[…] of, in fact, up to and including little hints about possible parapolitical dimensions. Did the US oil companies help the SDP to ensure the demise of a Labour government which might have imposed more conditions on them? Did the US government help fund the Scottish National Party in the 1970s? These questions are not […]
[…] the book is not terribly interesting. Part of it is Mayhew’s memories of his struggle with the CP front groups – the friendship societies – in the 1950s, and the rest is fragmented memories of his increasing dissatisfaction with the Labour Party and his eventual defection to the Liberal Party and thence into the SDP.
[…] (FARI). John Bruce Lockhart (Obituary, Independent 13 May 1995). SIS officer. Niall MacDermot (Obituary by David Leigh in the Guardian, 26 February 1996). War-time MI5 officer, later Labour MP and Minister in the first Wilson government, whose career was halted by MI5 ostensibly because of his wife’s links with Soviet officials, but probably because […]
[…] new magazine about … how to put this accurately?..Northern Irish politics and the British state from a Republican perspective? In other words, not too dissimilar to, say, Labour and Ireland but with a much greater emphasis on news. It appears 6 times a year and though the subscription is given as f30 (French francs?) […]
Searchlight At the beginning of the essay on the Blairites above, I discuss the concept of political contamination, the denigration of people on the left by association – real or fictitious – with ideas or people on the right. The most enthusiastic users of the contamination device in Britain today are found in Searchlight magazine. … Read more
[…] the broadcasting regulations – yet another falsehood.’ I have no sympathy for Robin Cook who has turned out to be at least as useless as any other Labour Minister, but readers of this column may remember that in issue 36 I described how Pilger had sent me a long letter and demanded I publish […]
[…] to Holroyd either, while writing his book The Dirty War from which Urban took the quotation. Hedging his bets as expertly as the MOD answering an inquisitive Labour MP, Urban concludes that his ‘own research has not produced any evidence to support the claim that the security forces colluded with loyalist death squads in […]
[…] that Kelly was a ‘KGB man’. You can see how the smear went: Agee went to the KGB (or can be said to have done so); Kelly is the leader of Agee’s defence committee in London, therefore Kelly is KGB. *Phil Kelly is now a Labour Councillor in Islington and chair of its Education Committee.
[…] Up for discussion is the future of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Mr Blair is determined to hammer out an agreement which will protect the monarchy. A Labour insider said: “This will be the ultimate pow-wow. The issue can not be put off any longer…Diana’s relationship with Dodi Fayed and her role in public […]
[…] role of J. J. Angleton in fomenting right-wing discontent with the Wilson governments points to a CIA connection with the plots to destabilise the 1964-70 and 1974-79 Labour administrations (see Peter Wright, Spycatcher: the Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, New York: Viking Penguin, 1987; and Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear! Wilson […]
