[…] class and to eradicate the reforms won by decades of peaceful struggle’. (p.101) This, I would remind him, could equally well characterise both Thatcherism and the New Labour project. ‘Reaction’ in Renton’s shaky hands is merely shorthand for people whose views he and the SWP leadership (before whom he genuflects) don’t like. In case […]
[…] the Cold War. Angleton became very important within the CIA. Not only head of counter-intelligence, but also CIA liaison with the Israelis and the FBI; he ran labour operations in Europe with Jay Lovestone; took responsibility for the surveillance of the American opposition to the Vietnam War; and, finally and fatally for his career, […]
[…] damning intelligence against Iraq being selectively chosen, while intelligence assessments, which might have worked against the build-up to war, were sidelined. Intelligence work had become politicised under Labour, and spies were taking orders from politicians. They provided worst-case scenarios which were use by politicians to make factual claims.’ (3) There were no names and […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] conviction, guilty or otherwise; net snooping at work; Echelon and its cousins; the origins of the surveillance society in 19th century use of private detectives to break labour organisations; the history of so-called ‘red squads’; the growth of federal law enforcement agencies and their intelligence gathering; the growth of private, political intelligence gathering from […]
[…] The Price of truth: the story of Reuters’ millions by John Lawrenson and Lionel Barber which will no doubt skim over Reuters’ connections to British intelligence. Former Labour Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, although he says he’s for Freedom of Information, will likewise be closemouthed in Northern Ireland: a personal perspective (Methuen) Out soon from […]
[PDF file]: […] about what would be the next story to be leaked, scandal to be revealed, personality to be defamed, that was going to be another blow to the Labour Government. Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay have sought to unravel the events which took place at that time. They suggest that it was all part of […]
[PDF file]: […] that underpin the Coalition? We might normally expect Her Majesty’s Opposition to have something – substantial – to say. But, apart from occasional moments of denial, the Labour Party position appears to be that it accepts the general assumptions made by the new government and would pursue broadly similar policies – but would either […]
[PDF file]: […] books, as its participants cash in with lucrative publishing deals and get their version of history into print as quickly as possible. Thus has the demise of Labour in May 2010 been marked. The accounts that have appeared include the absurdly self-centred, stating-the-obvious-at-alltimes tales of Peter Mandelson; the fantastic, optimistic and daytime TV-oriented (and […]
[PDF file]: […] the LSE (1964-1967) during which, he asserts, he was a revolutionary socialist himself. Apparently, this makes him especially qualified to ruminate on the background of the current Labour Party leader. Even if this is so, early on it becomes clear that this book doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know (or couldn’t […]
