[…] in Northern Ireland, what amounts to a revisionist history in miniature of WW2 intelligence operations on the British side, and a sardonic post-script on the Falklands: “Mrs Thatcher postured absurdly in the immediate aftermath …an illusion about an independent almost an imperial role comparable to that which regards nuclear weapons as deterrents to every […]
[…] was quickly moved to one side. Holroyd notes that Stalker’s downfall came after he and Colin Wallace had sent their file of allegations and evidence to Mrs Thatcher in 1984. After which ‘two events took place: the first was the Government’s robust attempt to stop Spycatcher; the second was the attack on the integrity […]
[…] was a sign that Atlanticism in the UK was now bipartisan. After 1979 the two major political parties had gone separate ways on the special relationship: under Thatcher the Tories had drawn closer to the USA than they had been under Heath; while Labour under Foot and Kinnock had adopted a stance critical of […]
[…] to jail after she leaked confidential documents to The Guardian. Many at the time – the height of the renewed Cold War under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – thought the editor of The Guardian would resign, a course of action over failure in civic duty his newspaper’s leading articles have frequently urged on […]
Say it ain’t so, Joe Joe Haines’ 2003 Glimmers of Twilight (London: Politicos, 2003) got a fair bit of attention when it appeared, most of the comments noting either former Harold Wilson press officer Haines’ allegation that Marcia Falkender claimed to have had an affair with Wilson in the 1950s, or the claim (supported by […]
Christopher Harvie Hamish Hamilton, London, 1994 This is nominally the book of the Channel 4 TV series on NSO. TV is an entertainment medium, almost wholly useless for conveying detail or arguments. (An hour’s documentary viewing covers what you might read in ten minutes – or less.) So the TV series was interesting in small … Read more
[…] America attacked the Round Table’s various front organisations in the late 1940s, thinking they were attacking the ‘international communist conspiracy’. (15) More recently both Nixon and Mrs Thatcher have explicitly set themselves up as the enemies of the foreign policy ‘establishment’ without ever showing the slightest signs of understanding who it is they are […]
[…] began in 1983 there seemed every point in collecting and publishing every available scrap of information on the British security and intelligence services: we had Reagan and Thatcher, a resurgent British imperialism on the coat-tails of America, and a repressive, authoritarian regime at home. Publicising what the British state most wanted kept in the […]
[…] therefore be concluded that MI6 is fully aware of, if not indeed one of the main sponsors of, the anonymous security group. Also closely connected with Mrs Thatcher and Mr Franks is the prominent journalist Robert Moss, who, together with Fred Luchsinger editor of Neuen Zuricher Zeitung, Dr Cux of the Swiss Intelligence Service […]
[…] Ministers on what insiders call ‘reality’ as opposed to ‘gossip’ in the Party’s document.” (More Hennessy ‘gossip’ .) 4. Secret Intelligence (Richard Norton-Taylor, G., June 6th 1983) Thatcher Advisers Refuse To Face M.P.’s Questions. (Peter Hennessy T. April 21 1983) The new Select Committees attempted to monitor the intelligence services and question the criteria […]
