“There was another institution which gave Billy particular pleasure. It was called Le Cercle, and outside the circle nothing was known about it but the name. Its origins and membership were (and still are) as deeply cocooned in mystery as those of the most exclusive Masonic lodge. It appears to have been founded by the … Read more
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS. HEAD OF COMMITTEE LOOKING INTO PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AGAINST COMMUNIST REGIMES 1954 PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SEC FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS 1947-50 CHAIRMAN BRITISH EMPIRES PRODUCERS ORGANISATION 1962-64 CONSERVATIVE COMMONWEALTH COUNSELLOR DONELLY, MAJOR FRANK MI6 (B) 1946 DEPT Q RESPONSIBLE FOR ‘CLEAN’ ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES FOR CLANDESTINE OPERATIONS 1949 ALBANIAN OPERATION DONNELLY, JOSEPH BRIAN B […]
[…] contracts a year with the ministry, and the top 5 contractors account for 31 percent of MOD business.’ p. 178 ‘In the two years to 1995, the Conservative Party received almost £1 million from those firms paid £5 million or more by the MOD in 1995-6.’ p. 178 A European defence industry? ‘The risk […]
[…] heroes. This changed in the 1980s when the SAS found themselves enlisted as Thatcher’s Praetorian Guard, their exploits, both past and present, exploited as part of the Conservative Party’s ideological offensive against the post-1945 political and social settlement.’ (p. 3) He notes the ‘interesting cultural difference between Britain and the United States that there […]
[…] Sutch. There was the Moyle affair in which a police report about Colin Moyle’s nocturnal activities on the streets of Wellington somehow got into the hands of Conservative leader Muldoon. There was the “Think tank’ affair, in which the newspaper Truth concocted a conspiracy fantasy in which Labour was going to nationalise all the […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] June 2000, he has been welcomed back into the ranks of the Pinay Circle and attended the June meeting of the Circle in Lisbon. Also present were Conservative MPs Michael Howard and Alan Duncan and Lord Cranbourne, leader of the Tories in the House of Lords. NATO and Kosovo The most surprising comments on […]
[…] the story has been subject to some ridicule by some sectors of the defence establishment. Tam Dalyell’s initial source, shortly after the Falklands War, was a senior Conservative back-bench MP with an interest in defence matters and close links with the Ministry of Defence, and who later held ministerial office. Tam later had it […]
