Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World Mark Curtis London: Vintage, 2003; p/b, £7.99 This latest analysis of British foreign policy by Mark Curtis could not be better timed. With more than a million Britons on the streets of London protesting against the Iraq war earlier this year there is a potentially large […]
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 – […]
Paul Todd, Jonathan Bloch, and Patrick Fitzgerald London: Zedbooks, 2009, £14.99, p/b, £39.95 h/b This book is published as the debate rages in America about whether or not the activities of the Bush regime, specifically the torture of various combat detainees and suspects rendered from various parts of the world, should be subject to […]
[…] 1st November 2002 on the occasion of her resignation: ‘I feel strongly that minimum standards of accountability and probity have not been upheld by some leading officers and members of the executive.’ According to the Tribune article, Ms Davis was referring to ‘allegations of financial malpractice’. 4 Any Questions, BBC Radio 4, 25 October 2002
[…] 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, […]
[…] Kinnock’s Making Our Way (Blackwell, Oxford, 1986). Bryan Gould, Goodbye To All That, (Macmillan, London, 1995) p. 202 Gould p. 205. Eatwell is now Lord Eatwell. Duckworth/ BBC, 1982 See note 24 above Gould p. 209 This is discussed below. To my knowledge neither has explained this change and I am unable to date […]
[…] 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 […]
