[PDF file]: Thatcher’s Secret War Subversion, Coercion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90 Clive Bloom Stroud: The History Press, 2015, £20 (h/b) Robin Ramsay I was seriously interested when I got the publisher’s flyer about this book. To my knowledge no-one has tackled this subject in its entirety; and noone has even re-examined Thatcher’s rise to power, the […]
[PDF file]: Blacklisted The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain O ne of the co-authors, Phil Chamberlain, wrote an early sketch of this material in Lobster 58 (which is on-line 1 ) and the subtitle of that piece, ‘How the Economic League lived on’ might have been the subtitle […]
[PDF file]: The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret relationship with apartheid South Africa Sasha Polakow-Suransky London: Vintage Books, 2011, £16.00 O ne of the striking features of the apartheid years was the courageous determination of many South African Jews to bring down a regime significantly sustained through close alliance with Israel. In part this was a relationship […]
[PDF file]: The Devil’s Chessboard Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government David Talbot William Collins, London, 2015 HB, 686pp., illus., index, bib., refs., £25.00 This truly excellent biography is at least partly a biography of two men, Allen Dulles and his older brother John Foster. I write ‘at least partly’ because […]
[PDF file]: Area 51 An uncensored history of America’s top secret military base Annie Jacobsen London: Orion: 2011, £20, h/b Built round interviews with participants, journalist Jacobson has written an account – not quite a history, really – of the U2 and Blackbird surveillance planes, and their significant role in the Cold War. There are lots […]
[…] But in 1984 Jim Hougan produced one of the great pieces of research in post-war American politics and gave us a completely new account of Watergate, his Secret Agenda (New York, Ballantine, 1985; no UK edition). Hougan’s research was subsequently reworked by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in their Silent Coup (London: Gollancz, 1991). […]
Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones London: Yale University Press, 2002, £22.50 Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World Percy Craddock London: John Murray, 2002, £25 Jeffreys-Jones is Professor of American History at Edinburgh University and writes on the American intelligence services. His book’s […]
[…] a kind of theoretical framework for the case studies which follow it, Lawrence seeks to document “striking advances (which) have emerged in the functioning of the (U.S.) secret police.” For Lawrence, “By the end of the sixties it was clear to the establishment that its traditional methods of social control were weakening, and that […]
[…] too convenient; and too, too neat. Republican News, the paper of Sinn Fein, commented a couple of weeks later: ‘We are now left with the UOP (Polish Secret Service), MI5 and MI6…. all claiming a success. MI5 has justified the continuation of its funding. The British government is seen to have delivered a blow […]
[…] he duly reported without comment. I have been told by a woman who knew Shaw very well throughout the 1950s and 60’s that Shaw’s homosexuality was no secret in his social circle. But while his friends might know he was gay New Orleans as a town did not. If I underscore his homosexuality it […]
