Brian Crozier HarperCollins, London, 1993 This is a very interesting book which greatly adds to our knowledge of the clandestine shaping of British politics in the 1970s and 80s. It is also a book which, like Chapman Pincher’s Inside Story, will repay repeated re-reading. But amidst all the new material a surprising amount of these […]
[…] Indonesia. ‘The bodies of the murdered generals were found in a well near the air force base of Halim (the air force had been a centre of communist influence among the military). A gruesome pogrom followed through the country as opponents of the PKI took their revenge.’ The crude attempt to imply that the […]
[…] the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): “Critics of a power elite theory often call it “conspiratorial”, which is the academic equivalent of ending a discussion by yelling Communist. It is difficult to lay this charge to rest once and for all because these critics really mean something much broader than the dictionary definition of […]
[…] on IRD’s domestic operations takes that contention a good deal further forward. The authors tell us that in 1956 the Conservative MP Douglas Dodds-Parker, a former anti- communist ally of Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin, had been appointed to the Foreign Office as Under-Secretary – and apparently in formal charge of liaison with IRD.(2) Dodds-Parker […]
[…] Times for Nixon’s ‘plumbers unit’: ‘Nixonian plumbing was a defensive response to aggression’. Ignorance masquerading as sophistication. Interesting piece about Soldier of Fortune magazine, the World Anti Communist League and General John K.Singlaub in New Statesman 2 November 1984. (The War Against ‘Communism’) The author is Chris Horrie who is, if memory serves me, […]
[…] details the U.S. role in Indonesia’s deadly purge of ‘ communists’ in the 1960s. The volume concerned also points out that the US embassy supplied lists of communist leaders to the Indonesians who were trying to destroy the PKI. The embassy said the lists were ‘……apparently being used by Indonesian security authorities who seem […]
[…] Hollis, and Norman Reddaway representing the IRD. At the end of it, Brook instructed Hollis to make available to the Foreign Office, with security collateral, intelligence about communist malpractices in the unions that could be used by IRD. This led, among other things, to the ousting of Foulkes and Haxell from the leadership of […]
[…] The Hidden Face of the Labour Party, a large tabloid-style pamphlet warning of the penetration of the Labour Party by ‘communists’ and, in the 1979 version, by ‘communist’ and Trotskyist groups. Contemporary reports suggested these pamphlets had been distributed by the million. I met him in 1987. He was a very charming toff. I […]
Greg Grandin New York: Metropolitan books, 2006, $25.00 Reviewing a biography of Harold Laski in 1953,() the historian A. J. P. Taylor remarked on ‘the dilemma of our times’: that ‘no-one who believes in liberty can ever work sincerely with communists, or trust them, yet no-one who has socialism in his bones can ever […]
[…] — a regiment of CIA agents and Labour Attachés to fund and steer the anti socialist wing of the European labour movement in the name of ‘the communist threat’. This left revisionist thesis, specifically the wide-spread belief on the European Left that the shape of post-war unionism in Europe was largely down to the […]
