IRD, home and away The creation of the Information Policy unit in HQ Northern Ireland in 1971 may have been the last occasion on which the classic IRD psy-war operation was created. Evidence of previous examples is hard to find, but skimming through Charles Foley’s Legacy of Strife: Cyprus from rebellion to civil war (Penguin, […]
[…] twenty years ago Ken Livingstone took a sustained interest until the researcher who was generating the questions he was asking in the House of Commons joined the BBC. Now we have Norman Baker, the Liberal-Democrat MP, who has kind of inherited the ‘awkward squad’ mantle from Tam Dalyell. He has had a short Commons […]
A small section of this appeared in Lobster 12. Although this is incomplete and under researched, we thought it worth putting out now. The origins of IRD 1947 saw the creation of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD). It is generally accepted that IRD was the brain-child of the then Labour M.P. Christopher Mayhew, […]
[…] and will only act when national courts are unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute. Ireland Panorama – A Licence to Murder Two-part documentary broadcast by the BBC June 19 and 23 2002 ‘reveals the extent to which some members of the British Intelligence services colluded with – and even tried to direct – […]
Ken Livingstone MP, has been putting dozens and dozens of questions to our state about the cases and allegations of Fred Holroyd and Colin Wallace, those bits of the secret state you are allowed to ask questions about, Northern Ireland, psy ops and so on. Putting down such questions is a fairly dispiriting business. Some […]
[…] any normal sense of that term, and have largely exploited their powerful positions at the expense of employees and shareholders as well as the Revenue. As a BBC journalist Lansley knows from experience how much of the corporation’s licence fee for programme making is diverted into the pockets of a handful of big-name presenters, […]
[…] role in first attempt to float the RUC package smearing Holroyd, explaining McKittrick’s previous use of Wallace as apparently reliable source, and John Ware’s role in the BBC Panorama ‘investigation’ of the Wright/Wallace/MI5 plots story. 21 September 1987. Wallace receives report of polygraph (lie detector) report done on him and his central allegations by […]
[…] little tip, with the notable exceptions of the Guardian and Channel Four News, the response of the media on mainland UK was pathetic, if hardly surprising. The BBC even got John Ware of all people, one of the co-authors of the notorious 1987 Independent smear-job on Wallace and Fred Holroyd, to give the first […]
[…] Trust, 2001) p. 841. 10 Lindsey Jenkins – see note 6 – p. 239. 11 British Management Data Foundation, ‘Document: A Letter to The Times’, Transcript of BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast on Thursday, 3 February 2000, (Stroud, Glos,: British Management Data Foundation) 12 Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, 1948-1977 […]
[…] be a coincidence of course, but this Observer piece appeared just after the rumour ran through the little group of journalists then working with Wallace that the BBC Panorama team were going to do a hatchet job on him. Chances are that Leigh and Lashmar were just hedging their bets in case Wallace turned […]
