same time they have hypocritically called for the release of a real mass-murderer, General Pinochet. Disappointingly, the exiled MI5 whistle-blower, David Shayler, has added his tuppenyworth to the tabloid calls to ‘string ‘er up’, prompting the suspicion that he is more like Peter Wright (a […]
[…] Two possible explanations come to mind. One, he had been much involved in the Ulster troubles as Northern Ireland Secretary. Then as Home Secretary, and responsibility for MI5, he had to deal with the IRA mainland bombing campaign. Two, he had a long record of seeking to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and […]
