[…] threatened by Soviet expansionism (13). (This had always been Angleton’s view and the reason for his support of Israel.) By 1979 Commentary had become a full-blown neo- Conservative, pro-Reagan platform: the editor, Norman Podhoretz, had even seen the prospect of the ‘Finlandisation of America’ lurking behind detente. (14). Along the way two books had […]
[…] Briefing, edited by a former head of MI5’s F Branch, Charles Elwell. In 1995 it was revealed that in 1963 IRIS had received £40,000 from the ( Conservative) government via its ‘secret vote’, unaccountable funds, and a further £35,000 from a number of large companies, including Ford and Shell. See The Times, Guardian and […]
Greg Grandin New York: Metropolitan books, 2006, $25.00 Reviewing a biography of Harold Laski in 1953,([1]) the historian A. J. P. Taylor remarked on ‘the dilemma of our times’: that ‘no-one who believes in liberty can ever work sincerely with communists, or trust them, yet no-one who has socialism in his bones can ever … Read more
[…] and 60s’, and Lashmar and Oliver’s chapter on IRD’s domestic operations takes that contention a good deal further forward. The authors tell us that in 1956 the Conservative MP Douglas Dodds-Parker, a former anti-communist ally of Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin, had been appointed to the Foreign Office as Under-Secretary – and apparently in formal […]
[…] colleague of Clermont member David Stirling – was curious, as neither prior to this event nor subsequently, did he demonstrate any interest in being leader of the Conservative Party. His candidacy, which allowed Thatcher to look more ‘centrist’ than she actually was, attracted 16 votes and damaged Heath, who lost to Thatcher by 119 […]
[PDF file]: […] a TUC increasingly accustomed to dealing in the political arena, wedded to a major political party which, almost alone in Europe, encompassed the majority of the non- Conservative working class. At the same time, the government’s apparatus for manipulating public opinion had grown inordinately, enabling it – on its own estimate – to confront […]
[PDF file]: […] of the political side can be found in Rob Wilson’s Five Days to Power (Biteback, 2010) which provides a thorough look at the Cameron-Clegg negotiations. Although a Conservative MP, Wilson’s narrative is not noticeably partisan (perhaps because he began his career in the Social Democratic Party ) and he provides some intriguing background detail […]
[PDF file]: […] by elements within the security forces of the United Kingdom seeking to destabilise the Government of the day and to try to ensure the return of a Conservative Government with a right-wing leader. As a footnote to these events they examine the role of the “black” propaganda unit in Northern Ireland during the period […]
[PDF file]: […] Report (see note 1) p. 66. 5 ;and James Hilder, ‘Iraq war killed 162,000 people, according to final count’, The Times, 3 January 2012. this is a conservative estimate. US military casualties, though not as grim as the Iraqi death toll, are still significant with 4,484 killed and 32,300 wounded as of December 2011, […]
[PDF file]: […] a ‘dash for growth’, but an attempt to rejig British capitalism in preparation for EEC entry. This was not widely understood at the time, even in the Conservative Party. Norman Tebbitt, for example, writing in the mid-1980s, looked back on the Heath ‘U-turn’ from the free market emphasis of Selsdon Man and saw a […]
