[PDF file]: The crisis: an historical perspective Scott Newton Introduction A s a student at Cambridge in the mid-1970s I was fortunate enough to be taught by a great medieval historian – Walter Ullman. Ullman liked to say that the task of the historian was to explain ‘how and why we came to be where we are […]
[PDF file]: […] Hence the scandals and suspicions of scandals – ‘conspiracy theories’ – that plagued them in the inter-war years, from the ‘Cambridge Five’ fiasco to the alleged ‘ Wilson Plot’. One hopes they’ve learned their lesson by now. Our lives may depend upon it. Secrecy is also, of course, the enemy of the historian. It […]
[PDF file]: […] a meeting with my then MP, Roland Moyle, to discuss attempts by the Intelligence Services in Northern Ireland during 1974 to discredit various political figures, including Harold Wilson. The 1981 destruction of documents may also be significant. That was the year that three staff members, including the Tara leader, William McGrath, of the Kincora […]
[PDF file]: […] by revealing (minor) state secrets. Today we have Cameron and Clegg, imitations of Tony Blair, Thatcher’s successor, who hardly matter. Then, influenced by research on the ‘ Wilson plots’, the secret state seemed important and powerful. These days it doesn’t seem so significant. Would the average MP today be more afraid of the Daily […]
[PDF file]: […] with much the same texture.) He quickly concluded that Arthur Scargill, at that time emerging as a leader of the miners, was ‘too egotistical and reckless’. Harold Wilson was ‘an unprincipled, slippery customer who was not to be trusted’. He took ‘the CIA tour’ of the USA with Neil Kinnock in 1975 soon after […]
[PDF file]: […] work for the CIA. “I assured them”, Maheu recalled, “I intend to keep my word and maintain the secrecy of the mission.” Meanwhile, Assistant Attorney General Will Wilson was quickly assigned to review whatever the Justice Department might hold on the CIA-Mafia contacts. The Nixon White House, he would later tell Watergate investigators, was […]
[PDF file]: […] the Tory right that Stonehouse was a traitor, working for the Soviet bloc, was added the whisper that he was involved in some dodgy finances and Harold Wilson dropped him from the cabinet when took office in February 1974. Author Hayes is the son of a man who was one of Stonehouse’s lawyers and […]
[PDF file]: […] is it ‘unimaginable’ not to support the US? It used not to be ‘unimaginable’. Edward Heath declined to support the US in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Harold Wilson refused to send troops to fight with the US in Vietnam. There are two major conclusions to be drawn from these events. The first is that […]
[PDF file]: The view from the bridge Robin Ramsay Knock, knock As I read the first few paragraphs of the story about the British Territorial Army1 unit tasked to infiltrate and penetrate the British peace movement in the 1980s, I was amused.2 ‘Infiltration’ and ‘penetration’ means they joined it. Most of the peace movement in particular and […]
[PDF file]: […] might call the paranoid left – which was looking at the American and British secret states in the wake of JFK, Vietnam, Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the Wilson plots and changes in policing and the rise of the ‘strong state’. Yet, looking back at the last 40 years or so, it is quite clear […]
