[…] the shape of IRD. The only bits of interest are an entertaining account by Alan Sked of his career as a eurosceptic and this snippet from former Conservative MP Richard Body: ‘Carefully selected people were invited to luncheon and dinner ……..to hear speakers give what they claimed to be confidential briefings “off the record”. […]
[…] World War and post-war official controls’ huffs and puffs merely to show that while the City was sat on between 1939 and 1951, as soon as the Conservative Party got into office, it got its hands back on economic policy. Notice how Roberts puts this: “Two decades of cheap money came to an end […]
[…] constructive statesman, admittedly flawed, but certainly not a criminal; in fact, as a great wasted talent. This man, we are routinely assured, could have led either the Conservative or the Labour party; but then so could Tony Blair, so this hardly amounts to a great endorsement, even assuming its validity. But what does this […]
A spook, moi? One of the formative experiences of my youth – and we’re talking early 1960s here, beatnik days, when wearing a narrow leather tie was pretty hip – was going to the Mound in Edinburgh on Sunday nights. The Mound is like Hyde Park Corner in London, a place where local by-laws allow … Read more
The history of the police, fascism and anti-fascism in Britain, is dominated by three very different interpretations. First, there is the argument that the police acted as a constraint against fascism: intervening against fascist groups as the need arose. Second, there is the opposite view: that the police were a hindrance to anti-fascists, acting always … Read more
[…] its Empire intact while simultaneously allowing Hitler to proceed on his crusade against the real enemy, the USSR. This defeatism was encouraged by powerful sections of the Conservative Party, the City, industry and the Royal Family, all of whom were disposed on ideological and/or racist grounds to take a favourable view of Nazism. So […]
[…] given the absence of a real subversive threat in CND which would provide a legitimate excuse for penetration and surveillance, and unwilling to tell this to its Conservative political masters, MI5 did simply fabricate a communist/subversive role CND didn’t deserve. However, assuming that MI5 will simply fabricate a ‘new threat’ to keep themselves in […]
[…] another vicious attack on a Catholic. Campbell and Longstaff were both defended at their trials by Donald Findlay QC, Scottish Barrister, Dean of St Andrews University, leading Conservative, and who himself was caught on video giving a fine rendition of the Protestant anthem ‘The Sash’ at a post-match piss-up at Glasgow Rangers’ ground, Ibrox. […]
[…] Brandt was an emigre and therefore suspect in many eyes. This was used in 1961 when, in one of the dirtiest political campaigns in post-war Germany, the conservative CDU/CSU parties called Brandt “a traitor to the fatherland”. Nazi propaganda that emigres were untrustworthy had a lasting effect. This unease even extended into the West’s […]
Watergate revisited: Hougan’s Secret Agenda Introduction No apologies for returning to Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda. As Steve Dorril said in Lobster 8, this is a major event. This essay is in two parts. In the first I make some critical remarks about Secret Agenda’s central theses; In the second I speculate about other items on […]
