[…] a private security firm (who, I kid you not, codenamed Gable ‘Horse’!) and a Tory MP. The outcome was a police report which ‘was given to Mrs Thatcher at a meeting in Downing Street and to Lord Bridge, then Chairman of the Security Commission’. Murray leaves this extraordinary episode thus: What happened from that […]
[…] the less well off simply disappeared from the electoral register to avoid payment. No-one’s quite sure how many voters disappeared in this way, but Baroness Thatcher herself has been quoted as saying that the Poll Tax helped win the ropey-looking 1992 election for the Conservative party. She put the number of disappearing […]
One of many reasons why the lobbying industry attracts opprobrium is because Britain’s political system offers only limited public sector facility to those who wish to influence it but lack the funding and/or patronage to do so. ‘The lobbyists’ did not cause the injustice. It is up to government to come up with the solutions. … Read more
[…] spelling of General Galtieri. Sinking the Belgrano was popular with the majority of the Brits who were deep into a nostalgic imperial relapse at the time; Mrs Thatcher won the 1983 election at a canter; and the British government did not invite Galtieri to send in his troops. World in Review is also dotted […]
[…] that Garnett’s book, another rattling good read, traces the story from the mid-1970s to now, while Mr Turner begins in 1970 and calls a halt when Mrs Thatcher takes office in May 1979. Mr Garnett is unafraid to interpose his opinions into his own narrative, as when he declares that private medicine and education […]
[…] research in marketing), The Mayfair Set (about a section of the British right in London in the 1970s considered as a microcosm of and forerunner to the Thatcher era) and, most recently, The Trap. I didn’t think much of The Trap’s thesis and thought its version of the concept of freedom contrived and philosophically […]
[…] Red Brigades (b) organised the current Mafia/P2 episodes to discredit Andreotti. (New Statesman 25 Jan. 1985) Also in the New Statesman (11 Jan 1985) Duncan Campbell ( Thatcher goes for Nerve gas), using leaked documents, shows that this government is on the verge of ordering nerve gas for the British military. We have to […]
Crosland lives! Managing the World Economy John Mills MacMillan, London, 2000, £42.50 (hb) John Mills argues in this book that the central problem facing any economy is that of creating and sustaining growth. This is true not only for the older developed economies of the United States and Europe, including Britain, but also for … Read more
[…] secret state and its opponents and/or victims. Because there is so much information in this period, inevitably the most interesting and most detailed section is on the Thatcher years. There are no great revelations here, but there are some incidents I had forgotten about (and some I’d never heard of); and since I can’t […]
[…] the right into power in much of Europe, America and Australasia. It is arguable that without the oil price hike in 1974 we would not have had Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and their subsequent effects on the world. An e-mail to the Observer journalist who conducted the interview with Yamani went unanswered but I had […]
