[…] at various times a Communist Party member, Ban-the-Bomber and Rank and File shop steward.’ It omitted to say that he had also been a member of the Conservative Party at one stage in a rather varied career. The balloon goes up On February 20, 1985, Channel 4 banned a 20/20 Vision documentary programme and […]
The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners Seumas Milne London: Verso, 2004, p/back, £8 GB84 David Peace London: Faber & Faber, 2004, p/back, £12.99 On the 20th anniversary of the most significant power struggle in post war Britain, two very different books on the miners’ strike of 1984-85, read alongside each other, … Read more
[…] and offences under the Official Secrets Act. I was already aware of the activities of Michael Murrin, a private investigator who was employed and financed by prominent Conservative politicians, including the MPs Sir Peter, now Lord, Blaker and Robert Atkins, now Sir Robert Atkins. Michael Murrin recorded his telephone conversations and following a compromise […]
[…] national security.’ Only recently the government had tried to put the editor of Punch in prison. (3) ‘I used to think the problem was 18 years of Conservative government, now I think the problem is government per se.’ Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson, Secretary of the D-Notice Committee, believes that without the D-notice system there […]
[…] which has grown like Jack’s beanstalk as partisans and disinteresteds alike slug it out.(11) However, history is written by the victors. Former Clinton ally (i.e. converted neo- conservative) Dick Morris gave the world the benefit of his insight shortly after election day. Who does Mr Morris think is to blame for the discrepancies in […]
[…] 1986) which is more or less an expansion of this final chapter. My opinions on the current “line” in anti-racist strategies are of no relevance here, but when I read in Heidel’s essay that “the racism of the neo- conservative New Right is cultural” it seems to me that something has gone wrong. ‘Cultural racism’?
[…] from public to private. (And because they were the Labour Party, they could do this without the opposition from the unions and the public sector that the Conservative Party would have faced. Many of the trade union supporters and members of New Labour have been in a state of total denial about the reality […]
[…] reading one sheet of A4. One final point: this reminded me again that among the leading architects of the creation of the current muddled but fundamentally neo- conservative NuLab were a group of ex-CPGB members and one ex-Trot (Mulgan), who in their left incarnations despised the Labour Party, and finally got to help kill […]
[…] more mundane figure than the PR machine would have us believe. Early Blair The PM had no great connection with the Labour Party (his father was a Conservative barrister, widely tipped as likely to get a seat in Parliament before a disabling stroke) and has, arguably, no great connection either with the English or […]
[…] may not appear to be elements within MI5, but these fringe organisations operated in conjunction with MI5 officers. That is what an inquiry would establish. Indeed it might establish that some of the people involved were in the mainstream of British politics. As I have said, two Conservative hon. Members are identified by Mr. Wright.
