Editorially Writing in mid-January… good news is the arrival of The Digger, apparently set fair to replace Private Eye as the major outlet – major above ground outlet – for British parapolitics. (Lobster, as one British academic said to me, is ‘underground’…). The new Kincora-Blunt trail, opened up by Ken Livingstone in the House of […]
[…] this small but powerful ‘Political Class’ has, through the practice of ‘manipulative populism’, done to a variety of British institutions, including the Civil Service, the Foreign Office, MI6, the legal system, the monarchy and Parliament. Oborne writes well and his anger-fuelled text carries the reader along at a great lick. One thing that made […]
[…] going to win, particularly as communist-affiliated groups were attempting to take the initiative on this soon after WWII. As Stephen Dorril has stressed in his book on MI6, the British involvement in these activities was ahead of the Americans in many respects. Aldrich related how the Cultural Relations Department, a forerunner to the more […]
[…] one of the first historians to acknowledge the parapolitical dimension in modern British history, from the formation of the Special Branch to the construction of the new MI6 headquarters over a century later. This is allied to a perception that covert forces, including in the 1970s the CIA, have generally worked to protect the […]
[…] Paget MP (Labour — Eton, Trinity College, European Movement); Conservative Cabinet member Duncan Sandys; Patrick Wall MP (founder of the secret 92 Group of Tory MPs);(15) ex MI6 officer Stephen Hastings MP; Lord Salisbury, the Society’s President, and his son Lord Cranborne; Lord Coleraine, Judge Gerald Sparrow, Lord Hinchenbrooke (Victor Montagu), Lord Forester, the […]
[…] regard for your family, your children or you.'(21) There, too, was that old chestnut: ‘SIS insists it is not dominated by a macho culture – indeed female MI6 officers play on people’s emotions in a way men cannot…’ (22) Yes, some women do. However, only the dated believe this is their unique value to […]
[…] B inquiry. This agency was later revealed to be Zeus Securities, the brainchild of Peter Hamilton, a man with formidable establishment credentials and a long background in MI6. Zeus, then operated by ex-MI5 officer, Jeremy Wetherall, of another security firm, Lynx, was given the contract to organise the surveillance, which they sub-contracted to Sapphire […]
[…] the United Kingdon believed that unorthodox methods and techniques were required in the war. The intervention of these groupings, which included Special Branch, military intelligence, MI5 and MI6, was uncoordinated. Much has been written about that period, some of it honest journalism, but most of it (emphasis added) propaganda inspired by the terrorists and […]
[…] never alleged this. “In an account he claims to have written in 1976 as evidence of his intimate involvement in the intelligence world, Wallace talks of an MI6 operative he knew. In fact that document reveals an event – the death of a policeman – that actually occurred in December 1981.” I think I’ve […]
[…] was assistant editor of The Economist. Lloyd and Leonard Jr. keep interesting company at the FPC. Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (see above) is ‘senior researcher’ and career MI6 officer Meta (now Baroness) Ramsay is on the advisory council. Alongside Lloyd and Ramsay are Sir Michael Butler, the former British permanent representative to the European […]
