[…] the banks another £46 million: the public finances were running out of cash. (2) At this point alarm bells rang in London and Paris. In 1875 the Conservative administration of Benjamin Disraeli used the crisis to buy the Khedive’s shares in the newly built Suez Canal. In 1876 Egypt was forced to accept a […]
JFK bits and pieces Paul Hoch recommends JFK:The Book of the Film (Applause Books, 211 West 71 St NY, NY 10023). This contains a footnoted JFK screenplay and about 350 pages of published articles, including some of the best anti-Stone stories. The final badge of honour was bestowed upon Stone’s movie by a long, ludicrous … Read more
[…] British state and Thatcherism in 1984/5 and lost. (Beckett suggests that the CPGB leadership did not want this show-down.) After 1974 and the Saltley depot event, the Conservative Party and the British state prepared not to be defeated ever again: the miners and the British Left in general did nothing. Like other generals before […]
[…] We’ve got another MP who takes a serious interest in the British secret state. In the past we have had MPs who had been secret servants (mostly Conservative) and a few Labour MPs who took a temporary interest. Almost twenty years ago Ken Livingstone took a sustained interest until the researcher who was generating […]
[…] presence of the Labour MP Allan Rogers on the new Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. They quote examples of his support for left-wing causes taken from the Conservative Party’s 1992 Who’s Left: An index of Labour MP’s and Left-wing causes 1985-1992 (which Julian Lewis had a hand in compiling). Mr Rogers comes in about […]
[…] pro-nuclear, pro-EU and pro-destroying the public sector. The only significant difference is that the Cameroons are linked to a different cluster of corporate sponsors. The NuLab and Conservative parties’ use of PR is discussed but that isn’t the meat of those chapters. This is the best introduction to real power politics in this society […]
The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 1 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Pan Books, 1998, £7.99 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 2 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Macmillan, 1999, £25 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 3 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Macmillan 2000, £25 Woodrow Wyatt’s diaries are quite remarkable. Any normal persons would have tried … Read more
[…] this century, had played a key role in establishing the system of apartheid in South Africa, and in the process helped to ensure the preservation of ultra- conservative Afrikaner cultural values and Afrikaner political dominance until 199. Yet this organization also existed. It was known as the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), and it formed a […]
[…] Rothschild was also close to Strachey (a former communist theoretician), and had been a scientific adviser to Strachey’s infamous Groundnuts scheme, a financial disaster used by the Conservative Party and its allies in the press to discredit both Strachey and the Labour Party. In 1963 de Courcy was found guilty of fraud and imprisoned […]
[…] Observer had stood out against the British invasion of Suez in 1956, despite courting the scorn of the government and the loss of some of its more conservative readers and advertisers. And yet this newspaper which had thrived on scepticism was seduced into accepting unproven and extravagant claims; this flagship of the left was […]
