A Wapping mystery I noticed with some interest that Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, was described in the Guardian on May 27 as having been labour correspondent of the Economist in the 1970s. Was he, I thought, one of the correspondents recruited by MI5 in the big F branch expansion circa 1973-5? Did that explain […]
The Christie File part 3, 1967-75 Stuart Christie p/back, £34 (inc. p and p) from Like the first, reviewed in Lobster 44, this third volume (300 pages, indexed) in Christie’s autobiography is done on A4 pages with the central text bordered with photographs of the people and incidents concerned, newspaper clippings, posters, cartoons etc. With […]
A secret service? In the Guardian of 12 June 2000 David Leigh had an important piece on the relationship between our secret servants and the media. At the core of this was his account of the revelation, via a libel suit in London, of an MI6 operation to plant disinformation in the Sunday Telegraph about […]
[…] is strongest, as one would expect, in those who have exercised power at the highest levels – among the Men in Suits. From Chamberlain through Heath and Thatcher, each deposed leader retained the support of the Party beyond Westminster. Tory supporters in their associations and clubs felt a great sense of loss and bereavement […]
[…] audiences over Iraq, Ledeen through the good offices of the Hollinger Group, until recently run by the Telegraph/Spectator group owner Conrad Black who was ennobled by Margaret Thatcher. Perle, who appeared repeatedly in newspapers and on radio and TV in Britain during the build-up to war, was for many years a Hollinger director. In […]
[…] he schemed with right-wing Oklahoma lawyer R. Marc Nuttle (‘National Field Consultant’ to the Committee For The Survival of a Free Congress) to lure Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to a luncheon for the Private Enterprises Foundation. It is claimed that Holihan’s share of the proceeds was to be nothing less than $50,000. Unfortunately for […]
[…] tends to support this. A number of cases have made it extremely difficult for councils to sue for libel and/or damage to their reputation(s).(6) In the early Thatcher years Tory Party central office set up a section to trawl for, collate and occasionally invent, local government (i.e. anti-Labour) ‘stories’ that were then fed to […]
[…] Murdoch three name checks; and John Rentoul of The Independent on Sunday managed ‘10 brief mentions’ in his big Blair book. Was it any different with Margaret Thatcher? ‘Hugo Young’s much-praised book on Margaret Thatcher, One of Us, reserves one minor, passing reference to Murdoch,’ writes Oborne. Will, the political chroniclers be more outspoken […]
[…] advisors, nicknamed ‘the adjutant’ by Canard Enchaine. Langemann also reports that Sir Arthur Franks and Nicholas Elliott were invited to Chequers for a working meeting with Mrs Thatcher, after her election. But perhaps the key political figure was the late Franz Josef Strauss, Bavarian Premier and Langemann’s boss. Strauss was a close friend of […]
[…] the Heritage Foundation for 11 FCS activists. Although there are still libertarian strands within the Tory Party, David Hoile and his colleagues were on the good ship Thatcher, and when she went down, so did they. (For a while they seemed to genuinely believe that Mrs Thatcher was a libertarian; a bit like believing […]
