[…] paragraph refutation, the entire briefing is baloney; a poorly argued rationale at best; forelock-tugging at worst. Indeed, the FCO briefing paper is so poor, just as today’s Labour Cabinet members make those of the Wilson-Callaghan generation seem like giants, I wonder if the quality of people going into the Foreign Office hasn’t also declined. […]
Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain: Volume 1 edited by Michael David Kandiah and Anthony Seldon Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1996 £29.50 As the title suggests this really contains two separate though not unrelated areas. The first is a series of shortish essays about so-called think tanks in the UK which follow on from […]
Many thanks to Terry Hanstock for contributions. Comments and contributions to Shayler case and human rights David Shayler went on trial at the Old Bailey in October/ November 2002 for disclosing information and documents relating to security and intelligence, under s1(1) and 4(1) of the Official Secrets Act 1989. During the trial he was […]
One neglected aspect of the plotting against Harold Wilson and the Labour Governments of the 1970s was the fact that it took place while the social democrat governments of Australia, New Zealand and West Germany — and possibly Canada — were also being subjected to destabilisation campaigns, with the some of the same characters […]
[…] this period. Yet despite the massive detail there are obvious things missing from Lucas’s account. Most striking is the tiny space devoted to the role of US labour unions and transnational labour bodies created and run by the US. This is surprising, for their activities in the immediate post WW2 period strongly support his […]
[…] over in 1975, and Indonesia became America’s most reliable Asian ally. One of his leading advisers is Mike Donovan, regional representative of the ‘American Institute for Free Labour Development’, a branch of US trades union organisation which “works closely with the US government in seeking information on Bishop’s supporters in the trades unions and […]
[…] Hook mentions Rousset’s suggestion in Out of Step, op. cit. p. 432. The God that Failed (Hamish Hamilton/London, 1950) was a collection of six essays edited by Labour MP Richard Crossman, three by ‘the initiates’ (Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, and Richard Wright) and three by ‘worshippers from afar’ (Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, and Stephen […]
[…] navy budget, later said that he ‘would have been astonished if those ships, from exercise Spring Train, had not been carrying nuclear weapons.’ (9) According to the Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, there was consternation in the Ministry of Defence when it was appreciated that a very large proportion of the Royal Navy’s entire stock […]
[…] person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil […]
[…] Freedom of Information Act, and are not likely to get one from any of the British political parties. Imagine a conversation in the office of the new Labour Prime Minister in a year or three: ‘FOI? Too much trouble, too much aggro with Whitehall. As if we need any more, what with the economy, […]
